Iowa-Writers-logo-subhead-300-v6.jpg” alt=”Iowa Writers Collaboration. Linking Iowa readers and writers.” width=”300″ height=”145″>Summer time! Last day of school! Graduation parties! Outdoor kitchens! Camping! What a great time to be a young teenager enjoying the roller coaster ride into summer.
Landing that first paying job is a summer rite of passage. It has been an ancient ritual for many teenagers to wait impatiently to work until they get a driver’s license at age 16.
But don’t worry, Iowa is solving that problem. A new law that allows them to legally drive to their jobs when they are as young as 14 and a half means they can do what they can to solve Iowa’s worker shortage. Gov. Kim Reynolds signed it May 17.
In 2022, a new law allowed 16- and 17-year-olds to care for children in daycare without direct supervision. Last year, the governor signed a law allowing 16- and 17-year-olds to get an exemption to work in jobs including excavation, demolition and roofing as part of employer training or school work-study. Teenagers 16 and older will also be allowed to sell and serve alcohol as long as the restaurant’s kitchen remains open. Extended working hours for 14- and 15-year-olds also allow them to work until 11 p.m. in the summer, 9 p.m. during the school year, and up to six hours on a school day. (Iowa state law does not comply with federal law, creating a gray area for employers.)
But these laws were not enough. A new law was needed so that Iowa’s youngest teenagers could legally drive into these new fields of opportunity. The legislators justified their votes under the premise of helping minors develop skills in the world of work. The governor stated that “opportunities to earn money and save to build a better life” “must be available” to young adults.
Few would disagree about the value of developing a good work ethic. My sister and I would get up on dark mornings (before the era of daylight saving time) so Dad could drive us two miles to the nearest town, where we boarded a cattle truck with other teenage girls sitting on makeshift benches around the perimeter, huddled together. under blankets in the cool morning air. Our destiny? Hybrid corn seed detasseling for Garst & Thomas. It didn’t last all summer, so we had time for swim lessons and the 4-H county fair.
Our farming family wasn’t well off, but my three brothers and I didn’t need money for a cell phone or a car we weren’t old enough to drive. A year later, my own children had plenty of time to swim, play 4-H, and play softball. They found summer jobs after they were 16. His work ethic was not affected.
Make no mistake about it: Laws that relax established protections against child labor allow employers to pay lower wages to their young employees. They also go against the goal of keeping kids focused on high school graduation. What other lengths are lawmakers willing to go to solve Iowa’s worker shortage?
Distracting new technology
Motor vehicle safety professionals refer to the time between Memorial Day and Labor Day as the “100 Deadly Days of Summer” due to a significant increase in fatal teen accidents. Iowa’s new juvenile permit law will allow teens to drive up to 25 miles to work or farm-related jobs.
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A couple of decades ago, Iowa teenagers as young as 14 and a half were issued minor school licenses to drive between home and school and extracurricular activities. According to the Iowa Department of Public Safety, Iowa is one of the few states that allows minors under the age of 14.5 to drive unsupervised.
As a parent, it never seemed like a good idea to me. Car accidents are already the number one cause of death among American teenagers. According to AAA, teens are three times more likely to die in a car accident than drivers ages 20 and older. I wrote about the merits of graduated driver’s licenses in a 2007 column in Successful Farming titled “Just Dying to Drive.”
Several years later, two of my nieces went ice skating during an early morning trip to a school activity. Their vehicle overturned and they ended up face down in a crop field. Although one of them was flown to Des Moines, both were lucky not to be seriously injured.
These types of accidents are not unusual. In Iowa, young drivers were involved in 16.3% of fatal car accidents in 2021, one of the highest rates nationally. In 2023 alone, 14- to 17-year-olds in Iowa were involved in more than 4,000 car accidents, resulting in 17 deaths and 94 serious injuries.
Today, teens have access to a new toolbox of destruction while driving: cell phones, texting, Instagram and Snapchat.
Protection from predatory employers
This loosening of child labor laws in Iowa comes as child labor violations in the industry increase. In 2023, more than 5,800 children in eight states were hired in violation of federal child labor laws. Packers Sanitation Services, Inc., Wisconsin, paid more than $1.5 million in fines for hiring children as young as 13 to clean meatpacking plants.
Earlier this month, Fayette Janitorial Service of Somerville, Tennessee, paid $649,304 in fines for violating the Fair Labor Standards Act by employing children as young as 13 to clean equipment at a meatpacking plant in Sioux City. Up to 23 children worked night shifts cleaning at the Seaboard Triumph plant. It is the first case of its kind in Iowa.
How many of these children who end up working long hours in dangerous jobs are immigrant children alone in the United States?
If you saw the biographical drama “Cabrini” earlier this year, you know that it focused a close-up on the plight of orphaned Italian immigrant children who were abandoned to their fate in New York City in the late 19th century. It features a scene in which two young men accepted jobs at a pumping station, where one died in an accident. Past generations of Americans fought for greater protections for workers, but Congress was unable to advance the Fair Labor Act until 1938.
Most children eagerly await their first job and usually do not question their safety. It’s hard not to suspect that the loosening of child labor laws in Iowa and about 11 other states in recent years isn’t aimed at children whose parents struggle to make ends meet.
Too far, too fast
In my job as an agricultural editor, I warned families not to allow their children to do work that was not appropriate for their age. Parents had a sincere desire to instill a work ethic in their children. In fact, many farmers took pride in teaching their young children to drive tractors. In a study of our readers, conducted by the University of Illinois, results revealed that parents generally disapproved of preteen children driving tractors, but felt their own children were quite capable. But what about your ability to make sound judgments in emergency situations?
In some cases, I pointed to the examples of non-agricultural industries, as well as urban families, to illustrate that injuries and deaths of young children in accidents were not the norm. Today, as child labor laws become more flexible, it appears to be increasingly so. We are putting our children in danger.
An estimated one-third of today’s teens have jobs in retail, food service, cleaning, and restaurants. Most of these jobs were not available to my children when they were teenagers because they could not legally drive to get there.
Iowa’s new underage permit law goes into effect July 1, allowing more inexperienced drivers on our roads.
Yeah! School exit! Memorial Day weekend was filled with graduation parties, picnics, and music festivals. But when I passed the school in a neighboring town on a beautiful day this week, the parking lot was packed to the brim. The occasion? The community had gathered, not to celebrate, but to mourn the loss of a 17-year-old student who died in a car accident on May 16.
This column first appeared on Cheryl Tevis’ Unfinished Business blog and is republished here via the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative.
Editor’s Note: Consider subscribing to the collaboration and its member writers to support their work.
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