Sponsors (9)
Introduced June 12, 2025 by Robert C. Scott · Last progress June 12, 2025
The bill significantly strengthens protections, enforcement, research, and training to reduce oppressive and hazardous child labor—benefiting children and at-risk communities—but does so by raising penalties, creating new enforcement funding and reporting mechanisms, and increasing compliance, litigation, privacy, and administrative costs for employers, governments, and taxpayers.
Children and teens under 18 gain substantially stronger legal protections against oppressive and hazardous work because the bill raises civil and criminal penalties, creates a private civil right to recover damages, and prioritizes enforcement of child-labor prohibitions.
Enforcement capacity is made more sustainable through a dedicated fund and a permanent advisory/enforcement structure, enabling sustained investigations, interagency cooperation, and funded prevention programs.
Improved research, data collection, and training (HHS/NIOSH studies, national statistics, and public education programs) will produce better, evidence-driven protections, clearer safety guidance for young workers, and targeted interventions for at-risk groups.
Small businesses and some employers face substantially higher compliance costs, exposure to large fines, and heightened criminal risk, which could strain operations and hiring decisions.
Large increases in civil penalties plus a new private right to recover damages are likely to spur more litigation and higher insurance or premium costs that may be passed to consumers or workers.
Redirecting employer penalty payments into a dedicated fund that is available without annual appropriation effectively earmarks those penalties and reduces Congress's annual spending control over those monies.
Based on analysis of 11 sections of legislative text.
Raises penalties for child-labor and OSHA violations, creates a dedicated penalty-funded Child Labor and Safety and Health Fund, establishes an advisory committee, and expands research, data, and hazardous-job reviews for youth.
Raises civil penalties for child-labor and OSHA safety violations, creates a dedicated Child Labor and Safety and Health Fund funded by specified civil penalties, and expands federal research, reporting, and enforcement infrastructure to prevent oppressive child labor and protect young workers. It also establishes a National Advisory Committee on Child Labor, requires periodic review and updating of hazardous-occupation orders for youth, and directs HHS/NIOSH and the Department of Labor to develop new research, data, and guidance on risks to children and young workers. The bill increases penalty amounts (including large multipliers for willful, repeated, or fatal violations, and extra multipliers when victims are under 18), requires agencies to consider the economic benefit of noncompliance when assessing penalties, centralizes penalty receipts into a fund that can be spent without further appropriation for enforcement, training, and research, and mandates annual reports and specified timelines for research, statistical programs, and rulemaking inputs.