Phillip Mattera, Violation Tracker Project Director and Corporate Research Project Director with Good Jobs First joined America’s Work Force Union Podcast to discuss a rise in child labor violations over the past decade and the organization's Violation Tracker.
Mattera discussed a report on the violations found by the U.S. Department of Labor regarding Child Labor. He said that over the past decade, there has been a noticeable uptick in the number of child labor violations. Mattera said he thought this was a practice America had moved past, however, the data shows otherwise.
The report's biggest violator of child labor violations was a private equity firm called Rourke Capital, with the second largest violator being McDonald’s. Rourke owns significant portions of several fast food chains, and McDonald’s, Packer Sanitation Services Inc. and Blackstone were responsible for nearly $27 million in fines from 2017 to 2023.
With these four companies and firms generating billions of dollars of revenue annually, Mattera said the penalties are not enough to make effective changes. He said that several of the children these companies take advantage of come from immigrant families. Mattera discussed how the Violation Tracker from Good Jobs First is a better way to follow these violations. The free-to-use database collects all labor violations committed by corporations nationwide, including safety, environmental and workforce violations, among others.
For more from Mattera, listen to the show above.