Now it is official - child labor - Children, 14 years old, some even younger, climb into dusty trucks before the sun colors the sky. Before six o’clock in the morning, long before the first school bell rings, they carry baskets full of fruit that were once picked by other hands. Hands that are now gone - expelled, deported. Florida, the state that calls itself free, has a new face - and it is the face of child labor. With the passage of HB 1225 and SB 918, the state legislature has torn down the walls of civilization’s protections. Employers can now make 16- and 17-year-olds work unlimited hours without breaks - even during the school year. Even 14- and 15-year-olds who are taught online or have already received their diploma are no longer protected. Law HB 49 opens the floodgates even further: working hours before 6 a.m. and after 11 p.m. are allowed, even on school days. One minute of public hearing was enough for the powerful to decide on the well-being of the weakest. In this new Florida there is no longer any obligation to grant breaks. No obligation to provide protection from the burning sun when the thermometer climbs to 100 degrees Fahrenheit. No obligation to spare the small bodies that bend under the weight of the harvest. No obligation to protect them from the pesticides that seep into their skin, burn their lungs, poison their future. Who takes these children to the fields? Who brings them back when the sun is high and exhaustion makes their knees buckle? Who hears their voice when they get no breaks, when they silently suffer under heat, hunger, and abuse? The answer, as simple as it is horrific: no one.
Governor Ron DeSantis, architect of this upheaval, called the new law a “necessary adjustment.” “What is wrong with expecting our young people to work part-time now? That’s how it used to be,” he said, before naming the real goal: DeSantis himself has clearly stated that teenagers should fill the gaps created by the deportation of migrants. It was not a judge who decided. No independent court asked what law and justice demand. It was a calculation - born of political lust for power, carried by economic interest, cemented by a legislature that did not even have the decency to give the public more than sixty seconds to be heard. What was lost is more than a line in a statute. It is the idea that a society has a duty to protect its children. It is the belief that childhood is a right, not a privilege. It is the dream that progress could mean never again sending small bodies into the fields while the stars are still in the sky. Florida is not moving into the future - Florida is going back - into the dark chapters of history, when work was more important than life, when silence mattered more than protection. A return to a time when children could no longer be children, but mere cogs in the machinery of a merciless system. In this new order, it does not matter who they are - only how long they can stand before they fall.
Note on the legal situation: Under international standards, Florida’s new child labor law, in particular HB 1225, SB 918, and HB 49, represents a clear violation of fundamental human rights norms. It violates the protections defined in Article 32 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) as well as Articles 2 and 3 of ILO Convention No. 138 (Minimum Age for Employment) and No. 182 (Prohibition of the Worst Forms of Child Labor). The United States, however, has never ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child or ILO Convention No. 138 and is therefore not legally bound under international law. Although the United States has ratified ILO Convention No. 182, there are no effective international enforcement mechanisms that would allow for direct sanctions. Florida’s law may be formally legal under the US legal system - but it is incompatible with the fundamental principles of international human rights.
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