这封信的作者是 Olentangy Liberty High School in Powell, Ohio 17 岁的Michelle Huang，他是学生公开信大赛的前 10 名获胜者之一，我们收到了 9,946 份参赛作品。
Dear Ohio State Senators,
When I picture child labor, I imagine grainy photographs from another century: children with dirt-streaked faces working mines, mills, and factory lines. I don’t picture 2025, and I certainly don’t picture Ohio.
But earlier this year, federal agents found more than two dozen minors illegally working inside Gerber’s Poultry in Kidron, Ohio. Many of them were immigrants from Guatemala. These children, some as young as 14, were working in dangerous conditions: handling heavy machinery and performing late-night sanitation shifts.
This wasn’t an isolated incident. The New York Times reports that child labor violations in the U.S. have surged by 69 percent since 2018. In 2023 alone, over 5,800 minors were found working in violation of labor laws, hundreds of them in dangerous roles. Here in Ohio, those violations have increased by 31 percent.
The response? Instead of strengthening protections, Ohio introduced Senate Bill 50 — a law that would loosen restrictions, letting 14 and 15-year-olds work longer hours during the school year. Supporters call it a solution to the labor shortage. But we, the children, aren’t the answer to adult problems.
I’m a high school student. I wake up before the sun rises to finish calculus homework, bounce between college classes and club meetings, and squeeze in time to study for the ACT. My days are packed with ambition, not out of obligation, but out of hope — hope that what I’m doing now might open doors in the future. That’s what childhood should offer: a runway, not a cage. So when I hear about kids my age scrubbing meatpacking floors at midnight, I can’t help but wonder what futures they’ve been forced to forfeit. What subjects they’re too tired to learn. What dreams they’ve quietly folded away.
This isn’t some labor shortage driven anomaly; it’s a symptom of a broken system, one where vulnerable kids are treated as expendable labor, not students or future citizens.
And instead of facing this crisis head-on, lawmakers are rolling back the very protections that once kept us safe. In Florida, Governor Ron DeSantis is backing legislation that removes restrictions on how long and how late teenagers can work — eliminating mandated breaks and enabling overnight shifts. Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds recently signed a bill allowing children as young as 14 to work in meatpacking facilities, arguing it would help them learn the “dignity in work.”
This isn’t about empowering youth. It’s about replacing adult workers with cheaper, more compliant children — it’s about cutting corners and avoiding real investment in wages, training, and workplace safety. It’s about adult failures, masked as opportunity.
So this is my ask to you, Ohio lawmakers: stop normalizing child labor. Don’t lower the bar. Raise the alarm. Call for hearings. Demand real data. Investigate the industries that quietly profit from this exploitation. And most importantly, listen to the kids who don’t have the luxury of writing letters like this — because they’re too busy working jobs they were never meant to have.
Clocking out,
Michelle Huang
Works Cited
Ainsley, Julia, Strickler, Laura and Martinez, Didi. Feds Found More Than Two Dozen Minors Working in Ohio Poultry Plant. NBC News. 20 Oct. 2023.
Iyer, Kaanita. Iowa Governor Signs Bill to Loosen Child Labor Laws. CNN.com, 27 May 2023.
Florida Bill to Allow Teens to Work Overnight Hours on School Days Moves Forward. cbsnews.com. 26 March 2025.
New York Times Editorial Board. The Dangerous Race to Put More Children to Work. The New York Times, 24 March 2023.
Roque, Lorena and Mehta, Sapna. CLASP Federal Recommendations to Combat Child Labor. CLASP. 7 March 2024.
Smith, Heather. Deregulating Child Labor Will Harm Ohio’s Kids. Policy Matters Ohio. 25 Feb. 2025.