The US state of Iowa has legalized child labor. A bill that represents a setback in the rights of minors and that contemplates allowing 14-year-olds to work night shifts, 15-year-olds to work on assembly lines and that those of 16 and 17 serve alcohol.

The proposal, which was approved this week, has been strongly defended in the Iowa legislature by Republican legislators and some businessmen, such as Steve Sarcone, who assures that “children do not go to bed at 9 in the night in summer” and this is a way of providing them “a safe environment”.

From the Democratic ranks they fiercely attack the proposal. Iowa Democratic Senator Zach Walls has harshly criticized the measure: “We have legalized that young people between the ages of 14 and 15 work with saws, in excavations, in dangerous manual labor… in demolitions!”

The President of the United States, Joe Biden, promised at the end of February a campaign against this scourge after the ‘New York Times’ demonstrated that the number of exploited children throughout the country has skyrocketed, many of them from South America. However, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, the Democrat Xavier Becerra, was caught supporting some of these laws. At first, the White House supported him, but the next day, through a statement, they demanded explanations.

The debate on the legalization of child labor is not only alive in Iowa. Several states of the country raise it and have even approved it. For example, in Alabama, a few months ago the authorities found 12-year-old children working in a car plant and in Wisconsin they found more than 100 minors packaging products in a meat company.

According to the Economic Policy Institute, in the past two years, as many as 10 states have considered bills to ease child labor restrictions.