Section 1. The Congress shall have power to limit, regulate, and prohibit the labor of persons under eighteen years of age.
Section 2. The power of the several States is unimpaired by this article except that the operation of State laws shall be suspended to the extent necessary to give effect to legislation enacted by the Congress.
The first thing that I thought seeing this as an unratified amendment was that obviously we have done some things without the amendment. There aren't factories full of child workers, at least in this country.
When that did happen, children had accidents at a higher rate than adults. Their development was stunted, both physically and intellectually. As people begin advocating for the children, some states began passing laws about child labor. This raised concerns that states that protected children were at an economic disadvantage by competing against states that still exploited the little beggars.
(And, they could have been literal beggars without the jobs; many of the child laborers had parents who could not afford to feed them without the additional income.)
The first attempts to handle the competitive issue involved prohibiting imports from states who used child labor into states that did not, or placing a fine on the businesses that used child labor. When these laws were contested, they were ruled unconstitutional.
This is actually quite sensible. The laws were taking a child labor issue and turning it into an interstate commerce issue. That led to the amendment proposal, specifically regulating the labor of persons under eighteen years of age.
Technically it could still be ratified, and would require another ten states, but it probably doesn't seem like a need. I remember in my youth that I could get a work permit at age fourteen, but I did not bother because I would not have been able to work past 7 PM. At sixteen there were more options and I started my stint in fast food and retail.
Except, I did still work before that, in unregulated ways. I babysat, where it was always until past 7 and often until 11 PM. I picked berries in the summer, which probably did have some regulations on it, but all I remember was needing a signed permission slip.
Hold that thought.
A lot of changes came with the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. It does have rules regarding child labor, but it was probably more significant that it also provided for 40 hour work weeks, overtime pay, and a national minimum wage. Providing better remuneration for the parents probably made it much less necessary to have the children work anyway, which should have been an additional incentive for keeping the law.
Most people are aware there are some limitations to the protections provided. Employees who can reasonably expect to get tipped do not have to be paid the minimum wage. Certain industries are exempt from paying overtime:
http://www.lni.wa.gov/WorkplaceRights/Wages/Overtime/Exemptions/default.asp
There are practical considerations, but it does still leave some room for exploitation, and a lot of that wiggle room is in agriculture. That may explain the school bus full of teenage berry pickers that I remember, but I am sure it also explains this:
http://www.cc.com/video-clips/l0fvyd/the-daily-show-with-jon-stewart-nicoteens
We don't need a constitutional amendment to fix this, but we would need to decide it was a problem. Perhaps we would decide that their parents need to be paid more, and that would mean the teenagers don't need to be there. Perhaps we would only decide that the employers should provide the gear and breaks.
There could be a lot of different ways to go, but nothing happens if people don't care.
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