When is the law not the law? When business is on the line.

Capital Eye bby Randi Bjornstad

Maybe pro-labor supporters thought they’d won a victory of sorts back in February, when the business giant Wal-Mart found itself fined a whopping $135,540 – using the term ironically, of course – for violating federal laws relating to child labor.

Yes, $135,540 – less than the cost of a modest home in many parts of the country and not even a drop in the bucket for a company that made more than $10 billion in profits last year – for repeatedly endangering the lives of children who worked for the company’s fabled pittances while putting their very lives on the line to keep those profits rolling in.

It seems that the King Kong of retailers – sorry, King, maybe Godzilla would be the more appropriate term – found it acceptable to employ underage workers and require them, or at least allow them, to operate hazardous equipment that in one case resulted in serious injuries to a teenager using a chain saw.

According to the U.S. Department of Labor, its investigation “revealed that Wal-Mart employed 85 minors aged 16 and 17 who performed prohibited activities, including loading and occasionally operating or unloading scrap paper balers and operating forklifts.”

In a gracious move – more irony here – Wal-Mart offered to cooperate with the Labor Department’s investigators and “guaranteed full compliance with the youth employment provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act in the future.”

Empty words, no doubt. Because guess what? Since then, Wal-Mart has negotiated an agreement with the same Department of Labor that’s supposed to protect workers in this country, extracting a promise that it will give15 days notice before descending on the company’s outlets to search for violations of child labor laws.

What? Do we tell abusive parents we’re going to stop by to see if they’re beating their kids? Do we call up meth cooks to tell them we’re going to check on their kitchens?

Does the word “outrageous” come to mind?

The editorial page of the Los Angeles Times didn’t mince any words when writing about this almost farcical circumstance.

“Thieves, muggers and other lawbreakers would have an easier life if police and prosecutors operated like the U.S. Labor Department,” the Times wrote.

Under the agreement, the LA Times reported, even getting caught wouldn’t be such a bad thing for Wal-Mart, because it would be given an additional 10 days to “escape citations and fines if it cleans up the problem.”

Yeah, right.

Fortunately, this egregious violation of federal law has gotten the attention of a few members of the U.S. Congress.

Rep. Laura DeLauro of Connecticut has introduced H.R. 4190, which she calls the “Safe at Work Act.”

Under her bill, it would be unlawful for the Department of Labor to “enter into any agreement to provide any person with notice prior to commencing an investigation” of violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act.

What’s pathetic is that we should need this law.

But apparently we do. Rep. Tom Lantos of California also has introduced a bill this session, H.R. 2870, the “Youth Worker Protection Act,” which would add a new section to the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 to protect the rights of minor employees.

Under Lantos’s bill, a minor can only be employed if he or she is at least 14 years old or has a special dispensation to work; has a valid work permit; or, if the employment is not hazardous to health and well-being.

“While many of us think that exploitative child labor is no longer a problem in the United States, the sad fact is that some of the most exploitative forms of child labor continue to occur in our country,” Lantos said in introducing his bill.

Violations occur in agriculture, factories and retail establishments, Lantos said, despite the fact that the United States in 1999 ratified a treaty known as the International Labor Organization Convention 182, which required it to “take immediate and effective measures to secure the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child labor as a matter of urgency.”

Allowing children to work and then subjecting them to dangerous work environments clearly violates both national and international law, Lantos says.

But in the case of Wal-Mart – and who knows how many other “mega-employers” – the bottom line appears to be much more compelling than the welfare of its bottom wage-earners.

But that begs the question: Why is the Department of Labor protecting business instead of the workers who are supposed to be its concern?