U.S. Child Labor [sic] Laws

With thanks to my contact @ Human Rights Watch

http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2009/09/15/us-adopt-stronger-laws-child-farmworkers

US: Adopt Stronger Laws for Child Farmworkers

Proposed Legislation Would Eliminate Double Standard in Child Labor Laws

September 15, 2009

The US Congress should amend outdated labor laws that allow even young children to work in commercial US agriculture, Human Rights Watch said today. Legislation introduced today by Congresswoman Lucille Roybal-Allard of California would for the first time apply the same age and hour requirements to children working in agriculture as for children working in other occupations. Hundreds of thousands of children under age 18 work in US agriculture.

In states including Florida, Texas, North Carolina, and Michigan, Human Rights Watch has found that child farmworkers work longer hours, at younger ages, and under more hazardous conditions than other working youths. This summer, Human Rights Watch interviewed children hoeing cotton and sorghum in scorching heat, cutting collard greens and kale with sharp knives, hitching and driving tractors, and stooping for hours picking cucumbers.

Pay was, at best, minimum wage, but was often far lower. Many employers provided no drinking water or toilets. Children described smelling and, in a few instances, being sprayed with pesticides. Many left school in April or May, or were still working elsewhere when their schools started in August.

"Children as young as 11 and 12 are working 10 or more hours a day in one of the country's most dangerous occupations," said Zama Coursen-Neff, deputy director for the Children's Rights Division at Human Rights Watch. "It's time to update antiquated laws and make sure that children harvesting food in the fields receive just as much protection as the teens serving that food at McDonald's."

Agriculture is one of the most dangerous types of youth employment in the United States. In 2000, the Department of Labor reported that the risks of work-related fatalities for youth working in agriculture were four times as high as the average for all working youth.

The Roybal-Allard bill, the "Children's Act for Responsible Employment (CARE)" would amend the Fair Labor Standards Act to prohibit the employment of children ages 13 and younger in agriculture, except for those working on farms owned and operated by their parents. It would allow 14- and 15-year-olds to work only for limited hours, outside of school hours, and would raise the age for hazardous agricultural work to 18.

Currently, under the Fair Labor Standards Act, any agricultural employer can hire children ages 12 and 13 to work unlimited hours, outside of school hours with parental permission. On small farms, there is no minimum age for children who work outside of school hours with their parents' consent. In contrast, employers outside of agriculture are prohibited from hiring children below age 14, and can employ 14- and 15-year-olds for no more than 18 hours in a school week, and not more than 40 in a non-school week. No such restrictions apply to children working in agriculture.

 "The long hours and low wages of child farmworkers undermine their education and perpetuate cycles of poverty," Coursen-Neff said. "US practices also violate international law."

In 1999, the US ratified the International Labour Organization's Worst Forms of Child Labor Convention, which prohibits work that is likely to harm the health, safety, or morals of children. The guidelines that accompany the convention recommend that prohibited forms of child labor include work with dangerous machinery, equipment or tools, and exposure to hazardous substances and temperatures.

In a letter sent on September 15, Human Rights Watch urged members of the House of Representative's Committee on Education and Labor to support the bill and act quickly to ensure its passage.

Roybal-Allard announced the introduction of the bill in advance of a September 16 US Department of Labor event focusing on the plight of migrant farmworker children. Labor Secretary Hilda Solis is the host.

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http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/14_million/poor3.shtml

Children in the Fields

By John Biewen - Correspondent

Part of 'The Forgotten Fourteen Million'


When Americans talk about the problem of child labor, they're usually talking about other countries. The U.S. banned most kinds of work by young children decades ago – and certainly dangerous work - except in the nation's orchards and fields. Farmworker advocates say agriculture is the last big stronghold of dangerous child labor in the United States. Much of that labor is legal. And most of the children doing it are poor.

SANTIAGO AND EMMA MATA work side by side inside a natural tunnel formed by overlapping branches of Granny Smith apple trees. They wear gloves and surgical masks to guard against dust and pesticide residue. It's a crisp, perfect October day near Mattawa, in south-central Washington State. The Matas are not migrants. Like thousands of farm workers in this part of Washington, they live here year-round.

"I work all the time," Santiago says through an interpreter. "Picking cherries, picking apples, trimming and pruning the trees ... "

The Matas pluck the green apples with smooth, rapid motions, quickly filling the canvas bags strapped over their shoulders. Every few minutes, each of them climbs down to lay a bagful into a squat, wooden bin the size of a big freezer chest – very gently, to avoid bruising.

Together, the husband-and-wife team can fill a 900-pound bin in half an hour. This orchard pays 12 dollars a bin, so it's a good day; the Matas are each making about $12 an hour.

"But it depends," says Emma, as she empties her sturdy canvas bag. "Sometimes, when there's a good, long row with lots of fruit on the trees, we make good money. But if there are other workers near us and not much fruit, we don't make much."

Economists who study the industry say on average, hired farm workers make $6 or $7/hour, with no health coverage, workers' compensation coverage, or overtime pay. Between seasons, farm workers live through long stretches of unemployment. So the average farm worker in the US earns about $7,000 a year.

"I strive to pay a fair wage, and I believe that we do, I believe that we do," says Larry Knudson, 59, who owns a midsize orchard outside of Yakima.

Knudson is blunt but amiable; he wears a wide-rimmed leather hat and scuffed canvas jacket. "Our base wage on this operation is $6.75 an hour," he says proudly. His speech grows halting, though, when he's asked how his workers get by. "All my year-round people, they're all raising families and ... are living ... fine."

Helping Pay the Bills

"I sleep [on] the floor, because I feel better on the floor," explains 13-year-old Luis Hernandez, giving a tour of the small house where he lives with his parents and five siblings in Toppenish, Washington. "My big older brother, he sleeps right there, in the bed."

The bed is right. It's the only one in the house. The four younger children sleep on thin mattresses on the living room floor, Luis says matter-of-factly. "And my dad and my mom, too."

Luis's parents, Juan and Antonia, are Mexican immigrants. Their children were all born in the U.S. The Hernandez' don't work for Larry Knudson, but, like his year-round employees, they make more than the average farm worker family – $18,000 last year, they say. That's still $10,000 below the federal poverty line for a family of eight.

To ease the burden slightly, Luis and his 14-year-old brother, Jose, work sometimes, too. Jose picked cherries last summer, then kept working after school started, harvesting apples on weekends through mid-October.

"Not all day, but in the morning [until] 3 p.m.," he says in an adolescent's shy monotone. "To help my parents get money to pay the bills and all that."

Antonia and Juan Hernandez seem sensitive to questions about their sons doing farm work. They say they don't require the boys to work.

"No, they wanted to come and help us," Antonia says in forceful Spanish. "It was their idea."

The eldest boy, Jose, goes to the orchards, Juan explains, "so [Luis] wanted to go too. Because he wanted to make some money. We let them keep some. Only a little, but some."

Media reports often focus on illegal child labor in agriculture. But it's legal for 14-year-old Jose to work in the orchards. Thirteen-year-old Luis broke state law by picking cherries last summer; cherry orchards are off-limits in Washington until age 14. But at 13, he could work legally in cucumber, berry, and spinach fields. Agriculture's child labor laws vary from state and state and crop to crop, but as a rule they're more lenient than in any other industry. That's true in most states, and it's strikingly true at the federal level. That despite the fact that farming ranks with mining and construction as one of the most dangerous industries.

"It's OK for a kid under 14 to work in the fields using knives and machetes and other sharp cutting instruments, but they can't work under 14 in an air-conditioned office collating paper," says Diane Mull of the Washington D.C.-based Association of Farmworker Opportunity Programs.

Mull estimates 800,000 children work legally and illegally in agriculture. Hard numbers aren't available. One census bureau estimate says 155,000 minors work on farms, but that survey didn't count kids under 15. A recent survey in Wisconsin found 92% of farm workers' children over the age of 12 worked in the fields.

Farm leaders insist their industry has the most relaxed labor laws for good reason.

"The average agricultural producer is a very, very small business," says Bryan Little, chief lobbyist for the American Farm Bureau Federation. "And family farms by and large cannot succeed without relying on the efforts of family and friends and extended family and anybody else you can find to try to come and drive the truck, drive the combine ... and do stuff like that when you're trying to get the harvest in before it rains."

But that communal picture of child labor is largely outdated, statistics show. The Census Bureau says only a quarter of kids working on farms are the children or neighbors of farm owners. Three-fourths are hired laborers.

A report last fall by the National Research Council's Institute of Medicine called on the government to tighten restrictions on child labor – especially on farms. Working on farms can be healthy for children if the work is safe and doesn't go on too long, says commission member Barbara Lee, a rural Wisconsin physician. "But if you put them into a situation where they're actually taking the place of an adult laborer, you have to ask the question: Would it be acceptable in any other industry? And if it is not, then we have to say we've got a problem here," Lee says.

Children At Risk

Luis Hernandez worked on the cherry harvest for just a few days last summer. That's because in the first week, just before his 13th birthday, he took a break to play, and got seriously hurt.

"I was standing on a ladder," he recalls. "When I got off, I was playing with the guy, a friend, that was on a tractor. I was playing with him, throwing cherries. Then I tripped, and when I tripped, the tire, it ranned over me and stopped right here on the middle of my stomach."

Luis's mother, Antonia, was working on a ladder nearby. She screamed when she saw the tractor's flat-bed trailer, loaded with bins of apples, knock Luis down and roll onto his chest.

"[The driver] heard me and he stopped and looked down," Antonia says. "The wheel had come up just short of Luis's head. The driver then backed off him."

Luis was flown to a hospital in Seattle with a bruised heart and blood in his lungs. He's O.K. now. But a 17-year-old boy picking peaches in Utah last summer was not as lucky; he died of a brain hemorrhage after being sprayed accidentally with pesticides twice in one week.

Teenage farm workers make up just 4% of all employed teens, but a much higher 25% of those killed on the job.

Farm groups say those figures overstate the danger to young hand laborers. Most of the kids killed on farms are those who live there, says Mike Gempler of the Washington Growers League; they are far more likely to handle dangerous machinery and pesticides.

"But for somebody who is involved in a fieldwork position, who's not working around concentrated forms of pesticides, who is handling a piece of fruit that is going to be sold and marketed the next day, the threat is not there at all," Gempler says. "The hard evidence doesn't stack up."

But critics counter that there's no hard evidence either way. Federal officials acknowledge that the long-term effects of pesticide exposure on field workers have never been studied. Farm worker advocate Diane Mull points out federal standards for when workers can enter a field after pesticides have been sprayed are based on the estimated risk to an adult male – not a child.

"We're using these kids, we're using farm workers, as guinea pigs, to really look at what intensive pesticide exposures are," she says. "If you look at that population and you know that they're largely minority, that's an even more egregious form of discrimination."

Farm worker advocates say the best way to curb child labor in agriculture is to reduce the need for children to work, by raising the wages paid to adult farm workers. Farm employers reply that they couldn't compete in global markets if they had to pay much more.


Related:

http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/26/kids-in-the-garden/