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Citing 'Tradition,' Big Ag Fights Reforms for Child Farmworkers
"[When I was 12] they gave me my first knife. Week after week I was cutting myself. Every week I had a new scar. My hands have a lot of stories."
--17-year-old boy who started working at age 11 in Michigan (Human Rights Watch)
America’s farm workers have always had it tough, toiling for endless hours in the fields under brutal conditions. But those workers do benefit from a unique income subsidy in the country’s industrial farming system: children.
(Photo: AFP)
In every region of the country, bountiful harvests are regularly gathered by the tender hands of child poverty: several hundred thousand kids work on farms, often just to help their families survive. Those children who deliver crisp peppers and sweet grapes to the mouths of other kids every day represent the devastating social toll of the dysfunctional food industry.
The Child Labor Coalition, which advocates for the rights of exploited children around the world, documents a cornupcopia of abuses in the backyard of a global superpower:
- More children die in agriculture than in any other industry.
- According to the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), between 1995 and 2002, an estimated 907 youth died on American farms—that’s well over 100 preventable deaths of youth per year.
- In 2011, 12 of the 16 children under the age of 16 who suffered fatal occupational injuries worked in crop production, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
- When you include older children, more than half of all workers under age 18 who died from work-related injuries worked in crop production.
Advocates have for months been pressing the Labor Department to finalize a rule change that would help shield child farm workers from some of the most severe occupational hazards, such as handling pesticides and dangerous farm equipment, and would beef up protections for workers under age 16 (currently, children as young as 12 can legally work on farms, thanks to a loophole in federal labor law, and many younger ones work illegally).
The reforms would largely impact youth in the migrant communities that fuel the agricultural labor force, filled with poor and Latino workers who are extremely vulnerable to abuse.
Under the banner of National Farmworker Awareness Week (March 25-31, consumer and labor groups are working to educate communities about egregious conditions on farms. Now that organizations like the Florida-based Coalition of Immokalee Workers have begun to rattle the food industry with colorful worker- and consumer-driven campaigns, Washington should be ripe for long-overdue reforms to curb the worst forms of child labor.
But common decency has again been overshadowed by a well-oiled campaign by the agricultural industry lobby, which has pushed to block the rule changes by claiming that child labor reflects good old American values.
The “Preserving America’s Family Farms Act,” proposed by Rep. Tom Latham of Iowa, targets the pending reforms as a threat to a time-honored “tradition” of child farm labor. Evoking an imaginary pastoral ideal of the American homestead, the bill argues that the strengthening child labor protections would “adversely impact the long standing tradition of youth working on farms to gain valuable skills and lessons on hard work, character, and leadership” and would hurt their opportunities to “gain experiential learning and hands-on skills.”
Apparently, a great way to build kids’ character is pushing them into backbreaking, dangerous labor—rather than going to school or otherwise developing themselves in a way that’s less profitable for agribusiness. You might wonder how many of the bill’s sponsors regularly send their children to pick produce all day to cultivate “leadership” skills.
The saddest aspect of this political debate around farm labor is that the most systemic abuses would not be stopped by just tightening child regulations—not even by enacting the stronger restrictions on child labor that lawmakers have previously proposed in the Children’s Act for Responsible Employment. Whatever the law says, the marginalization of the farm workforce makes comprehensive enforcement nearly impossible.
Justin Feldman of Public Citizen told In These Times, "People are afraid because of immigration status, because of limited English ability, because of poverty and all sorts of issues. They're afraid to come forward to authorities and report.”
In The Atlantic, restaurant industry veteran Helene York cites the underlying the economic dilemma: “Migrant families will lose their children's wages and would be unable to move with available work. What's needed is more income paid to laborers for the really hard work.”
Feldman noted, “one of the reasons that we have children and whole families working on farms is to subsidize the underpayment of the workers.... Looking at it holistically, we need to broaden immigrant rights and workers rights, and not much can change until that happens."
Child labor is a symptom of a monstrous blight across the food system: consumers relish cheap prices and companies reap profits, and workers pay the human cost. Maybe that is an American value, of sorts.
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17 Comments so far
Show AllThe time has come to recognize that the US government pushed US citizens off the land just like it did the people of the first nations, now corporations own the land and food production. There is no difference between giant corporatist and communist farms; one is a private corporation employing semi-slave migrants and children and the other is a State corporation employing gulag prison labor.
Capitalist propaganda trumpets the efficiency of corporate agriculture per hour worked and ignores soil loss, water table reduction, or loss of human and other life to chemical poisons. The repeated lie of efficiency has become accepted truth and few stop to notice that traditional eco agriculture produces close to twice the food per acre.
We are told that US citizens are too lazy and worthless to do the hard work done by semi-slave migrant labor. The solution is clear, raise the farm wage high enough that free citizens can earn enough money to earn a living from the honorable work of raising food.
This is an excellent post that makes excellent points.
May I add a thought: In order to become attractive work, farm labor needs more than just higher wages. It currently is not only difficult, but dangerous in terms of exposure to pesticides and other chemicals, and its toll on back, hands, joints.... Much farm labor is very difficult, which is why it is difficult to get people to do it.
We also need to address the problem of higher-cost food, which is what higher wages may imply, notwithstanding the huge profits of big ag. Capitalism doesn't like diminished profits, does it? Costs can too readily be shoved along to the consumer.
When I was fourteen I would get up at four in the mourning to pick vegetables. I made around a dollar and fifty cents an hour not much. But I learned about hard work and how hard it is to make a living with physical labor. The money wasn't much but I was able to buy some of the things I wanted that were not in my families budget. I learned, I grew strong and healthy and made a little money. Is there something wrong with that. How do fourteen year-old's spend their summers nowadays?
Instead of wringing your hands, join the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (http://ciw-online.org/) and demand that the atrocities in the fields stop. What it takes to circumvent the 1938 National Labor Relations Act (which permits child and worker abuse--beatings, etc.--, wages below minimum wage, retribution for complaining, violations of health and safety in the workplace rules, sexual harassment, discrimination and verbal abuse, even slavery in the fields) is for major food corporations like Publix and Kroger's to sign on to the Fair Food Agreement--as 10 others have already done. This situation is one of the worst in America. And we should not permit the enablers, like Publix, to continue to profit so much from taking advantage of farm laborers as to be a member of the Fortune 400. It's an atrocity that tops all the rest perpetrated by Wall Street.
Plantations Inc, eh? Nothing like shild slavery to profit the master.
Evil is the root of all money.
"Looking at it holistically, we need to broaden immigrant rights and workers rights, and not much can change until that happens."
Amen.
Not to contradict anything in the article, but for the sake of perspective I will share my one observations. Working with small family farmers and in immigrant rights advocacy for many years, I have unrestricted access to hundreds of small farms.
On virtually every farm teenage children of the growers work summers on the farm. I have never seen a pre-teen child working. It may happen, and on the farm the line between "chores" and "work" is not so clearly defined as suburban people may imagine.
I have never seen children handling or near any pesticide or heavy machinery operation. There are rigorous safety programs for that work. Teenagers are anxious to learn to operate tractors and the like, and by age 16 or so many do - once they have gone to the safety classes and gotten certification.
I do occasionally see the children of farm workers playing in the orchard while their parents pick fruit. The children of the owners play in the orchard, as well. I have never seen a child picking fruit. Teenagers hire on in the season to help with harvest. I picked cherries myself starting when I was 14.
Farm work is hard and it is dangerous. But a statement such as "the egregious conditions on farms" is simply playing on the prejudices of suburbanites ignorant about farm life.
Workers are exploited in all industries in this country, That is the nature of the system - buy labor as cheaply as possible and sell the products of this labor as dearly as possible. But this is less true on small family farms then almost anywhere else, because the margins are so thin. Food packaging, processing, marketing, distribution - that is where the windfall profits are in the food industry. Yes, that corporate food industry preying on our food system wraps itself in the mantle of "small farmers" and some idyllic image.
Yes, immigrants are especially vulnerable to abuse - everywhere. And yes, as in all industries, there are unscrupulous employers in farming. But the children of immigrant farm workers are not trapped, they have access to education and have a future. The degree to which this is not true is the degree to which there exist prejudice and barriers for their parents away from farming - from the immigration service, from the police, from racism in the communities.
I would welcome anyone interested in this to accompany me for a couple of weeks this season. You could go anywhere you wanted to go and see anything you wanted to see and interview anyone you wanted to on the farms in the region. You would not see the conditions that are implied by this article. You would see intense pressure on immigrants, from outside of the farm community. You would see relative poverty, from the owners to the workers - a smaller and smaller percentage of the consumer food dollar is making its way back to the farm. You would see teenagers involved in farming - mostly white locals who are working summer jobs. You would see children of immigrants getting an education, and going to college. You would see immigrants sending money home to lift their families from desperate poverty, you would see immigrants becoming farm owners. You would see the dangers in farming, and you would see the protocols and regulations in place to minimize death and injury,
Hear, Hear! It seems as though Chen must be a city girl who knows nothing of the family farm. She lumps all ag enterprises together as a disgraceful employment situation. Did she do no work of any kind until adulthood? Did she do no chores until becoming an adult? How do you become adult if you have never been familiar with work and especially the habits of work, starting with playing alongside the adults and later adding simple chores and so forth. Her brush is simply too broad. I grew up working in the family business and other businesses (in town and sometimes on the nearby farms of friends and relatives).
Work helps to define you as a person and moves you into the adult world. It gives you a place of belonging and a feeling of worth and self-respect. And no, I don't mean 12+ hour days of near-slave labor, as seems to be implied as the only working condition for those who are not yet adults or even that any work at all is somehow horrendous. There is a range of activities with real limits, and believe me, our farm families take care with their kids. They definitely limited what I was allowed to do (kept me away from hazards) and how many hours while encouraging my growth in learning at work. There are really two kinds of victimization, 1) near-slave labor [obviously wrong] and 2) never letting kids do any work.
Chen seems to think that when a youngster does any kind of work it is always as a "near slave" rather than a limited range measured out for the age of the youngster. This is after all a family enterprise, and everyone needs to feel they are putting in their weight. If your family totally forbid you any work or chores what would that say about your sense of belonging? Please, put a few more dimensions into the discussion.
I think that the posters above may wish to read more about the proposed bill in question.
The intent of the legislation apparently is not to prevent children over twelve from working on farms, but rather to guarantee them safer conditions. See below.
But aside from safety issues, they may also wish to ask themselves if migrant children (or any children) under 16 should be eligible to be employed in work that prevents them from attending school.... And our society's responsibility to the children of the workers who harvest our food.
from the Now with Bill Moyers website:
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The Association of Farmworker Opportunity Programs has found that half the youth who regularly perform farm work never graduate from high school. Many children, like those portrayed in NOW's "On the Border," leave school early and return late each year due to their family's work migration. In addition, recent estimates suggest that children who work in agriculture average 30 hours of labor per week — often during the school year.
http://www.pbs.org/now/politics/migrantchildren.html
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From the Child Labor Coalition website
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DOL’s proposed rules will also preserve the “parental exemption,” allowing any child to do any job at any age on their parents’ farm. DOL also recently announced that they will redefine the parental exemption to be more inclusive of other types of family members. Contrary to assertions by some in the farming industry:
• Children as young as 12 will continue to be able to engage in non-hazardous farm work – just not the jobs that have proven to be especially hazardous—and will prevent such avoidable tragedies as children drowning in grain silos, being crushed by tractors or being maimed by heavy machinery.
• Educational programs, such as FFA and 4-H, will continue to teach children about agriculture under safe conditions, including raising farm animals.
We can prevent needless tragedies from happening to children by implementing the proposed updates to the child occupational safety rules without any further delay. The rules won’t impair the rural way of life; they simply put the safety and well being of children above corporate profit. Every day we wait puts at risk the well being of these child workers and could cost them their lives.
The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) recently proposed the first update to the rules governing child labor in hazardous work in over 40 years, with the strong support of NCL and the Child Labor Coalition, a group of 28 organizations focused on child labor issues that NCL co-chairs. While there has been a great deal of coverage highlighting agribusiness and its opposition to the changes, under the guise that the new rules would somehow impair the family farm or “rural way of life,” what’s often lost in the conversation is that the rules would protect children from harm, injury, and death.
Agriculture is consistently ranked as one of the three most dangerous industries, along with construction and mining, yet children are still allowed to work in agriculture under extremely dangerous conditions, such as handling poisonous pesticides, managing animals that can way upwards of 3,000 pounds, and operating heavy machinery. Just this summer, Oklahoma teens Tyler Zander and Bryce Gannon, both 17, each lost a leg in a grain auger accident. Agriculture uses far more machines and dangerous chemicals since the last update to rules for child workers more than 40 years ago.
http://stopchildlabor.org/?p=2628
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What is being proposed is not a "bill" but rather updated regulations.
All indications are that this is a meaningless feel-good effort from the Obama administration in order to give a false "cause" to the progressive base and rally them to the president's re-election campaign. This administration has a long and sorry history of misleading the base in just this way. The Labor Department, as well as the Department of Justice and every other department under Obama has been totally inactive in doing anything meaningful, yet now we have this nonsense from them. As with so many actions by this administration, it supposedly addresses problems that do not exist, all done apparently for PR purposes to promote the president's personal political fortunes, while doing nothing at all about very real problems..
My objections to the new regulations, and those of most small family farmers, is twofold. First, we are highly suspicious of this administration - and with good reason, as I will explain in a moment. Secondly, the regulations are so vague, and this administration so duplicitous and dishonest that it is difficult to tell exactly how these new regulations will be interpreted and enforced.. If past performance by this administration on so many issues is any guide, there is much to fear.
This administration, especially the DOL and ICE, has been intensely hostile to small farms and rural communities and extremely friendly to Wall Street and corporate agri-business interests. The administration sees rural people as a Republican stronghold, and has sought to punish and cripple us and use us as a pretext for rallying progressives and liberals to support the administration. This is especially maddening for those of us who are not Republican, and who worked so hard for years to successfully turn the rural precincts away from the Republicans. Those of us who are not Republicans represent 40-49% of the people in almost every rural district.
People in the farming community have a deep sense of betrayal about this administration. Desperately needed help for beleaguered rural school districts was unambiguously and clearly promised during the campaign. Instead, we get the Arne Duncan privatization insanity. Improved Internet access was promised. Instead, millions $$$ were handed over to a handful of giant telecoms with no accountability and the promise has been utterly betrayed. Revised free trade agreements and enforcement of regulations against tainted imported food and the country of origin labeling law. Again, another this was another outright betrayal. Obama promised to end the massive swat team raids on farms. Instead, they have increased. These are but a few of the things Obama promised during his campaign and then did the exact opposite once elected.
Many of us in the rural areas think that this administration has declared war on us, and with good reason.
Farm injuries to young workers have been steadily declining, including a 50% decrease over the last 12 years. So why this new regulation, which covers nothing that was not previously covered? It is a cynical political ploy to manipulate the progressive base and get them back onboard with Obama's re-election..
Con servatives care as much about traditional values as a pig does Sunday. Real American tradtional values would actually be that of the native and founding people to which we owe so much, but the con dogs couldn't deal with that.
The Department of Labor posted the regulations changes online and held a public comment period. I've tracked them down and had a look at them. Maybe it's just me, but I do not find them vague. I am wondering if you have read them firsthand. And there is no evidence that they will be strictly enforced; in fact quite the contrary, given recent history. Human Rights Watch says:
"Even the currently weak laws are poorly enforced. Enforcement of child labor laws overall by the US Department of Labor declined dramatically between 2001 and 2009. The US Department of Labor found only 36 cases of child labor violations in agriculture in 2009, constituting only 4 percent of all child labor violations. Pesticide safety regulations of the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) make no special provisions for children."
http://www.hrw.org/news/2010/05/05/us-child-farmworkers-dangerous-lives
Here's a brief summary of the proposed regulations changes from the Department of Labor website:
_____________________________________
The proposed updates include:
Strengthening current child labor prohibitions regarding agricultural work with animals in timber operations, manure pits, storage bins and pesticide handling.
Prohibiting hired farm workers under the age of 16 from employment in the cultivation, harvesting and curing of tobacco.
Prohibiting youth in both agricultural and nonagricultural employment from using electronic devices, including communication devices, while operating power-driven equipment.
Prohibiting hired farm workers under the age of 16 from operating almost all power-driven equipment. A similar prohibition has existed as part of the nonagricultural child labor provisions for more than 50 years. A limited exemption would permit some student-learners to operate certain farm implements and tractors (when equipped with proper rollover protection structures and seat belts) under specified conditions.
Preventing children under 18 years of age from being employed in the storing, marketing and transporting of farm-product raw materials. Prohibited places of employment would include country grain elevators, grain bins, silos, feed lots, stockyards, livestock exchanges and livestock auctions.
http://www.dol.gov/whd/CL/AG_NPRM.htm
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There is a side-by-side comparison of the old regs to the new regs here:
http://www.dol.gov/whd/CL/SidebySideNPRM.htm
Perhaps you could look at the regs and tell us which of the changes you take issue with. I find your previous post to be less than pointed in its criticisms and while I am nearly completely ignorant about agricultural practices, I want to know more about why these regulations changes are perceived to be onerous. I have an open mind, and am willing to be persuaded, but I'm sort of in the dark about why these are going to be difficult for small farmers. Specifics would be helpful.
Yes I have thoroughly studied the regulations and the discussion about them over the last few months.
I am suspicious of this from the Obama administration for the same reason I am suspicious of the other police state regulations they have put in place, supposedly to "protect" us from something or other, and because of the consistent track record of hostility and broken promises toward rural people and the small farming community from this administration.
Specifically, it is not clear that lease farm property is covered, that cousins and other relatives are excepted, and it is not clear exactly what sorts of employment are now outlawed. The equipment issues are already handled by existing regulations. The pesticide issue is already handled, as well.
Read the proposed new regulations at that link you provided, apply a little common sense, and I am sure that you can see how vague and absurd it is.
Vague stuff -
14 year olds cannot be around animals known to be dangerous - like dogs?
14 year olds cannot be more than 6 feet off the ground - like on a amusement park ride, or a jungle jim?
14 year olds are permitted to ride as passengers in cars. WTF???
The new regulations are so absurd and vague, that I think the suspicion that many of us have, that this is partly a continuance of the attacks by this administration on small family farmers and rural people, and partly a feel-good PR effort to rally disaffected progressives to the Obama re-election campaign.
Thanks for the link to the explanation directly from the DOL for this. Now that I read that I am more convinced than ever that my assessment was correct.
I don't know, Two Americas, I think we may have to agree to disagree on this one. They're not talking about dogs, or swingsets. And they specifically stated that youth could ride in cars, after a paragraph prohibiting them from riding as passengers on farm equipment. They wanted to be clear. Here are the texts of two of the regulations:
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Prohibit hired farm workers under the age of 16 from performing certain tasks involving working with or around animals. The proposed Ag H.O. 4 would prohibit:
· -- working on a farm in a yard, pen, or stall occupied by an intact (not castrated) male equine, porcine, bovine, or bison older than six months, a sow with suckling pigs, or cow with new born calf (with umbilical cord present);
· -- engaging or assisting in animal husbandry practices that inflict pain upon the animal and/or are likely to result in unpredictable animal behavior such as, but not limited to, branding, breeding, dehorning, vaccinating, castrating, and treating sick or injured animals;
· -- handling animals with known dangerous behaviors;
· -- poultry catching or cooping in preparation for slaughter or market; and
· -- herding animals in confined spaces such as feed lots or corrals, or on horseback, or using motorized vehicles such as trucks or all terrain vehicles.
The student-learner exemption would not be applicable to the revised Ag H.O.4.
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(The following concerns farmworkers under the age of 16)
Prohibit working on or about a roof, on a scaffold, and at elevations greater than 6 feet above another elevation.
Expand the Ag H.O. to prohibit work on elevated farm structures including silos, grain bins, windmills, and towers; and vehicles, machines, and implements.
Reduce the maximum height at which hired farm workers under age 16 may work at elevation from 20 feet to 6 feet, including work on ladders.
The student-learner exemption discussed on page 1 is allowed, but only for bona-fide student learners who are operating tractors and farm implements permitted in the proposed Ag H.O.s 1 and 2.
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There's more at http://www.dol.gov/whd/CL/SidebySideNPRM.htm
They make sense to me. It seems reasonable to prohibit 15 year-olds from working with unneutered farm animals older than a certain age, or on ladders over 6-feet tall.
Anyway, we had a good exchange, and I certainly learned something from your posts. As I say, my ignorance about agricultural matters is profound. For that I thank you. And I wish I had a little of your experiences and ag knowledge.
The way you put it Michelle is pretty good for your agenda. But did you check how many of those kids were actually working on their family farm? How many died doing work and how many were killed by wagons or tractors rolling back over them while playing?
How many kids were injured or died in bicycle accidents? Those were preventable too.
The term "illegal aliens" combines a frightening adjective and a horrifying noun to degrade and dehumanize desperate, hard working, long suffering, exploited people. It causes otherwise decent people to accept denial of basic human rights to the poorest and most vulnerable among us.
Big Ag, including its worst component Big Meat, benefits from this slavery, which is more immoral than the form of slavery we abolished in 1863. At least under that horrible system, the slave owner had some incentive to ensure the health of his workers; in today's system they are entirely disposable.
Politicians often talk about "farmers" when doing Big Ag and Big Meat's bidding, conjuring up images of a wholesome family working its forty acres. In fact, the laws they enact harm family farmers and enrich greedy, human rights violating corporations.
Reform in this area won't happen until we clean up campaign finance and end the system of legalized bribery we now have, until we boycott Big Ag and Big Meat, and until we support parties other than the hopelessly corrupt Democrats and Republicans.
Child farm labor in Merka a non-issue, a distraction. In other countries, maybe. But in Merka the real threat is the loss of the small-farming culture to giant industrial farming. What Merka needs is to develop local independent economies, and having kids participate in the local economy is crucial to developing an appreciation for the local economy in people. This is part of the people's agenda for education and economics naturally intertwine. Remember the debates about education. There is no better classroom than the real world, and specifically, the local self-determined community. The local community is the incubator of the human spirit, and all other facets of the human being. No community, no humanity. It's as simple as that. The author of this article is trying to appeal to the liberal elite establishment, trying to help divert energy from the people's agenda to the liberal elite agenda. But that old emperor has been butt naked for a long time now. The liberal red herrings should be ignored. The people's plan is complete, whole, and infinitely superior to the regression of das liberal/konservative elitevil.
This is a very important topic that deserves a lot more attention than it gets in the USA. The Harvest of Shame continues. (I hope everyone has seen that old documentary.) The use of child farm labor is an evil practice that must be ended. This is State sanctioned child abuse. These children need to be off the farm - away from the toxins - and in a safe, nurturing environment. If the parents were paid a fair wage this would not be happening. Shame on the USA.