Advocates Push for Legislation to Protect a Half Million
U.S. Child Farmworkers

from the NCL Bulletin, Vol. 69, No. 3

In any given week, 500,000 American children, many as young as eight years old, labor up to 70 hours, in U.S. fields. On June 12, the International Labor Organization's World Day Against Child Labor and the Child Labor Coalition (CLC) called for members of Congress to pass legislation to improve the deplorable conditions that many children face in the U.S.

The Children's Act for Responsible Employment of 2007 (CARE Act), introduced the same day by Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-CA), would substantially increase protections for young farmworkers for the first time since the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, which NCL helped pass.

“The National Consumers League has a long history of advocating for the rights of workers — urban and rural, old and young,” said Linda Golodner, then-President of NCL and Co-Chair of the NCL-coordinated CLC. “These child laborers are some of our nation's most vulnerable, and it's about time our government made real steps to improve their working conditions and their lives as a whole.”

At a Hill staff briefing at the Capitol, advocates from the American Federation of Teachers and the Association of Farmworker Opportunity Programs were joined by the Washington Director of the International Labor Organization and Norma Flores, a former child laborer who recently graduated from college. Flores' stories of migrating with her family as a child across the United States demonstrated the urgent need for increasing the protections for young American farmworkers.

Across the United States, farmworkers are exposed to pesticides, heat exhaustion, harmful ultraviolet rays, muscular and skeletal injuries associated with repetitive motions and constant bending, and working with heavy machinery and sharp tools. The burdens from working in the fields often result in young farmworkers not completing their education, at an alarming school drop out-rate between 50-65 percent.

The new CARE Act would elevate protection for child farmworkers to the same level as children working in other industries, increasing the maximum civil and criminal penalties for child labor violations, and strengthening pesticide safety provisions in agriculture to acknowledge the higher risks pesticides pose to children and women. The bill preserves the family farm exemption, which enables children of any age to continue working on their parents' farms.

“I commend the Child Labor Coalition for organizing this important advocacy effort on Capitol Hill on behalf of children who work in our nation's agricultural fields,” Roybal-Allard said. “I have introduced the CARE Act today to curb unfair child labor practices in agriculture that allow young children to work in dangerous conditions, and I am grateful for the Coalition's efforts to help pass this needed and long overdue legislation.”

The Child Labor Coalition, which is coordinated and co-chaired by NCL, is a group of more than 30 organizations that strive to protect working youth and to promote legislation, programs, and initiatives to end child labor exploitation in the United States and abroad.

“The notion that oppressive child labor occurs legally within the United States shocks us as educators and will likely shock students as well,” said Antonia Cortese, AFT Executive Vice President and Co-Chair of the CLC. “This topic is important for us to address in the classroom and can serve as an effective tool for teaching students about the human impact of public policy and how they can change it.”

CLC members completed the day with personal visits to Congressional offices to explain the plight of children in the fields and the impact of excessive and hazardous work on their health, safety, and education.

Learn more about the Child Labor Coalition, the CARE Act, and other domestic and international child labor issues at www.stopchildlabor.org.
 

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