Monterey, CA
Today, hundreds of thousands of young children work long, hard hours in the nation’s agriculture industry -- many in migrant and seasonal work -- under conditions that threaten their health, safety and well-being. Under current federal law, children working in agriculture receive less protection than children working in any other industry. The few legal protections that are supposed to shield these children in the fields from harm are sparsely enforced, and the educational opportunities that could help them better their lives are sadly inadequate.
Although the Fair Labor Standards Act was intended to prevent the exploitation of child workers, it still permits children in agriculture to work at younger ages, for more hours and in more dangerous occupations than children in any other industry.
A General Accounting Office study requested by Representatives Tom Lantos, Henry Waxman and Bernard Sanders revealed that as many as 129,000 children aged 14-17 work in the agriculture industry in the United States, yet the study warns that this figure must be considered low because of the limited information about the many younger children who work and the scant data on seasonal and migrant workers.
Child laborers in agriculture average 30 hours a week at work, and among 15-17 year olds, they account for at least 25 percent of all fatalities experienced by all working children. The law that now prohibits a 12 or 13 year old from working in an air-conditioned office still allows children that age to work unlimited hours outside of school harvesting produce under the blazing sun in fields without adequate water or sanitation.
Declining inspections by the federal agencies and inadequate record-keeping methods that do not detect or identify child workers have made it easier for unscrupulous employers to conceal the number of children working illegally, to get away with egregious minimum wage violations, and to expose child workers to harsh and dangerous working conditions.
Children in U.S. agriculture are less likely to attend school or graduate than any other group of youngsters, particularly if they are in seasonal and migrant work.
The AFL-CIO supports legislation that would raise the level of protections for children working in non-family agriculture to be equivalent with that for children in other industries. While federal agencies have made efforts in recent years to improve their record keeping and their enforcement of child labor laws, we urge Congress to evaluate and improve enforcement and data collection procedures to eliminate the weakness and inadequacies that are easily exploited by lawbreakers. Further, we encourage the federal agencies overseeing programs meant to help educationally and economically disadvantaged children to assess how well these programs are locating and serving the youngest seasonal and migrant workers to assure that these children are benefitting from every opportunity to stay in school and succeed academically at this most critical time in their education.