thumbnail

Cocoa Child Labor and Deforestation Strategy Session to be held December 18th

/in /by

Cocoa Strategy Session Announcement

 

Members of the Child Labor Coalition’s Cocoa Committee are convening a strategy session in Washington, DC on Tuesday, December 18, 2018. The meeting will take place at Fairtrade America, 1400 Eye Street, NW, suite 425.

 

The goal of the Cocoa Committee’s efforts is to reduce child labor, child trafficking and deforestation in West Africa, where more than two million children help produce cocoa, a critical ingredient in the chocolate that so many of us consume.

 

Mighty Earth’s Etelle Higonnet will provide a number of updates to participants, including a discussion of efforts by the European Union to enact legislation that would work to make cocoa supply chains more responsible.

thumbnail

More US Child Workers Die in Agriculture Than in Any Other Industry

/in , , , /by

New US Government Report Highlights Dangers Caused by Weak Child Labor Laws

By Margaret Wurth

 

Margaret Wurth, Senior Research, Children’s Rights Division, Human Rights Watch

More than half of work-related deaths among children in the US occur in agriculture, according to a new US government report published this week. This happens despite the fact that farms employ less than six percent of child workers, highlighting the devastating consequences of weak laws and regulations that don’t properly protect child farmworkers.

The report was prepared by the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) at the request of congressional representatives Lucille Roybal-Allard from California and Rosa DeLauro from Connecticut.

My colleagues and I have interviewed hundreds of child farmworkers in the US in recent years. They’ve told us harrowing stories of working long hours in extreme heat, using sharp tools and heavy machinery, and climbing to dangerous heights with nothing to protect them from falling. Many are exposed to toxic pesticides, and on tobacco farms, children face the added risk of being exposed to nicotine, a neurotoxin.

Under federal labor law, children at the age of 12 can legally work unlimited hours on farms of any size with parental permission, as long as they don’t miss school. There is no minimum age for children to work on small farms or family farms. By law, children working in agriculture can do jobs at age 16 that health and safety experts deem particularly hazardous. In all other sectors, workers must be 18 to do hazardous work.  

The report clearly shows that these gaps in laws designed to protect young workers leave child farmworkers vulnerable to serious injuries and death. The report found that between 2003 and 2016, 237 children died while working in agriculture in the US. That represents more than half of the 452 work-related deaths among children in that period, even though child farmworkers represent only an estimated 5.5 percent of working children. The report estimated more than 4,700 injuries to children working on farms each year, based on data collected in 2012 and 2014.

Many of these children’s injuries and deaths may have been avoided with better workplace protections. But instead of strengthening protections for child workers in the US, the Trump Administration has moved to roll back even the limited regulations that exist to protect child farmworkers from danger.

Since 2001, Representative Roybal-Allard has introduced and reintroduced a bill to afford child farmworkers the same protections as children working in any other sectors, by limiting their working hours and by raising the minimum age for them to begin work. Beginning in January, the Democratic majority in the House of Representatives has an opportunity to act swiftly to address the gaps in US labor law, by affording child farmworkers the same protections as children working in other sectors.

This dispatch may also be viewed on the web site of Human Rights Watch, where it originally appeared on December 4, 2018.

thumbnail

New GAO Report Raises Concern over the Health and Safety of Child Farmworkers in the United States

/in , , , , /by

 For immediate release: December 6, 2018

Contact: Reid Maki, Child Labor Coalition, (202) 207-2820, reidm@nclnet.org 

 

Washington, DC–In the wake of a new child labor report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the Child Labor Coalition (CLC) joins Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-CA) and Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) in voicing concern for the health and safety of 2.5 million U.S. children who work for wages, particularly those who toil in sectors like agriculture with elevated injury and fatality rates.

“The scourge of child labor still haunts America,” said Sally Greenberg, executive director of the National Consumers League and a co-chair of the CLC.

The new report “Working Children: Federal Injury Data and Compliance Strategies Could Be Strengthened” (November 2018) updates a 2002 GAO report on child labor in the United States. Earlier this week, the GAO issued the updated report, which had been requested by Reps. Roybal-Allard and DeLauro last year. Despite the difference of 16 years, the two reports reached similar conclusions, calling for better data. The new report also called for better coordination between the Wage and Hour Division and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration—both entities at the Department of Labor—to enforce child labor laws.

The GAO found that while fewer than 5.5 percent of working children in the United States toiled on farms, the agricultural sector accounted for more than 50 percent of child labor fatalities. In the years 2003 to 2016, 237 children died in farm-related work accidents, representing four times the number of deaths of any other sector (construction and mining had 59 over the 14 year period).

“The GAO report’s findings are damning,” said Roybal-Allard and Rep. DeLauro in a joint statement. “This report confirms that child labor is contributing to a devastating amount of fatalities in the United States—disproportionately so in the agricultural sector. In that industry, kids are often exposes exposed to dangerous pesticides, heavy machinery, and extreme heat, and they are being killed as a result. That is unacceptable.”

The study examined recent data on children at work as well as child work fatalities and injuries and found significant data gaps and misaligned data. A data survey pilot project that sought improved data on workers ignored children entirely; it excluded “household children and working children on farms employing 10 or fewer workers,” noted the report’s authors, who concluded “DOL is missing opportunities to more accurately quantify injuries and illnesses to children, which could better inform its compliance and enforcement efforts.”

“The updated GAO report supports what child advocates have been seeing on the ground: the number of working children in the US has been on the rise since 2011, while child labor continues to decrease around the world,” says Norma Flores Lopez, chair of the CLC’s Domestic Issues Committee. “American working children are inadequately protected while working in dangerous—sometimes fatal—industries, including agriculture.  The U.S. Department of Labor must take immediate action to better protect our children by implementing the report’s recommendations. By providing equal protections for all working children, the US DOL can improve its effectiveness in enforcing child labor laws and keep children safe.”

“The Child Labor Coalition has worked for nearly 30 years to safeguard child workers on farms,” said Reid Maki, director of child labor advocacy for NCL and coordinator of the CLC.  “The United States has had glaringly weak agricultural child labor laws since the enactment of the Fair Labor Standards Act in the late 1930s. We allow children as young as 12 to work unlimited hours in agriculture, despite its known dangers.”

Read more