Washington, DC — Today, on World Children’s Day, Representative Raul Ruiz (CA-25) reintroduced the Children’s Act for Responsible Employment and Farm Safety (CARE Act) in the U.S. House of Representatives. The Child Labor Coalition (CLC) strongly supports this essential legislation, which modernizes outdated federal child labor laws and extends long-overdue protections to child farmworkers—among the nation’s most vulnerable laborers.  “Our nation has a moral duty to protect every working child,” said Reid Maki, Director of Child Labor Advocacy and Coordinator of the CLC. “Farmworkers remain among the most exploited and unprotected workers in America. Children deserve safe working conditions and the same rights afforded to young workers in every other industry. Updating these antiquated laws is long overdue.”  The CARE Act closes loopholes that have long allowed children in agriculture to perform hazardous work at age 16—an age two years younger than what is required in all other sectors. It raises the minimum age for children to work on farms from 12 to 14, and it makes these critical changes while preserving long-standing family farm traditions by ensuring that new protections do not restrict children working on their parents’ farms.  Maki emphasized the deep historical harm caused by these outdated rules: “It’s astonishing that discriminatory loopholes allowing very young children to work 70- or 80-hour weeks in dangerous conditions have […]