Federal cuts threaten Wisconsin farm safety center for children, rural communities
National Farm Medicine Center is US leader on farm safety for kids, but loss of staff and funding puts programs in jeopardy
By Hope Kirwan
May 13, 2025
Please read the article at NPR Wisconsin here.
By Alma Hernandez
Imagine being a five-year-old child; happy and carefree. The age where you either attend pre-k or start kindergarten. But can you imagine a five-year-old working in farm fields in hot 90-degree humid weather with her parents? I was that child. I wore a long-sleeved shirt, jeans, closed-toed shoes, and a hat to protect me from the hot sun. At five years old, I was unaware of how difficult agricultural labor is. My mom had enrolled me at the Redlands Christian Migrant Association (RCMA), a Migrant and Seasonal Head Start program, but she also wanted to teach me to value my education.
My mother’s life lesson started during the weekend after I did not want to wake up for school. My mother remembers that I was full of confidence when asked if I wanted to go to work with her and my father. However, I did not know what was in store for me.
Alma Hernandez (far right) is joined by fellow NMSHSA farmworker youth interns Jose Velasquez Castellano and Gizela Gaspar. CLC Coordinator Reid Maki is also in the photo.
Arriving at the fields around 7:30 am, I first saw endless rows of strawberry fields. I felt enthusiastic. My task: collect as many bright red strawberries as I could and place them in my pink Halloween bucket. After filling my bucket, I would give the strawberries to one of my parents. Around 12, I felt the heat. It was around 90 degrees. The humidity made it feel worse. I felt like I was in 100-degree weather; I did not like that at all and wanted to go home. I was already tired and asked if we could leave. My mom said no – I had to stay till they finished and so I kept working.
I do not recall what happened the rest of the time I was there, but I remember what happened afterward. I went home and sat on the stairs of the house with a red face, a headache, and clothes covered in dirt, and reflected on the decision I had made to join my parents in the strawberry fields. I went inside. I was so tired that I ignored dinner and skipped a shower, and went straight to bed just to wake up the next day, to repeat another day of long, hard work. My parents had me help them one more day, and convinced that my lesson was learned, they let stay home where, in the next few years, I could help take care of younger siblings when my parents could not find childcare.
Although my work in the strawberry fields was short-lived, I have much more experience harvesting blueberries. I started working on blueberry farms when I was 12 years old and worked every summer until I was 16. The blueberry season starts in the summer after school ends in Florida.
My family and I would leave Florida near the end of June and start the 17-hour drive to Michigan. Unlike the strawberry season, I liked picking blueberries because I did not have to bend down low to the ground all day; blueberry plants grow higher. My job was to fill up my six buckets. Once they were all filled, I would carry all the buckets to place them into plastic containers and have them weighed. On average, six buckets would be 42-45 pounds, and depending on who we were working for, the average pay was 0.45 to 0.55 cents a pound. I had to pick as many pounds as I could. On good days, I would be able to pick 200 pounds or more; on many other days, I would pick less.
The clothing I wore was also the same: long sleeves, jeans, closed toes shoes, and a hat, to protect myself from the sun. The weather in Michigan is not as humid as it is in Florida, usually, it was in the mid-80s to low 90-degrees however it was still hot being there all day. We would go in each morning at 8:30 or later depending on how wet the blueberry plants were and leave the fields around 8 or 9 at night.
For immediate release: March 31, 2022
Contact: Reid Maki, (202) 207-2820, reidm@nclnet.org
Washington, D.C.—The Child Labor Coalition (CLC), representing 38 groups engaged in the fight against domestic and global child labor, applauds Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-CA) and Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ) for introducing the Children’s Act for Responsible Employment and Farm Safety (CARE). The legislation, introduced on Cesar Chavez Day, would close long-standing loopholes that permit children in agriculture to work for wages when they are only age 12. The bill would also ban jobs on farms labeled “hazardous” by the U.S. Department of Labor if workers are under the age of 18. The children of farm owners, working on their parents’ farms, would not be impacted by the CARE Act.
“Today, I am re-introducing the Children’s Act for Responsible Employment and Farm Safety (CARE Act) with my friend and co-lead Congressman Raúl M. Grijalva to protect the rights, safety, and future of [children who work on farms],” said Congresswoman Roybal-Allard, Thursday.
“I’m proud to co-lead this important legislation with Rep. Roybal-Allard to protect the children of farmworkers. Farmworkers remain some of the most exploited, underpaid, and unprotected laborers in our nation. They and their children deserve legal protections, better working conditions, and higher workplace standards to protect their health and safety. It’s past time we updated our antiquated labor laws to give children working in agriculture the same protections and rights provided to all kids in the workforce,” said Rep. Grijalva.
“Children working for wages on farms are exposed to many hazards—farm machinery, heat stroke, and pesticides among them—and they perform back-breaking labor that no child should have to experience,” said CLC co-chair Sally Greenberg, the executive director of the National Consumers League, a consumer advocacy organization that has worked to eliminate abusive child labor since its founding in 1899. “Current child labor law discriminates against children who toil in agriculture. It’s time these dangerous exemptions end. We applaud Rep. Roybal-Allard and Rep. Grijalva’s leadership in re-introducing CARE.”
“Ending exploitive child labor on American farms is long overdue and this legislation will result in healthier, better educated farmworker children and help end the generational poverty that afflicts many farmworker families,” said Reid Maki, Coordinator, Child Labor Coalition and Director of Child Labor Advocacy, National Consumers League. The CARE Act has been endorsed by 200 national, regional, and state-based organizations, noted Maki.
“Children as young as 12 are being hired to do backbreaking work on US farms, at risk of serious injuries, heat stroke, pesticide poisoning, and even death,” said Margaret Wurth, senior children’s rights researcher at Human Rights Watch, a CLC member. “Existing US child labor laws are woefully out of date and put child farmworkers at unacceptable risk,” Wurth said. “Congress should act swiftly to adopt the CARE Act and ensure that all children are protected equally.”
The CLC’s strategy for child labor on U.S. farms is guided by its Domestic Issues Committee Chair Norma Flores López who worked in the fields as a young girl. “Decades ago, my family and I were crowding into the back of a pickup truck with our few belongings, and starting our two-day journey towards the fields of Indiana, Michigan, or Iowa. What awaited me, starting at the age of 12, were long hours of back-breaking work earning low wages. I was one of the faces you see in photographs from the fields, hidden behind a bandana. Fast forward more than 25 years, and we are still fighting for young girls –and boys — who are enduring exploitation, harvesting the fruits and vegetables we eat. The same reality that I once lived awaits the approximately 300,000 children who work on American farms today,” said Flores López, who also serves as Chief Programs Officer of Justice for Migrant Women and was the 2021 recipient of the U.S. Department of Labor Iqbal Masih Award.
“For too long, children laboring in U.S. agriculture have been denied the protections they deserve to ensure their health and well-being. Too often, kids working on commercial farms are subjected to dangerous, unhealthy, work that’s detrimental to their education and far too often results in harm or even death. The CARE Act would address this problem and give children working on farms the same protections as children working in other industries,” said Bruce Lesley, president of the First Focus Campaign for Children, a bipartisan children’s advocacy organization.
In addition to raising the minimum age at which children could work in agriculture, CARE would increase minimum fines for employers who violate agricultural child labor laws when those violations lead to serious injury, illness, or death of minors. The legislation would also strengthen regulations that protect minors from pesticide exposure and improve analysis of child labor health impacts.
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By Ellie Murphy
CLC intern Ellie Murphy
Americans eat a lot of bananas. The U.S. is world’s biggest importer of bananas, eating between 28 and 30 bananas per person per year. Worldwide, bananas are the most popular fruit with 100 billion consumed annually. The fruit is nutritious and cheap. Prices generally fluctuate between 30 cents and $1.00 per banana. It’s a great deal for the consumer, but someone is paying a heavy price to produce bananas: exploited farmworkers, including many children.
The work is hard, often dangerous, and not fit for children—who just want to help their impoverished families. Stagnating banana prices have put the squeeze on farmers, leading some planters to hire the cheapest workers—children.
Countries that use child labor to produce bananas include Ecuador, Belize, Brazil, Nicaragua, and the Philippines, according to the U.S. Department of Labor (USDOL) List of Goods Produced by Child Labor or Forced Labor.
Poverty is the main driver of child labor, but children in the developing world face barriers to accessing education that can also push them toward the work world. Barriers include paying for school fees, uniforms and books. In some countries, there aren’t enough schools, classrooms or teachers. Transportation problems also impact children’s ability to attend school.
Child labor in the banana sector poses significant challenges to children’s’ health and overall well-being. Child workers employed at these plantations are often forced to handle sharp tools like machetes, carry heavy loads, and face exposure to agrochemicals like pesticides and fungicides without protective clothing or gear. Dizziness, nausea, and negative long-term health conditions can result for child workers, and because child workers often live on banana plantations, escaping these health hazards is nearly impossible.
Let’s take a closer look at Ecuador, the world’s top exporter of bananas.
A Human Rights Watch (HRW) report released in April 2002 found widespread labor and human rights abuses on Ecuadorian banana plantations. Children as young as eight were found performing hazardous work. “The use of harmful child labor is widespread in Ecuador’s banana sector,” concluded HRW. Report authors interviewed 45 child banana workers and found that 41 began working between eight and 13 with most starting at age 10 or 11. “Their average workday lasted twelve hours, and fewer than 40 percent of the children were still in school by the time they turned fourteen,” noted HRW. According to the U.S. Department of Labor (USDOL) almost half of indigenous children in rural areas do not attend school, “which can make them more vulnerable to child labor.
“In the course of their work, [child banana workers] were exposed to toxic pesticides, used sharp knives and machetes, hauled heavy loads of bananas, drank unsanitary water, and some were sexually harassed,” noted HRW.
Harvesting bananas is hard work and is often accompanied by exposure to dangerous chemicals.
Roughly 90 percent of the children HRW interviewed reported that they “continued working while toxic fungicides were sprayed from airplanes flying overhead. In an attempt to avoid harmful chemicals, children interviewed about their experience stated that they used various methods to avoid toxic chemicals: “hiding under banana leaves, bowing their heads, covering their faces with their shirts, covering their noses and mouths with their hands, and placing banana cartons on their heads.”
About one in 20 Ecuadorian children in the 5-14 age group work—and four in five of these child workers toil on farms, according to data from USDOL released in its 2019 Findings on the Worst Forms of Child Labor (2019) report.
Clearly, child labor laws in Ecuador are not being adequately enforced. Alarmingly, according to the USDOL, funding for Ecuador’s labor inspectorate fell dramatically from $1.5 million in 2017 to $265,398 in 2018. During that time the number of inspectors increased from 150 to 249. There is no explanation provided for these conflicting numbers but USDOL did note there were fiscal pressures on the Ecuadorian government.
The 2002 HRW report cited many causes of child labor, including discrimination against unionized adult workers who earn higher wages. As a result, many workers who unionize are fired and replaced with children who earn around $3.50 per day, 60% of the minimum wage for banana farmers. “Ecuadorian law fails to protect effectively the right to freedom of association, and employers take advantage of the weak law and even weaker enforcement to impede worker organizing,” noted HRW.
It’s been referred to as a “ticking time bomb” – the Corona virus and its potential impact on farmworkers– the incredibly hard-working men, women, and children who our fruits and vegetables and provide other vital agricultural work. Farmworkers perform dirty back-breaking work and are notoriously underpaid for it and at great risk from COVID-19.
Farmworker advocacy groups that NCL works with or supports like Farmworker Justice, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, the United Farmworkers of America (UFW), the Farm Labor Organizing Committee, and a national cadre of legal aid attorneys have spent weeks strategizing about ways to protect the community which they know is especially vulnerable to the virus.
Advocates have reached out to administration officials and Congress for desperately needed resources to support impoverished farmworker with little to show for it. Despite their essential contributions to the economy, farmworkers have been cut out of the emergency relief packages. The Trump administration has even revealed plans to lower pay for agricultural guest workers who sacrifice home and family to come to the U.S. to perform arduous farm labor. Advocates fear that decreasing guest worker wages would drive down low wages for farmworkers already living and working in the U.S.
“Sofia,” a 17-year-old tobacco worker, in a tobacco field in North Carolina. She started working at 13. She tries to protect herself from nicotine poisoning by wearing plastic trash bags and a mask. COVID presents new and scary risks. © 2015 Benedict Evans for Human Rights Watch
Farmworkers are poor, with extremely limited access to healthcare. Their poverty often means they work through their illnesses. The workers often toil closely to one another as they harvest fruits and vegetables; they ride to the fields in crowded buses and cars; they have limited access to sanitary facilities, including hand-washing. They often live in overcrowded, dilapidated housing.
The majority of farmworkers are immigrants from Mexico or are the children of Mexican immigrants. The community is socially isolated from main stream America. Poverty forced many farmworkers to leave school at an early age. It also causes them to bring their children to work with them in the fields—-child labor supplements their meager incomes. Language and cultural barriers further their isolation. NCL, through the Child Labor Coalition which it founded and co-chairs, has committed to the fight to fix the broken child labor laws that allow children in agriculture to work at early ages—often 12—and to perform hazardous work at age 16.
When the virus began to move into America’s rural areas, many socially- and culturally-isolated farmworkers hadn’t heard about the virus. Some were confused that the grocery store shelves were empty; that the bottled water they usually buy suddenly cost much more.
In some cases, farmworkers reported that the farmers they work for have not told them about the virus or the need to take special precautions while working. Farmworkers face an alarming dearth of protective equipment. Many farmworkers groups, including the UFW and Justice for Migrant Women are urgently racing to provide masks and other protective gear.
A farmworker with COVID-19 is unlikely know he or she has it and is very likely to keep working and infect his or her family and coworkers. Recently, a growers group tested 71 tree fruit workers in Wenatchee, Washington, according to a report in the Capital Press newspaper. Although none of the workers were showing symptoms of COVID-19, 36 workers—more than half—tested positive!
The conditions faced by farm workers are a “superconductor for the virus,” noted advocate Greg Asbed of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers in a New York Times opinion piece, “What Happens if America’s 2.5 Million Farmworkers Get Sick?” The answer, he concluded, is that “the U.S. food supply is in danger.”
The current circumstances reminded Asbed of a previous crisis: “A century ago in ‘The Jungle,’ Upton Sinclair wrote about how the teeming tenements and meatpacking houses where workers lived and labored were perfect breeding grounds for tuberculosis as it swept the country.”
“Now there is a new pathogenic threat and the workers who feed us are once again in grave danger,” said Asbed, adding that the “The two most promising measures for protecting ourselves from the virus and preventing its spread — social distancing and self-isolation — are effectively impossible in farmworker communities” because farmworkers live and work so closely together.
The looming food crisis is not just an American phenomenon, reported the New York Times, April 22nd in an article ‘Instead of Coronavirus, the Hunger Will Kill Us.’ A Global Food Crisis Looms. “The world has never faced a hunger emergency like this, experts say. It could double the number of people facing acute hunger to 265 million by the end of this year,” noted reporter Abdi Latif Dahir.
“The coronavirus pandemic has brought hunger to millions of people around the world. National lockdowns and social distancing measures are drying up work and incomes, and are likely to disrupt agricultural production and supply routes — leaving millions to worry how they will get enough to eat,” added Dahir.
“Full Fields, Empty Fridges” in the Washington Post April 23, warned that in the U.S. the farm –to-grocery distribution system is breaking down under the strain of the virus and that farmers are plowing in fields of crops. The Trump administration has announced a $19 billion plan to buy agricultural products and get them to food banks, which are experiencing shortages and, in some cases, lines of cars waiting for help that are over a mile and a half long.
In the U.S., the federal government’s responses have been focused on helping farmers—which is fine, we all want farmers to be helped—but we cannot forget or neglect the needs of desperately poor farmworkers.
Kendra Moesle, Association of Farmworker Opportunity Programs
Children in the Fields Campaign (CIFC) is an active member of the Child Labor Coalition, which strives to combat child labor here in the U.S. and abroad. Also partners with us on that coalition is the 100 Million Campaign: a worldwide movement led by kids advocating for kids, whose call to action is “for a world where all young people are free, safe, and educated”.
In the U.S., the local chapter of the 100 Million Campaign has taken on child labor in tobacco, something that has been a problem in the U.S. for a long time due to the inequality of U.S. labor laws. When the 100 Million Campaign’s youth-led National Planning Committee met and discussed the number of issues before them, Executive Director of the Kailash Satyarthi Children’s Foundation US, Anjali Kochar, says they felt this was “the moment in time” when something could finally be done about child labor in tobacco. In conversations that the campaign hosted in schools across the country, this seemed to be the most galvanizing issue to young people, simply because “it just didn’t add up.” How is it illegal for minors to buy tobacco products, kids wondered, and yet it can still be perfectly legal for them to manufacture the stuff?
CIFC believes that no child should be exposed to hazardous work in agriculture, and this is especially true in tobacco, which poses additional risks to children. When kids work in tobacco, they are inevitably exposed to the nicotine that seeps through their clothes from the raw tobacco leaves. This exposure leads to Green Tobacco Sickness (GTS), a preventable illness whose symptoms include vomiting, nausea, insomnia, and more.
People ask the question: Why don’t workers just wear gloves? Wouldn’t that solve the problem of absorbing nicotine and contracting GTS?
But gloves are not officially required for this work, so employers do not provide them. Farmworker kids are also too poor to afford them – especially since the gloves wear out quickly and would frequently need to be replaced. Children are also more sensitive to nicotine absorption (hence why they’re not allowed to smoke cigarettes!) and their immune systems are not fully developed, which is why it’s imperative that they never be placed in a situation where they might contract Green Tobacco Sickness in the first place.
Some farmworker children who work in tobacco do understand the dangers they face – and so they attempt to cover themselves up with black trash bags, particularly on days when the fields are wet and chances of nicotine absorption are even higher. But when temperatures reach into the triple digits, they have to take off the suffocating trash bags or risk falling deathly ill to heat stroke. If you’ve ever been inside a tobacco field in the South in summertime, you’ll know that temperatures run ten+ degrees hotter there than in the surrounding area, which is already oppressively hot & humid. One article in the Kentucky New Era ran a story with this headline: “Think it’s hot? Step into a tobacco field.”
Working in tobacco poses such a clear danger to kids, that there’s been more legislative noise about it than most domestic child labor issues. But here we are, on the cusp of 2020, and children ages 12 and up (& often younger) are still allowed to carry out this dangerous work.
All of which begs the question: what needs to happen for this hazardous labor to stop? Well, there are a number of options available to us:
Call us crazy, but we continue to have hope that our country will soon do what’s necessary to save our children. The longer we work on this issue, the more fervently we believe that ‘something’s gotta give’!
So, here’s our message to the new year: 2020, please don’t let us down.
In the U.S., many teens who work in tobacco fields wear plastic garbage bags to try to avoid nicotine poisoning. [Photo courtesy Human Rights Watch]
Reid Maki, Coordinator of the Child Labor Coalition
“Which companies are good? Which companies can I safely buy from without risk that their products are made by child labor or forced labor?” These are questions you get asked all the time when you work for a consumer group like the National Consumers League or if you help run an anti-child labor gorganization like the Child Labor Coalition (CLC). We would love to be able to answer these questions, but without constant monitoring, which is extraordinarily expensive and challenging, it’s extremely difficult to say which companies are doing a good job rooting out problems in their supply chains.
A little help may be coming, however. Legislation in the Washington State Assembly would require large companies to report out on labor abuses in their agricultural supply chains.
It’s well known that farm labor is one of the lowest paid, must vulnerable work forces in the U.S. Most farmers are great people. We don’t doubt that, but agricultural labor has many peculiarities which contribute to making labor exploitation more common. Much of farm labor is immigrant–a significant portion of the labor force are undocumented immigrants. “Farm workers risk being seen as disposable and invisible, stripped of their human dignity and worth,” said Indira Trejo, who works for the United Farm Workers, the legendary farmworker union that has worked to reduce labor exploitation in the fields.
On top of the increased vulnerability that comes with being an immigrant, who may have language-barrier issues, farmworkers are often hired by independent contractors—some are scrupulous and some aren’t–but the use of these crew leaders can create an extra employment layer that may make exploitation more common.
Concerned about the exploitation of farmworkers, Washington State Senator Rebecca Saldana (D-Seattle) has introduced Senate Bill 5693, the “Transparency in Agricultural Supply Chains Act. The bill applies to companies with gross global receipts of $200 million and asks them to disclose any violations of employment-related laws, including slavery, peonage (debt bondage), and human trafficking. “Consumers in our state who want to buy products that reflect their values have a right to know whether a company they purchase from is following through on its commitment to production integrity,” said Senator Saldana.
According to a report in the Columbia Basin Herald, the bill applies not just to large agricultural companies but to large retailers who sell farm products as well. “The bill would require retail sellers to annually disclose violations of employment-related laws, court or arbitration rulings, citation or other ruling by governmental agencies, and criminal convictions on their website,” noted staff writer Emma Epperly. Consumers could use this information to make better-informed purchases and avoid products linked to labor abuses. Suppliers are also required to report violations to the retailers with statutory damages ranging from $500 to $7,000.”
Adelaida Mendoza, a farmworker form Yakima Valley explained why the bill is needed in a UFW web article: “Many of us have worked for bad employers that broke the law by underpaying for the hours worked, or refusing to allow the breaks required by law,” Mendoza said. “The stores that sell those products take no responsibility for violation committed by their suppliers. This bill would change that mentality.”
The bill defines agricultural products as cocoa, dairy, coffee, sugar and fruit products. For reasons that are unclear to us, the bill considers wheat, potatoes, onions, asparagus, or other vegetables not to be agricultural products. Onion and many vegetables are common crops In the U.S. that children help harvest, so we’d love to see a broad range of vegetables added into the bill’s coverage.
Sadly, U.S. child labor laws are so weak that they allow a 12-year-old to work unlimited hours in the field (as long as the child is not missing school); as a result, much of the agricultural child labor in the U.S. is not a violation of child labor law. This is something that the CLC and AFOP, a long-serving member of the coalition have long worked to change—we’d love to see children who work in agriculture protected just like children who work in all other sectors. With respect to child labor, the transparency bill could provide some limited help: We still see children under 12 working on farms, albeit in limited numbers. Depending upon the size of the farm, this could be the type of labor violation that triggers provisions of the bill. We are also well aware that child labor is incentivized because of poor pay to farmworker parents. If the agricultural sector stops wage theft and pays parents a living wage, it will help reduce child labor.
New US Government Report Highlights Dangers Caused by Weak Child Labor Laws
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.
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.”
Sources:
CLC members—the Ramsay Merriam Fund, the American Federation of Teachers, and the National Education Association—made this web site possible through their generous support.