Children in the Fields

By Emily Drakage, NC Regional Coordinator, Children in the Fields Campaign - Association of Farmworker Opportunity Programs

The U.S. Department of Labor’s (USDOL) Wage and Hour Division sent out a press release on November 4, 2010 concerning the Strike Force initiative this summer in Western North Carolina.   The new and active interest taken by the DOL on child labor issues in North Carolina was encouraging to read about as an advocate of migrant and seasonal farmworker children. I was pleased to hear the investigators had found no evidence of child labor in the tomato harvest in Western North Carolina.  While this is a great improvement from the series of violations found during the blueberry harvest in 2008, it still pains me to think that when the USDOL investigates child labor in agriculture they are really only searching for children younger than 12 years of age.  

The agriculture industry is consistently ranked as one of the three most dangerous industries in the nation according to USDOL statistics.  All farmworkers toil under very harsh conditions and have less worker protections than any other industry. Yet, a result of an unfair exemption in the U.S. child labor law, children as young as 12 are permitted to perform dangerous, back-breaking labor for unlimited number of hours (outside of school hours) for poverty wages. The Fair Labor Standards Act, which regulates child labor in the U.S., has not been amended since its initial enactment in 1938 and fails to equally protect children who labor in agriculture as it does for all other youth in all other industries.

It is shameful that we as a country still allow this unequal standard of protection to exist.  Migrant and seasonal farmworker children continue to work and live in such environments and as a result these children sacrifice their childhood, education, and well being giving them little hope of escaping the cycle of poverty. The Fair Labor Standards Act which has not been amended since its initial enactment in 1938 fails to equally protect children who labor in agriculture as it does for all other youth in all other industries.

As previously stated, legally a 12-year-old child can labor in agriculture for unlimited number of hours outside of school hours. How can this be considered equitable when, for example, the law stipulates that a youth must be 14-15 years old with a workers permit to work limited number of hours in a grocery store? We must lend our voice in support of farmworker children and youth protections.  Farmworkers’ labor puts food on our tables and is an essential asset to North Carolina and the nations’ economy, but child labor is not.  In order for all children to receive equal labor protections please take action to end child farmworker discriminations by contacting your local representative or by finding more information at www.afop.org , www.ncfield.org , or www.harvestofdignity.org.