By Drew Gores, Undergraduate Student, Duke University
Child labor has entered the spotlight in recent months as two states have introduced bills that would weaken legal protections for child workers. During the spring, Missouri State Senator Jane Cunningham introduced SB222, which aims to reduce the minimum age at which a child may be employed and eliminate restrictions on the number of hours a child is allowed to work. Elsewhere, the Maine state legislature held hearings on a bill which would permit high school students to work for more hours during the week and at later times of night.
Opponents claim that passage of these bills would facilitate the exploitation of child workers. Missing from the national discussion, however, is any mention of the fact that children working in our nation's agricultural industry already face far more harmful working conditions than even those which would be introduced by the Maine and Missouri bills. This issue is of special interest to North Carolinians. Because our state's farms employ about 150,000 farmworkers every year - some of which are children.
For the last 70 years, child farmworkers have been excluded from even the minimum federal legislation which protects child workers in other industries. To work at a restaurant, for example, a child must be 16, while children as young as 12 and 13 can work on a farm with parental permission.
This discrepancy in the laws persists despite the fact that the Centers for Disease Control’s National Institute for Occupational Safety Health (NIOSH) has rated the agricultural industry the most dangerous occupation for young workers. Children working in the fields labor long hours in the hot sun. They carry heavy loads and face exposure to toxic pesticides and dangerous machinery. Because they are still growing, child farmworkers are extremely susceptible to illness and trauma as a result of this work.
North Carolinians are taking action to ensure that all children in North Carolina are able to enjoy a safe childhood. Representatives Jordan and Parfitt introduced the Protect Youth/Farm Family Employment Bill, which limits the number of hours that 14- and 15-year-olds can work in our state's fields.
Farm labor is the backbone of North Carolina's agricultural industry, a sector which contributes 70.1 billion dollars to our state's GSP annually. Without strict rules regulating child labor, this industry is profiting as it puts children in harm's way.