Independent Weekly Highlights Child Labor in NC

Last week, the Independent Weekly published an excellent article on the realities faced by children working in the agricultural industry in North Carolina.

The reporter interviewed several members of the Farmworker Advocacy Network, including the NC Justice Center attorney Carol Brooke and Emily Drakage from Association of Farmworker Opportunity Programs' Children in the Fields Campaign. Here's an excerpt:

While the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 sets the minimum working age at 14, the law allows children ages 12–14 to work in the agricultural industry as accompanied minors or with parental consent. According to Carol Brooke, a lawyer with the NC Justice Center specializing in child labor laws and policy, it is legal in North Carolina for children as young as 10 to be a paid employee in agriculture. They can work as long as 14 hours a day.

The law hasn't been touched since 1938, says Emily Drakage, a regional director at the Association of Farmworker Opportunity Programs and co-founder of NC FIELD. At the time, U.S. agriculture was based on family farms, not agribusiness.

Nearly 75 years later, Drakage says, the law "does not reflect the current realities of industrial agriculture. There is a big difference between working for your dad who is a farmer, and a farmworker."

You can read the full article, share it and comment on it here. Many thanks to the Indy for giving this issue the attention it deserves!