The Moral Urgency of Farmworkers in the Media

Spring and summer herald the annual return of migrant workers to farms around the country, especially in North Carolina. So often, workers’ return to our home state means their resuming hard work for little pay, the constant risk of pesticide exposure, and, for their children, going to work in a dangerous environment. While workers’ situation in our economy remains dire, this spring is beginning differently in at least one respect: gradually, the media has begun to turn its attention to child labor issues and the pesticide exposure migrant farmworkers face.

CNN recounts the story of Jessica Rodriguez, who began working in tobacco fields in North Carolina at age 11. While she should have been in school, Jessica worked in the fields, encountering dehydration and green tobacco sickness, a potentially lethal illness related to tobacco exposure. Even worse, according to an alarming new Human Rights Watch (HRW) report, more than half of children in Jessica’s situation experience pesticides being applied to crops by growers as they continue to work in the fields.

Meanwhile, The Guardian picked up the story of Eddie Ramirez, who began work in the fields at age 12. Part of the tragedy of child labor in North Carolina is that children like Eddie and Jessica being forced to work is legal. Laws designed to allow children to work on family farms have become loopholes that allow underprotected migrant youth to be exposed to dangerous industrial agricultural environments. The U.S. now lags behind Brazil and India in the legal protections it offers children, according to the HRW report.

The groundswell of media attention in the days since the HRW report was released is a welcome development in the fight against child labor and injustice against migrant farmworkers. Dozens of media outlets from California to Connecticut have picked up the story of the fight for human dignity being waged in North Carolina and around the country, including an op-ed in the New York Times.  

For the tide to turn, however, and for farmworkers’ dignity to be acknowledged, we cannot be satisfied with merely reading about issues in the news. The time to act is now.

FAN is dedicated to fighting for workers’ dignity and committed to seeing injustice eradicated, but we are counting on your support. Your help is needed at this pivotal time:

• SIGN Human Rights Watch’s petition to end child labor in tobacco farming.

• SUPPORT FAN-member organization Toxic Free NC’s petition pertaining to proposed changes in the EPA’s Worker Protection Standard (WPS). Toxic Free’s petition calls for tightening rules concerning children being exposed to pesticides in the fields.

• COMMENT on the EPA’s proposed WPS changes. For more information, and to see FAN’s statement on the changes, visit the FAN blog.

• WRITE a letter to the editor or Op-Ed for your local newspaper bringing the plight of farmworkers to your paper’s attention. For resources, sample letters, and more, contact FAN.

• WATCH FAN’s Emmy-award winning documentary HARVEST OF DIGNITY, or contact FAN to host a screening.

• LIKE FAN on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, Pin Harvest of Dignity, and tell your friends that you stand with farmworkers this summer.

Our moral imperative: Protecting all children in NC

By Melinda Wiggins | Originally published by the Raleigh News & Observer

Last month, N.C. Senate Rules Chairman Tom Apodaca refused to allow so much as a hearing of Senate Bill 707, all but killing it. What did the Henderson Republican find so objectionable?

The bill would ban the employment of children under age 14 in one of the deadliest occupations in America. But isn’t that already illegal? Didn’t child labor laws from the 1930s put an end to the industrial exploitation of kids? Not in agriculture. Not in North Carolina. Here, impoverished kids as young as 10 can be hired to work for strangers in sun-baked fields laden with toxic pesticides, doing hard labor few adults would choose to do.

We are not talking here about family farms. Senate Bill 707 – like every other proposal to bring child labor standards out of the 19th century – explicitly allows children to work on farms owned or operated by relatives. Unfortunately, this truth is routinely ignored or misrepresented, allowing legislators to brush off these reforms as threats to an American institution and parental rights.

There is no moral justification for child labor in any industry, but the economic justification is a wickedly powerful one. The denial of child labor, wage, housing and other legal rights to farmworkers – rights enjoyed by workers in every other industry in America – allows agricultural corporations to keep their labor costs at rock bottom. Growers have no control over the cost of seeds, pesticides or heavy equipment. But with the help of friendly legislators, they can hold down labor costs by taking advantage of the men, women and children who work their fields.

We understand the political realities that lawmakers face. Agribusiness carries a big stick in states like North Carolina. Fortunately, there is something the legislature can do this session to protect farmworker children from being further exploited from trafficking and sexual violence. As reported by Human Rights Watch last year, farmworking girls are subject to unwanted touching, stalking and rape. In a March 2012 Indy Week report corroborated by the nonprofit farmworker advocacy group NC Field, a 16-year-old girl tells of two young girls at one camp being offered as prostitutes to their supervisor.

Senate Bill 683, the so-called Safe Harbor Act, aims to protect victims of human trafficking and the prostitution of minors. The inclusion of simple, sensible provisions will extend this protection to children in our state who need it most.

One provision guarantees that farmworkers may receive visits during nonworking hours from church, charitable and nonprofit organizations for health care, education and other services. Another requires that the Polaris Sex Trafficking hotline be posted in migrant camps. Others require locks for doors and windows of farmworker sleeping areas and locked storage for farmworker valuables such as passports so they cannot be held to exert control.

Too many school kids are working in fields when they should be doing homework. And too many 10-, 11-, 12- and 13-year-old girls are at risk of sexual violence while helping to support their families. Our legislature is empowered to change these realities right now with bills like 707 and 683.

Melinda Wiggins is executive director of Student Action with Farmworkers, a nonprofit based in Durham.

Getting Children Out of the Fields

New immigration policies could help undocumented farmworker youth

By Griselda Casillas, Toxic Free NC 2012 Farm Worker Outreach Intern

Last month President Obama announced new deportation policies stating that undocumented immigrants under age 30, who came to the US before age 16, and who are currently in school or have graduated from high school or earned a GED, are not to be deported. Also, those young undocumented immigrants who qualify can apply for two-year work permits that will allow them to work in the United States legally.

This policy change will affect the lives of many young undocumented farmworkers, who often work long hours in the fields of North Carolina in order to feed the nation.  

Agricultural work is classified as one of the three most dangerous occupations in the United States because of the many dangers workers are exposed to that put their lives at risk. Those dangers include constant exposure to pesticides, green tobacco sickness, heat stress, musculoskeletal injuries and many other health problems.

In North Carolina, children are legally permitted to work in the fields at the early age of 12, though recent field investigations have discovered children much younger than 10 filling up buckets of blueberries to help their families make more money in order to put food on their table.

Children are the most vulnerable farm workers because their bodies are still developing.  They have a higher chance of dying from a work-related incident in the fields than an adult. The pesticide exposure they receive comes with short-term effects like nausea, vomiting, cramping and itchy/burning eyes, breathing difficulty, as well as long-term effects such as cancer, miscarriage, memory loss and depression.

Teen farm workers talk about their experiences working around pesticides in the fields of North Carolina. Video courtesy of Toxic Free NC.”

A majority of the time children and adults are not informed about the dangers of pesticide exposure, or their rights in the field. They are not often notified whether the fields have been recently sprayed.  Farmworkers, especially youth, may not have been told what procedures they should follow to protect themselves, or what to do if they get sick from exposure to pesticides.    

On top of that, many undocumented children and teenagers have limited access to medical care.  This means that if they are injured or become ill on the job, they’re less likely than other children to receive proper treatment and care.

Due to work-related illness, family stress and sheer exhaustion, farmworker children are also more likely to perform poorly in school and are at greater risk of dropping out of school.  Many undocumented farm worker youth lose motivation to complete high school when they learn that it will likely be impossible for them to go on to college.

The Obama administration’s new deportation policy enacted last week will help young undocumented immigrants, including those who work in the field, to find jobs that don’t put their lives at risk. The two-year work permits will allow many farmworker youth to seek jobs that typically require proof of citizenship or residency, for the first time in their lives. Under this policy, undocumented youth will also be able to apply for drivers’ licenses and other types of documentation that are currently unavailable to them.

This policy will help young farmworkers to improve their lives in several concrete ways. They can get out of field work and seek jobs in other occupations that don’t expose them to pesticides, extreme heat, heavy lifting and harmful repetitive motion stress. They can seek higher paying jobs that will allow them to provide meaningful help to their families and save money for college, breaking the cycle of poverty.

With the possibility of legal residency, youth will be encouraged to perform better in school and pursue a college education after high school.

Perhaps most importantly, though, the implementation of this policy will mean that undocumented farmworker youth no longer have to live in fear, and that’s a very welcome change.

U.S Department of Labor Keeps Children in Harm’s Way

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

This spring North Carolinians are enjoying their local farmers markets as they begin to overflow with a myriad of fresh fruits and vegetables planted and harvested here in the state. Joy can be found on the faces of folks as they purchase a rainbow of delectable and affordable produce. Springtime for migrant and seasonal farmworker children in North Carolina, carries an entirely different implication. Many of these children must labor 40+ hours a week in the fields to help their families get by.  They are subjected to unsanitary, hazardous, and back-breaking labor conditions. It seems surreal for a state with an over-abundance of agricultural revenue to have child labor tangled up within it. 

Meanwhile, agriculture continues to be the most dangerous industry for children to work in.  In fact, three-quarters of the children under age 16 who died while working for wages in 2010 were killed while working on farms according to the Bureau of Labor statistics. The Department of Labor recently proposed safety updates to the rules governing child labor in agriculture—it would have been the first change in 41 years.

The updates were common sense changes to protect farmworker children from known dangers and would still have allowed children to perform any type of task on their parents’ farm, at any age. This is an exemption secured through the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, which is statutory and therefore cannot be changed by a federal agency. Members of Congress also introduced legislation in the House and Senate to block the implementation of the protections called, "Preserving America's Family Farm Act."  Even after advocacy groups held a press conference with a panel of experts from the education, health and agriculture communities to dispel the misinformation surrounding the proposed rules, the Obama administration in the end conceded to the large and misguided outcry from the opposition.   

Throughout the summer let us not forget the farmworker children who sacrifice their childhood, health, and wellbeing to bring us the fruits of their labor at what appears to be a “low cost.”   

For more information, click here: http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/the-administration/225809-labor-department-abandons-child-farmworkers.

"Uprooted Innocence" featured on "The State of Things"

Photo by Joe Wolf

Did you know that almost half a million children work in agriculture in the U.S.?

Emily Drakage with the Children in the Fields campaign and Catherine Bittar, a Duke University student who helped produce the short documentary "Uprooted Innocence" talk about the reality of child labor with WUNC's "The State of Things."

• Listen to "The State of Things"
• Watch "Uprooted Innocence"
• Take action with the Harvest of Dignity Campaign

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!

60 Minutes misses the rest of the story

On Sunday, May 22, CBS’ 60 Minutes featured a report on child labor in agriculture in the U.S. The report primarily focused on the economic necessity of young children working in the fields to both the grower and the farmworker. Currently, children as young as 12-years-old are allowed to work an unlimited number of hours in the fields outside of school hours.  In almost every other industry you must be at least 14 years of age and the hours permitted to work are limited. The 60 Minutes segment appears to justify the existence of child labor and how and why it plays an “inevitable” role within the complexities of the agriculture industry.  However, there is something terribly askew in this business model if producing fruits and vegetables forces growers and farmworkers to employ children, so that both can financially stay afloat as well as feed the nation.  

AFOP’s Children in the Fields Campaign Program Director Norma Flores López was also featured in the segment. Back in August, Flores López, who is a former migrant farmworker, sat for an hour long interview, sharing the barriers and dangers farmworker children face as a result of the unfair agriculture exemption in the U.S. child labor law. While the report did shine a light on the agriculture exemption, important information shared by Flores López describing why children should not be exempted from the protections established in the child labor law that governs other industries was missing. 

Children who work in the fields are exposed to many dangers including pesticide exposure, which has been scientifically linked to delays in learning rates, reduced physical coordination, cancers, and behavioral problems to name only a few.  Farmworker children are also exposed to heat-related illnesses and are subjected to injury and even fatality from operating heavy and dangerous machinery and equipment.

Farmworker children in North Carolina have reported experiencing vomiting, dizziness, nausea, rashes, sunburn, and heat sickness while working in the fields.  We need to stop and ask ourselves, “Would I allow my 12-year-old child to work 10 hours a day, 6 days a week in the tobacco or strawberry fields knowing these risks?” 

Take a stance to end child labor in North Carolina’s fields! Visit www.harvestofdignity.org  for simple ways you can take action.

Emily Drakage
Children in the Fields Campaign
Association of Farmworker Opportunity Programs

Update on Tuesday, May 31, 2011 at 1:32PM by Chris Liu-Beers

Here is extra video of Norma Flores Lopez that is online but did not appear in the televised report:

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.