Farmworker group objects to child labor change delay
November 01, 2011 | 08:00 AM
The Association of Farmworker Opportunity Programs said late last week that the Labor Department’s decision to extend the comment period on a proposal to update child labor regulations amounts to a capitulation to farm groups and members of Congress who asked for the extension.
The comment period has been extended 30 days, until Dec. 1. Coalitions of 60 farm groups and 78 members of Congress wrote to Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, asking for the extension.
Norma Flores López, Association of Farmworker Opportunity Programs
“As farmworker advocates, we are opposed to additional delays that may lead to further deaths and the maiming of children working in agriculture,” said Norma Flores López, director of AFOP’s “Children in the Fields” campaign and a former farmworker child, in a news release.
“These updates are too late for the hundreds of children who have died as a result of these out-of-date child labor regulations,” she said, “but it's not too late for those children currently laboring in hazardous conditions.”
The National Safety Council ranked agriculture as the most dangerous industry for even adult workers, with 28.7 deaths per 100,000 workers in 2008, Lopez said. For youth, agriculture has the highest fatality rate of any industry, with 40 percent of all youth fatalities occurring on farms, she added.
In July, two 14-year-old girls were killed and eight others were injured while detassling corn in Tampico, Ill., she said, after being electrocuted by irrigation equipment, while in August two 17-year-olds each lost a leg when they became trapped in a grain auger in Kremlin, Okla.
The proposal would prohibit people under 16 from working on farms unless they are family members, but farm groups say that restriction is too narrow. The revisions would also extend restrictions on child labor, including barring children under 16 from cultivating, harvesting, or curing tobacco.
Children working in tobacco fields are particularly vulnerable to acute tobacco poisoning, known as green tobacco sickness, which has no special treatment or cure, the association said.
Child Labor Regulations, Orders and Statements of Interpretation: Child Labor Violations – Civil Money Penalties
Association of Farmwork Opportunity Programs
The comment period has been extended 30 days, until Dec. 1. Coalitions of 60 farm groups and 78 members of Congress wrote to Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, asking for the extension.
“As farmworker advocates, we are opposed to additional delays that may lead to further deaths and the maiming of children working in agriculture,” said Norma Flores López, director of AFOP’s “Children in the Fields” campaign and a former farmworker child, in a news release.
“These updates are too late for the hundreds of children who have died as a result of these out-of-date child labor regulations,” she said, “but it's not too late for those children currently laboring in hazardous conditions.”
The National Safety Council ranked agriculture as the most dangerous industry for even adult workers, with 28.7 deaths per 100,000 workers in 2008, Lopez said. For youth, agriculture has the highest fatality rate of any industry, with 40 percent of all youth fatalities occurring on farms, she added.
In July, two 14-year-old girls were killed and eight others were injured while detassling corn in Tampico, Ill., she said, after being electrocuted by irrigation equipment, while in August two 17-year-olds each lost a leg when they became trapped in a grain auger in Kremlin, Okla.
The proposal would prohibit people under 16 from working on farms unless they are family members, but farm groups say that restriction is too narrow. The revisions would also extend restrictions on child labor, including barring children under 16 from cultivating, harvesting, or curing tobacco.
Children working in tobacco fields are particularly vulnerable to acute tobacco poisoning, known as green tobacco sickness, which has no special treatment or cure, the association said.
Child Labor Regulations, Orders and Statements of Interpretation: Child Labor Violations – Civil Money Penalties
Association of Farmwork Opportunity Programs
