Feds to address child farm worker problems

This week Human Rights Watch released a report which asserts that labor conditions for child farm workers, of which there are somewhere between 300,000 to 400,000 domestically, negatively affects health and education of the children. Additionally, the report claims that the legal protections child workers do have are poorly enforced. Human Rights Watch laid the blame for the conditions facing child farm workers at the feet of Congress, the Department of Labor, and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), reports David Curry in the Boston Globe online.

According to Curry's article, Labor Secretary Hilda Sollis "commended Human Rights Watch for its report and said ending illegal child labor is a top priority of her department." To that end, the Department of Labor has added 250 new field investigators over the last year and plans to add more.

The EPA was criticized by Human Rights Watch for failing to consider the effect of pesticides on child workers. Curry reports that the EPA has said it is "working to strengthen its assessment of pesticide health risks."

However, as Curry points out in his article, any steps taken by the two agencies may do little to protect child workers until the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), which regulates child labor, is amended. Under the FLSA children can start working on farms at age 12, whereas for other types of employment children must typically be either 14 or 16. Additionally, the hours children can work on nonfarm jobs is limited to three a day outside of school, but for farm workers the hours are unlimited.

To read the Curry article, click here.
To read the Human Rights Watch report, click here.

Posted: 05/06/10