Zulema Lopez from the film THE HARVEST/LA COSECHA (photo by U Roberto Romano)
Our film THE HARVEST/LA COSECHA documents the lives of 3 of the estimated 400,000 migrant farmworker children who are torn away from their friends, schools and homes to pick the food we all eat. Zulema, Perla, and Victor sacrifice their own childhoods to help their families survive, journeying from the scorching heat of Texas’ onion fields to the winter snows of Michigan apple orchards and back south to the humidity of Florida’s tomato fields following the harvest. Their lives are like most other child farmworkers’ lives, lives of instability and the always present danger of injury.
Agriculture is the most dangerous industry for American children to work in. Children are allowed to work for hire in agriculture at 12 years of age, and can work in small farms at any age. Thousands are injured each year and are exposed to hazardous conditions each day. Unlike other industries, agriculture is exempt from the child labor regulations that other industries must abide by. In September, the DOL proposed changes to the regulations governing child labor in agriculture. These safety rules would place restrictions on the operating of heavy machinery, the handling of pesticides, and the performance of tasks that are too dangerous for children under 16 years of age, among other measures.
In response, the Senate and the House of Representatives have just introduced the “Preserving America’s Family Farms Act”, S.2221 and H.R. 4157 respectively, which would prevent the Department of Labor from placing regulations on child labor in farms at all. Rep. Tom Latham (R-IA) introduced the act in the House on March 7, 2012, and Senators John Thune (R-SD) and Jerry Moran (R-KS) introduced the bill in the Senate on March 21, 2012. The proposed legislation defends the importance of the tradition of children working on family farms and overlooks the risks and dangers, as well as the lack of safety measures, that hired child farmworkers face every day.
Their proposed legislation overlooks the crucial facts of the majority of farmworker children’s lives, and suggests that the proposed safety rules would prevent children from getting hands-on training in farms and working for their own family farms. This is inaccurate, as the rules do not apply to children working on farms operated by their own parents (and Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis has expressed her intention of making this parental exemption apply to farms owned by other family members as well) or in 4H, which is not hired labor and thus not affected at all by the DOL’s proposed rules.
The Child Labor Coalition (CLC), which represents more than two dozen organizations that seek to protect child workers, are advocating for the immediate implementation of the DOL’s proposal on child labor safety rules. They have set up a petition for the Secretary of Labor and the U.S. Department of Labor to implement their rules. They understand that it is imperative for the DOL to pass provisions that will protect children when driving tractors, which is the main cause of death in agriculture, and from engaging in practices such as working with animals in dangerous situations, harvesting and curing tobacco, and working in grain storage facilities, among several others of the most dangerous farm activities.
To sign the petition and support CLC in their efforts to bring the Department of Labor to place protective measures for children working in farms, go to: http://www.change.org/petitions/u-s-dol-child-safety-rules-for-hazardous-work-on-farms-will-save-lives-we-need-them-now