USA: IIECL Supports USDOL’s Proposed Changes to Child Labor Regulations – IIECL
On December 1, 2011, the International Initiative to End Child Labor (IIECL), a US-registered 501 (c)(3) not for profit organization, submitted comments to the US Department of Labor in response to the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking and Request for Comments on proposed changes to the Child Labor Regulations, Orders, Statements of Interpretation and Child Labor Violations. IIECL, formed in 1998 for the purpose to end the worst forms of child labor in the US and around the world. IIECL, are recognized worldwide for expertise on child labor issues, particularly child labor in agriculture. IIECL has conducted job risk and hazard analysis on the work performed by children in agriculture in numerous countries on various commodities, and has worked on establishing hazardous orders and labor standards for children in the US and various countries around the world. While IIECL provided specific comments that can be found on the website’s Resource Library, overall, IIECL applauds the US Department of Labor on proposing additional protections for children working in agriculture and other sectors within the Hazardous Orders (HOs).
According to Diane Mull, IIECL’s Executive Director, “It is evident that the recommendations rely on independent, well-researched and documented evidence to form recommendations for improvements in the HOs for children in agriculture and other sectors.” The recommendations mirror those recommended by the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) in 1995 and 2002, the General Accounting Office (GAO) reports from the 1980’s and 1990’s (agriculture), and numerous other studies and reports conducted over the past 20 years. The proposed changes are “a reasonable response to bringing about equalization of protection for children, particularly in agriculture, through the HOs,” Mull explains. “For too long, exemptions have existed within the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) for agriculture that are unjustified and have long been politically manipulated. The actions of the Department to bring about equalization of the law for all industry sectors, particularly those that rely on the use of child labor, brings needed uniformity under the law. Considering that children working on farms are largely minority combined with the overwhelming evidence of hazardous work in agriculture, suggests that to not equally protect these children as all other children and submit to the political pressures of the agriculture business sector to weaken or eliminate proposed changes would be a more egregious form of discrimination.”
Mull suggests that failure to act and make needed adjustments would be out of character for the Department and stand in conflict with its overall mission to “improve working conditions… and assure work-related benefits and rights” and the Wage and Hour Division’s mission to “promote and achieve compliance with labor standards to protect and enhance the welfare of the Nation’s workforce”, especially for America’s children and youth.
The US Department of Labor, through its International Labor Affairs Bureau’s’ Office of Child Labor, Forced Labor and Human Trafficking is viewed worldwide as the leader in working toward the elimination of child labor. To not take actions that would bring the US in closer compliance with International Labor Organization (ILO) Convention 182, ratified by the US in 2000, would severely undermine the Department’s position and standing worldwide. She states further, that she believes that it is time that the agricultural sector be brought into the 21st century and treated as all other industries. She explains that it is evident that, “the Department has addressed the unique nature of agriculture through its exemption of family farms and undertaken care to apply a balanced and reasonable approach. “There is misinformation being circulated about what the proposed changes would do for the family farm,” Mull states. “It is unfortunate, but a typical political response when change is being proposed,” she concluded. “It’s very disappointing that 30 Senators have submitted comments requesting the Department to remove their proposed changes. It suggests that politics is hard at play when children’s interests should be at the center of the discussion.”
What an absolutely preposterous attempt by idiotic people who have never worked on a farm, within a household, or as a family unit. If families cannot teach their children the core values of work ethic (which is already severely lacking in the US), commitment, helping and sharing, then what is to become of our family unit and our natino? Children MUST be taught how to do basic chores of life, and how to provide for themselves.
I praise DOL for doing the right thing!
It is so unfortunate that an open and rationale process was not used by USDOL’s Wage and Hour Division to help formulate the proposed regulations and gain consensus BEFORE springing the proposed changes to the Fair Labor Standards Act on an unsuspecting ag community. Not how it should have been done and the timing was not the best. While I understand your views, I am a bit frustrated over the misinformation that circulated regarding what was actually proposed. I fully agree that families should teach their children core values and instill within them a good work ethic, commitment, helping and sharing, safety around the farm, and an understanding regarding the value of education. We feel that there are some tasks that children can perform as work that would not place the child’s health and safety at risk. However, I hope that you would agree, that there are some tasks that children, under certain ages, should not be allowed to perform, i.e., spraying pesticides, working in and around extremely dangerous machinery and sharp cutting instruments, etc. OSHA has the records of some 688 children who have died between 2003-2008 due to some of these activities and others while working in agriculture. Age and task appropriate activities needs to be considered and parents of children working in agriculture need to be equipped with information to help them make informed decisions about the risks that their children face. I worked on my father’s farm and was extremely lucky that I didn’t experience any accidents or injuries that would have left me permanently disabled or worse. 4-H and FFA are good programs, but the consistency of the quality of the education varies and could be improved to ensure that all of the core elements of education needed by farm working youth are covered, especially critical job hazard / risk, ergonomics, safety and health, and appropriate use of protective gear.
Just to be clear, the proposed regulations would have completely exempted children who work on family farms. It is fully expected that farming families should teach their children how to do chores and safe work on farms that they may someday inherit or buy, if they pursue agriculture as a career. Clearly, the intention of the proposed regulations was not to change the way of life on family farms. However, on many non-family commercial farms, there are children who work on farms, with and without their parents, for people they don’t know and never will. Current law allows for children under the age of 12 to legally work, children 16 to 17 to apply pesticides and other agricultural chemicals, work around dangerous machinery, and routinely use sharp cutting instruments for which they have never been trained on how to do the job, not provided any safety instruction or protective gear, working extremely long hours in hot temperatures, not providing field sanitation or fresh drinking water, and underpaying the child farm laborers. No farming parent I know would allow that for their child. But, unfortunately, some commercial farming operations, who enjoy the exemptions allowed for family farms, are taking advantage and gaining economic benefit on the backs of these children. That’s who the proposed regulations were trying to target and the children who were to be protected. Want to know why family farms are disappearing? Look to the commercial farming operations who have bought up the family farms and see where they have been able to slip through loopholes that were in place to protect family farms. There are national farm family groups who supported the proposed regulations because they would like to see the real family farms get a break for a change and still protect their way of life.