CAUTION CHILDREN AT WORK
Nixon, Ron
CAUTION Children at WorK by ron nixon The next time you buy fresh fruit or vegetables from the supermarket, think about the true costs. Rosa Rubina will. Her five-year-old son Jacob lost his hand...
...Today, because of the injury, the child keeps to himself...
...A section of the Fair Labor Standards Act, the law regulating child labor, allows agricultural industries to obtain waivers that will allow them to use ten- and eleven-year-olds for hand-harvested products if the companies can show that not using the ten- and eleven-year-olds "would cause severe economic disruption to the industry...
...Lack of child care isn't the only reason that children work on the farm, of course...
...Another report by the Institute found that from 1980 to 1989, 670 sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds died in work-related accidents...
...Due to budget cuts, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, charged with collecting data on young injured farmworkers, has decided to stop collecting data on injuries caused by farming equipment like tractors and pesticides in its reports on consumer products...
...This keeps the grower from having to comply with worker-safety or child-labor laws...
...This problem is particularly acute for minority youth...
...According to the American Friends Service Committee and the United Farm Workers, between 800,000 and 1.5 million children work in agriculture...
...Last year Congress took the first step in what many child advocates fear will be an all-out assault on child-labor laws...
...Exposure to pesticides represents the greatest threat to the health of children in agriculture, says Valerie Wilks, formerly of the Farmworker Justice Fund in Washington, DC Children in agriculture are exposed to a range of chemicals each year...
...Children in other occupations cannot...
...Yet according to a lawsuit filed in 1979 by Public Citizen, a Ralph Nader group, the Department of Labor published regulations that permitted ten- and eleven-year-olds in potato and strawberry fields to be exposed to the residues of some twenty-five pesticides, including many that produce birth defects, impair growth, and damage the reproductive system...
...But to exploit this provision, some growers allow an independent contractor to hire workers...
...Yet agriculture is less regulated than any other industry, particularly when it comes to children...
...We have to watch him...
...Furthermore, children in the fields may eat contaminated dirt or pesticide-treated crops...
...On any given day during the harvest season, children as young as five are in the field picking cucumbers, tomatoes, strawberries, and other hand-harvested fruits...
...This also gives the illusion that there are only a few workers being employed, when in reality there could be hundreds...
...It perpetuates a cycle of poverty...
...Many of these farms were selling their crops to major agriculture corporations like Vlasic Foods, Heinz USA, and Dean Foods...
...We can't spend our limited resources on things that we aren't sure are considered consumer products," says Art McDonald of the Commission...
...If he wasn't doing this he'd be running around...
...A provision in the annual appropriations bill forbids the Department of Labor and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration from inspecting farms that claim fewer than ten workers...
...Once you start working in the groves, you never come out," says a fifteen-year-old farmworker who asked not to be named...
...In Florida, many children from Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala, and Haiti drop out of school to work on farms for $4 or $5 an hour...
...The absence of such data could have a crippling effect on efforts to prevent injury to young agricultural workers, advocates say...
...The average farmworker's annual wage is about $4,600...
...Thousands of young people are injured, some even killed, on the job each year in the United States...
...For just about every labor standard in the book, agriculture Is exempt...
...Another year two kids drowned...
...The American Farm Bureau and a trade association made up of state agriculture commissioners have lobbied Congress not to strengthen laws and regulations governing farmworkers...
...Current regulations are established for adults...
...Like most migrant families, the Rubinas and their children work side by side, or the children play in the fields while their parents work...
...A report by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health found that 64,000 children, ages fourteen through seventeen, were treated in hospitals for work-related injuries in 1992...
...Nowhere are the dangers of children Ron Nixon is the associate editor of Southern Exposure magazine and the director of the Investigative Action Fund at the Institute of Southern Studies...
...In fact, agriculture is the second most dangerous occupation after mining, according to a 1995 report by the National Safety Council...
...Three year ago a minor was run over in the field by a tractor...
...According to the federal Migrant Head Start program, in 1990 only 23,000 out of millions of migrant children were provided day care...
...Though they are less likely to work than their white counterparts, minority children often work in more dangerous and unreportable jobs," says Charles Geszeck of the Government Accounting Office, the investigative wing of Congress...
...They were playing in some ditches on a Saturday while their parents worked...
...The boy's hand was caught in a conveyor belt and ripped off...
...So you could have fifty or sixty people, including children, working on a farm and only ten people on the employer's books," says Mull...
...the EPA's own data show that 300.000 pesticide-related illnesses occur among adults and children each year...
...Tnj| House of Representatives passed a bill aT-lowing youths under the age of eighteen to load paper compactors even though a report by the National Institute for Occupational Health Science found numerous injuries resulting from the operation of these balers...
...Since many farmworkers are paid by the number of fruits or vegetables they pick, "everyone in the family needs to work just to make a living," says Diane Mull...
...Even so...
...But if I don't pick I don't eat...
...In no other industry could you gist away with this," says Diane Mull of the Association of Farmworker Opportunities Program in Virginia...
...Labor Department...
...Poverty makes hard choices for many farmworkers...
...Other opponents of child-labor laws and regulations have joined an anti-regulation task force called Project Relief, which gave $10.5 million to legislators, mostly Republicans, during the 1994 elections...
...These are migrant children who are just a source of cheap labor...
...In 1994 only 200 children nationwide were found working illegally, according to Bob Cuccia, a spokesperson for the Department of Labor...
...working more apparent than in agriculture...
...The Food Marketing Institute, the lead trade organization behind the baler repeal, gave $173,369 to legislators from 1991 to 1994, according to Federal Election Commission records...
...And even this may be an undercount," says Jeffrey Newman of the Committee...
...Parents like Rosa Rubina have little choice but to expose their children to a dangerous environment...
...Another 40 percent had worked in the fields while the fields were still wet...
...A report in 1990 of migrant children in New York found that more than 40 percent had been sprayed with pesticides...
...I went crazy," Rubina remembers...
...I saw his arm wasn't there and his hand was stuck in the conveyer belt...
...A child fourteen years of age or younger can use knives, machetes, operate machinery, and be exposed to pesticides...
...Farm industry representatives disagree...
...Many have no illusions about their future...
...The research isn't there because nobody cares," says Mull...
...Even though the boy was rushed to a nearby hospital and eventually to Atlanta, doctors were unable to save his hand...
...Farmworker children are often two or more years below grade level in reading and math skills, and their dropout rate is 45 percent, compared with 29 percent for non-farmworkers...
...Still, the EPA has not felt a need to set standards for child exposure to pesticides...
...Politicians from farming states are loath to take on agribusiness, and agribusiness wants to keep it that way...
...Last year, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, the agriculture industries gave millions to a conservative Congress bent on undoing reforms that date back to the New Deal era, including restrictions on child labor...
...I used to work for Florida Legal Services, and children are out in the field all the time...
...Children in agriculture can work more than forty hours a week, even during a school term, although children in other industries are prohibited from doing so, Young farmworkers can also work an limited number of hours before school...
...This provision is supposed to keep small farms from being subjected to the same laws as giant agribusiness...
...It's a national disgrace...
...But children who work in agricultural jobs face more serious problems than dirty hands...
...Another tactic that growers use to circumvent the laws is to register an entire family as working under the social security number of the head of a household, says Mull...
...This story was supported by a grant from the Fund for Investigative Journalism...
...According to the GAO report, "the EPA regulations for protecting workers against pesticide hazards are based on adult exposure onlv and give no special consideration to children...
...Housewives in Boston may not understand it, but there is nothing wrong with fourteen-year-olds getting their hands dirty and learning some discipline," says Scottie Butler, general counsel for the Florida Farm Bureau...
...Some days he asks me, 'Ma are you still gonna love me with one hand?'" Accidents like Jacob's are becoming all too common for children in the workplace...
...Despite urgings from regulatory officials and farm-labor organizations, Congress has been unwilling to change the laws to protect farmworkers and their kids...
...In addition to being barred from inspecting farms that claim fewer than ten workers, labor officials have to ask a grower's permission to inspect a farm...
...farms...
...It may be impossible for the Department of Labor to know the exact number of children working on farms...
...And children tend to be more susceptible to pesticides because they absorb more pesticides per pound of body weight and because of their developing nervous system and organs...
...This makes it more difficult to measure the problem of child labor in agriculture," says Jesus Martinez, a district director for the U.S...
...But the National Child Labor Committee says more than 110,000 children work illegally on U.S...
...I don't know what else to do," says Juan Hernandez, whose nine-year-old son helps him pick cucumbers in Fremont, Ohio...
...Growers say that they don't hire children, but in 1992, on a tour of ten farms in Ohio, the Associated Press found dozens of children working...
...Her five-year-old son Jacob lost his hand while helping to grade and package watermelons in Tifton, Georgia...
...Children left in the field unsupervised can get into serious trouble, says Francisco Rivera, an attorney with the Florida department of Labor...
...Consider the following: • Hazardous work is prohibited in farming only until age sixteen (compared with age eighteen in nonagricultural occupations), and all work on family farms is exempt...
...Thousands of children like Jacob Rubina are not counted in the data gathered by the Department of Labor and other agencies because they work in largely unreportable jobs or help out their parents on the farm where they aren't listed as workers...
...He doesn't go out," Rubina says...
...Food processors know that they are being targeted, so they are being good," said Cuccia...
...There is little regulatory agencies can do to help...
...Kids work and don't go to school and they don't make much money, so they stay poor...
...He won a 1995 "Best Censored" award for his reporting on child labor in Southern Exposure...
...She is not alone...
...I tried to get the children into day care but there was a long waiting list," says Rosa Rubina...
...These statistics tell only part of the story...
...While agriculture is not the only industry that employs large numbers of children, it is certainly the most dangerous...
Vol. 60 • August 1996 • No. 8
