Child Labor in Our Backyards

Last year about this time, an ABC News Investigation exposed the lives of migrant workers on television. In their investigations they found children as young as 5 years old working in the fields of North Carolina, New Jersey and Michigan. Particularly, young children were discovered in the Adkin Blue Ribbon Company in South Haven, Michigan, one of the largest blueberry companies. The company supplies blueberries to Walmart and Kroger supermarket chains. 

Although agriculture is one of the most dangerous occupations, the current laws in the United States actually allow children as young as 12 years old to work in the fields.

“Under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), the legal age to perform most farm work is only 12 if a parent accompanies the working child. Children 12 years or older can work unlimited hours in the fields before or after school hours. U.S. law also allows children working in agriculture to perform hazardous work at 16 - workers in other industries must wait until they are 18” (Association of Farmworker Opportunity Programs).

           

So, it is legal for children as young as 12 years to perform back-breaking, dangerous work in the fields 10 to 12 hours a day, but the law doesn’t allow children to work in an air-conditioned office for two hours a day. 

It is estimated that there are 400,000 U.S. children working in the fields. In 1998, the Government Accountability Office estimated that more than 100,000 children and adolescents are injured on farms annually (AFOP).

source: Heather Anderson

“The parents when they allow the children to work on the fields and the crew leaders encourage it, are not doing it to become rich. They are doing it so they can have food on the table.” – Theresa Hendricks, Michigan Migrant Legal Aid, in another video about the investigation.

Migrant farmworkers pick and harvest the fruits and vegetables that are made available to use as consumers, so we can eat and have food on our tables. At the same time, children must work in order to help their parents and family members to make enough money so they have food on their own kitchen table. Does anyone else see what is wrong with this?

For more information on child labor in the fields, please watch more documentary videos listed (see left side).

The Association of Farmworker Opportunity Programs. Children in the Fields Campaign. Association of Farmworker Opportunity Programs, 2009. Print.