Kudos to Wash Post for exposing troubling farmworker kids’ stories

By Sally Greenberg, NCL Executive Director

Sunday’s Washington Post featured a compelling – and sad – story that reaffirms NCL’s concerns about farmworker kids. In “A Harvest of Reduced Expectations,” by reporter Kevin Sieff, the youngsters interviewed describe constantly moving from town to town during the school year – following their farmworker parents, showing up at new schools in the middle of the year, and failing to enjoy any continuity in their education. As a result, many drop out.

One teenage girl talked about living in farmworker’s quarters, which are typically run down and lacking in the niceties so many of today’s teens take for granted – a good bed, a desk on which to do homework, regular hours for meals and bedtimes. One boy is pictured sitting on his bed reading over his homework; he has no desk and lives in a threadbare makeshift living quarters.

But most troubling in the teenage girl’s story is that though she is glad to be able to be with her father and take care of her siblings, she is often surrounded by farmworkers who are NOT there with their wives and families. During the weekends many of these men bring prostitutes back to the quarters where these children live.

Reid Maki at NCL has worked tirelessly with the other members of the Child Labor Coalition, which NCL co-chairs, to gain passage of the CARE Act, which will help to get farmworker kids out of the fields and in school full-time. This Washington Post article is particularly well headlined: A Harvest of Reduced Expectations; the piece does a great job of shining a light on the substandard and unacceptable living conditions of so many farmworkers – and their kids. Let’s pass CARE and get these kids into schools where they will be learning on a continuous basis and not exposed to a world that is hardly fit for adults, let alone children.

Longoria, Colbert highlight farmworker plight

By Reid Maki, Coordinator of the Child Labor Coalition and Director of Social Responsibility and Fair Labor Standards

America’s farmworkers are mostly invisible these days. The men, women, and children who pick our fruit and vegetables go largely ignored by the public and Congress, which has failed to update the Fair Labor Standards Act leaving farmworkers mostly unprotected from workplace abuses. This September, however, two celebrities—Eva Longoria and Stephen Colbert—traveled to Capitol Hill in an effort to shine a much-needed spotlight on the plight of farmworkers.

On September 15, Longoria, a cast member from the television hit “Desperate Housewives,” appeared at an informal briefing in the Rayburn House Office Building to promote “The Harvest”, a documentary she is producing about child labor in agriculture. Longoria and filmmaker Robin Romano showed clips of child workers featured in the film, which will premier at the Sundance Film Festival. The Harvest follows kids as they migrate and perform back-breaking work that many adults will not do because it is too hard and the pay is too low.

Despite being “a long time advocate for farmworkers,” Longoria said she was unaware that hundreds of thousands of children toiled in America’s fields because of loopholes in our country’s child labor laws. She noted that the educational impact on farmworker kids is profound: two out of three migrant students do not graduate high school. The high drop out rate, she added, contributes to a cycle of poverty that grips the farmworker community. Children are faced with the dilemma of providing needed family income or pursuing their educational needs. “No child should have to make that decision,” Longoria said, urging the briefing attendees to support H.R. 3564, the Children’s Act for Responsible Employment or CARE, legislation that would extend labor protections to farmworker kids.

The bill’s author, Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-Calif.), told attendees that passing CARE “would be a great step forward in protecting children.”

On September 24^th, the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship & Border Security’s hearing on “Protecting America’s Harvest,” addressed attempts to ensure that there are enough workers to harvest crops. TV humorist Stephen Colbert was one of the “expert” witnesses based on his recent experience as a farmworker. His testimony was pure satire that would have made H.L. Mencken smile: “Congresswoman Lofgren has asked me to share my vast experience spending one day as a migrant farmworker.”

“I’m happy to use my celebrity to draw attention to this important, complicated issue and I certainly hope that my star power can bump this hearing all the way up to CSPAN 1,” Colbert told a crowded hearing room.

“As you’ve heard this morning, America’s farms are far too dependent upon immigrant labor to pick its fruits and vegetables. Now, the obvious answer is for all of us to stop eating fruits and vegetables. And if you look at recent obesity statistics you can see that many Americans have already started.”

“I reject this idea that farm work is among the semi-mythical jobs that Americans won’t do…Really, no Americans? I did, as part of my ongoing series—“Stephen Colbert’s Fall Back Position” — where I try other jobs and realize that mine is way better. I participated in the UFW’s “Take Our Jobs” campaign. One of only 16 people in Americans to take up the challenge, although that number may increase in the near future as I understand many democrats may be looking for work come November,” quipped Colbert.

“I’ll admit I started my work day with preconceived notions of migrant labor, but after working with these men and women, picking beans, packing corn for hours on end, side by side in the unforgiving sun, I’d have to say—and I do mean this sincerely—please don’t make me do this again. It is really, really hard.”

“For one thing, when you’re picking beans you have to spend all day bending over. It turns out—and I did not know this— most soil is at ground level. If we can put a man on the moon why can’t we make the earth waist high?” asked Colbert in exaggerated mock pain.

The subcommittee also heard testimony from Arturo Rodriguez, the president of the United Farm Workers, who told members of Congress that “most of the food on your table has been harvested and cared for by unauthorized workers.”

“There’s another indisputable fact. The life of a U.S. farmworker in 2010 is not an easy one: most farmworkers live in poverty, endure poor working conditions, and receive no government assistance,” said Rodriguez.

“Undocumented farmworkers take jobs that other Americans won’t do, for pay that other Americans won’t accept, and under conditions other American won’t tolerate,” said Rodriguez, who urged Congress to support the Agricultural Job Opportunities, Benefits and Security Act, or “AgJOBS” bill, which would allow undocumented farmworkers already here in the U.S. to earn legal status by continuing to work in agriculture. “It is time to acknowledge the dignity of the current farm labor workforce and ensure the safety and abundance of America’s food supply by passing the AgJOBS bill. A failure to do so would be both a human and economic tragedy,” said Rodriguez.

Congress should take action, Colbert suggested. “This brief experience gave me some small understanding of why so few Americans are clamoring to begin a career as seasonal migrant field worker. So what’s the answer?” he asked. “I’m a free market guy. Normally I would leave this to the invisible hand of the market but the invisible hand of the market has already moved over 84,000 acres of production and over 22,000 farm jobs to Mexico and shut down over a million acres of U.S. farm land due to lack available labor because apparently even the invisible hand doesn’t want to pick beans.”

“Maybe this AgJOBS bill would help. I don’t know. Like most members of Congress I haven’t read it,” quipped Colbert, who suggested that offering more visas to immigrant laborers might help. “This improved legal status might allow immigrants recourse if they are abused.”

“It just stands to reason to me,” explained Colbert, “that if your coworker can’t be exploited then you’re less likely to be exploited yourself, and that itself might improve pay and working conditions on these farms and eventually Americans may consider taking these jobs again.”

“The point is we have to do something, because I am not going back out there,” said a horrified Colbert. “At this point, I break into a cold sweat at the sight of a salad bar.”

Colbert couldn’t help giving Congress one last tweak as he ended his testimony: “I trust that following my testimony both sides will work together on this issue in the best interest of the American people as you always do.” The packed hearing room laughed loudly at Colbert’s reference to the increasing lack of bipartisanship in the current Congress.

Not everyone seemed amused by having a humorist on a congressional panel. The Subcommittee’s ranking minority member Steve King (R-Iowa) sat unsmiling through the satiric Colbert testimony and during questioning suggested that film footage of Colbert working on a farm was “staged.” King later said it was insulting to suggest that American workers do not want to do farm work.

Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), the chair of the full Judiciary Committee, suggested that Colbert leave the hearing during the Q and A so that members could get down to business. He was politely “overruled” by Subcommittee chair Zoe Lofgren (D- Calif.), who said that Americans are interested in Colbert’s views.

Subcommittee members asked Colbert questions about the conditions he encountered in his brief time in the fields. “It was very hot,” said Colbert. “It was hotter than I like to be….It’s not a job I want to do and not a lot of people took Mr. Rodriguez up on his offer….[statistics] seems to say that Americans don’t want to take these jobs, but I don’t want to say definitively that they won’t.

Colbert turned a bit serious when Rep. Judy Chu (D-Calif.) asked him why he chose to take a stand on the working conditions endured by farmworkers when there are so many issues to weigh in on. “I like talking about people who don’t have any power and this seems like one of the least powerful people in the United States—our migrant workers who come and do our work but who don’t have any rights…Yet we still invite them to come here and at the same time ask them to leave. That’s an interesting contradiction to me.”

View all of Colbert’s testimony on YouTube here and here.

Labor Day’s children

By Guest Blogger Brigid O’Farrell

Brigid O’Farrell is an independent scholar living in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her new book, “She Was One of Us: Eleanor Roosevelt and the American Worker,” will be released by Cornell University Press in October. She is affiliated with the Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project, George Washington University, and a member of UAW Local 1981.

“Labor Day,” wrote First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt in her My Day column, “must be one of the most significant days on our calendar. On this day we should think with pride of the growing place which the worker is taking in this country…That is as it should be in a democracy.”

This year, workers don’t have much to celebrate. Unemployment is at a record high, reaching over 12 percent in California. Union membership in the private sector has declined nationwide to just over seven percent, a level not seen since the Great Depression. The most vulnerable workers are children.

Human Rights Watch reports that hundreds of thousands of children continue to work on farms and orchards picking tomatoes, corn, melons, berries–all the fresh fruits and vegetables we enjoy at our Labor Day picnics. Children under 18 work as seasonal and migratory workers, exempt from the laws governing other children. Many work long hours in extreme temperatures, often receiving poverty wages, exposed to hazardous materials and dangerous equipment.  By some estimates their school drop out rate is 50 percent, contributing to future poverty.

At the age of 74, and in failing health, Eleanor Roosevelt, a union member for more than 25 years, joined the National Farm Labor Advisory Committee. She testified before Congress and in her column praised a report recommending that “all farm workers, who are now usually exempted, should be included in Federal and State laws requiring union recognition and collective bargaining, setting fair standards for wages and hours of work and providing for unemployment compensation.”

She told the story of a 12-year-old girl, Christine Hayes, whose “scalp and most of her face were ripped off by a potato-digging machine while she and other child laborers were helping to harvest the potato crop on a farm near Blackfoot, Idaho.” She wrote that the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act, a pillar of the New Deal, had exempted children doing agricultural work from its protections. “Therefore, there are legally, hundreds of thousands of children between the ages of 10 and 13,” she wrote, “who are permitted to work, and many, many more—some of them as young a six and seven years old—who are illegally employed. This should be corrected by law immediately.” It was not.

Fifty years later, Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis is taking action. The daughter of immigrant farm workers and former Congresswoman from California, she is has initiated an effort to enforce the existing laws by hiring more investigators and increasing employer fines. Congresswoman Lucille Roybal –Allard of California, has introduced the “Children’s Act for Responsible Employment (CARE), to stop 12 and 13 year olds from working in the fields, to limit working hours by 14 and 15 year olds, to keep teenagers out of dangerous jobs, to bring pesticide exposure levels into line with the EPA, and to increase employer penalties.

More farm workers are employed in California than in any other state. As we enjoy our Labor Day picnics and watch our children return to school, let’s remember the children who have helped to feed us, many of whom have been injured, and even more who have dropped out school. Eleanor Roosevelt said that these children “represented the future” just as much as all the other children we know and love.

NY Times exposing child farmworker dangers

By Sally Greenberg, NCL Executive Director

NCL staff woke up to find that Saturday’s New York Times had a front page above the fold story about one of NCL’s core issues: getting farmworker kids out of the field and into school. NCL’s roots, going back to 1899, were focused on eradicating child labor and sweatshop labor. Florence Kelley is largely responsible for advocating, legislating, and litigating most child labor out of existence in the United States.

However, a loophole in landmark worker protections the Fair Labor Standards Act, which prohibited most child labor in the United States, had an exception for agricultural workers. Farmworker kids are often victims of a cycle of poverty – they are pulled out of school while their family migrates for work and end up working 10-hour days in stifling heat exposed to pesticides, sun stroke, lack of water and toilets, and other hardships that come with working in the fields. Many have such a spotty academic record they can’t graduate from high school, thus perpetuating the burden of low-wage jobs and no chance of advancement through education.

Some of the parents quoted in the article feel ambivalent about the law. They want their kids with them – or working – because they need their pay, but they also know the best place for them is school. But that was true 100 years ago when Florence Kelley ran the League. If you look at the problem of child labor from that prism, keeping children out of the fields is ultimate the best solution.

Children in the Fields Campaign gathering steam

By Reid Maki, Coordinator of the Child Labor Coalition

Our effort to protect migrant farmworker children from potentially harmful child labor through the Children in the Fields Campaign continues to gather steam. A campaign highlight occurred two weeks ago on February 22, when the Congressional Labor and Working Families Caucus and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus hosted a briefing on the hidden problem of child labor in U.S. agriculture. The room was packed with about 50 congressional staffers, interns, human rights advocates, and federal officials who work to protect farmworkers.

Norma Flores, who is now a Children in the Fields Campaign organizer, told the audience that she formally began working for wages in agriculture when she was 12, but that she helped out her migrant family in the fields when she was even younger. She spoke about working in 100-degree heat and working with sharp scissors that were so rough on her hands that she couldn’t write when she returned to school. She spoke about the lack of sanitation–days when toilets were not available or located too far away for the workers to use and days when clean water was not available to drink. She also talked about her scariest day in the fields when a plane spraying pesticides flew over the crew and dropped the pesticide spray directly on them. “My dad…was freaking out. He told us to run,” said Lopez.

Flores said she often migrated before the school year was over and returned to Texas months after it started up again. Many migrant children, she noted, end up dropping out from school due to the fatigue associated with migrating and working in the fields.

Maria Mandujano, who is now a college student and one of the lucky ones who managed to make it through school to graduation, told attendees that she started working in the fields when she was only 11, helping to harvest onions, sugar beets, corn, and zucchini. She recalled 13-hour shifts in 98-100-degree heat and said the work has left her with a bad back. “It is wrong that farmworker youth are the only youth exempted from U.S. child labor laws,” said Maria. “I hope that Congress will act to protect others like me.”

Zama Coursen-Neff, a researcher with Human Rights Watch, told briefing attendees that she has found a great deal of evidence that child farmworkers continue to work under very difficult circumstances that leaves her wondering whether the United States is in compliance with Convention 182, the international agreement signed by the U.S. that prohibits the “worst forms” of child labor that endangers the health, safety, and morals of children. Inaccessibility to good drinking water, pesticide contamination, exposure to hazardous jobs at young ages, and the sexual harassment of young female workers were among the problems she said young workers told her about. She interviewed child workers who work seven days a week for less than $150, she said. “I’ve seen kids working barefoot and without gloves,” she added. “Some kids are too tired to change their clothes at the end of the day.”

Coursen-Neff said she also believes that U.S. child labor laws are discriminatory because the exemptions that allow children to work at 12 and younger in agriculture primarily impact Latino children. She reminded participants that for many farmworker children, farm work is a way of life and not a temporary farm job that older Americans tend to remember fondly as a part of their youth. “One mother told me that she felt she had stolen her 11-year-old daughter’s childhood,” she said.

Filmmaker Robin Romano showed a trailer for his upcoming film on child farmworkers called “The Harvest.” He told attendees that the agricultural exemptions reminded him of “Jim Crow” laws, arguing that the treatment of migrant kids is “separate and unequal.” He agreed with Coursen-Neff’s assessment that the United States is not in compliance with Convention 182 and he said that the attempts to deal with abusive child labor in African cocoa fields under the Harkin-Engel protocol “require stricter rules than we have.”

“This is stunning to me,” Romano added. He noted that most of the migrant child workers he met were born in the U.S. “These are American citizens….Our children deserve better from us.”

Please consider calling your Congressman and urging them to cosponsor The Children’s Act for Responsible Employment, HR 3564. Email Reid Maki at reidm@nclnet.org if you have any questions.

Effort to pass legislation to protect farmworker children gathers steam

by Reid Maki, Child Labor Coalition

This post originally ran in Media Voices for Children, an Internet news agency for children’s rights.

In November, I reminded folks that young children—children who are 12- and 13-years-old and even younger in some cases—harvest fruits and vegetables on many U.S. farms and that many of them are allowed to do so because of loopholes in U.S. child labor law that go back to the 1930s. Child advocates have been trying to close those loopholes for years, and today, I’m happy to report that the campaign is progressing well.

Last week, Rep. William Lacy Clay (D-MO) became the 68th member of Congress to cosponsor the Children’s Act for Responsible Employment (CARE), HR 3564, which would close the legal loopholes and apply the same child labor laws to all working children. The bill, introduced by Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-CA) in September, would preserve an exemption for family farmers so their children could help on the farm, but the children of migrant and seasonal farmworkers who work for wages would have to wait till they are at least 14 to work. The U.S. Department of Labor would evaluate the safety of agricultural jobs to determine if some can be performed by 14- and 15-year-olds. The CARE Act would also prohibit teens in agriculture from doing jobs recognized as very dangerous until they were 18—the age limit in all other industries.

Campaign organizers, including the 24 members of the Child Labor Coalition, the American Federation of Teachers, the Association of Farmworker Opportunity Programs, Human Rights Watch, and First Focus Campaign for Children, are pleased that members of Congress from states with large farmworker communities have embraced the bill. Twenty members of the California delegation have cosponsored CARE. Texas, another state that is home to many migrant farmworkers, boasts seven members who have co-sponsored the bill. The Progressive Caucus has been incredibly supportive with 43 members co-sponsoring the legislation.

Help us Protect Farmworker Children! Help Us Pass the CARE Act!

By Reid Maki, Coordinator of the Child Labor Coalition

2010 has begun with positive momentum building for the Children’s Act for Responsible Employment (CARE), legislation that aims to protect the sons and daughters of migrant and seasonal farmworkers. Support for CARE, which is a priority of the National Consumers League (NCL) and the Child Labor Coalition (CLC), which NCL co-chairs, grew rapidly in December. During the month, the number of members of Congress who have agreed to be co-sponsors of the legislation quadrupled. The legislation is now endorsed by 64 members of Congress as well as 30 national groups!

CARE would fix exemptions in U.S. child labor law—dating back to 1939 and the enactment of the Fair Labor Standards Act—that allow large numbers of kids to work for wages in U.S. agriculture at ages 12 and 13. Our belief is that although it’s okay for kids to work on their parents’ farms, children working for wages in agriculture should be subject to the same child labor laws as all other working children in the United States. Agriculture is consistently ranked by the U.S. government as one of the most dangerous workplaces. Does it make sense to allow young children to work in an industry known to be dangerous?

In November, ABC’s Nightline found several children under the age of 10 working for blueberry farmers in Michigan. In 2008, staff from our campaign partner, the Association of Farmworker Opportunity Programs, conducted investigative visits to blueberry fields in North Carolina and found numerous children under 10 working. There are so many exemptions to current law that it’s often hard to tell if young children are working legally or illegally.

Often the sons and daughters of impoverished migrant and seasonal farmworkers, the children, who work mostly as hand harvesters of fruit and vegetables, pay a heavy price for their work. In addition to suffering health consequences from exposure to pesticides and dangerous farm machinery, these farmworker youth experience drop-out rates that are truly frightening: More than half of these kids do not graduate from high school! The work is often exhausting. Long hours in the hot sun after getting up at 3 or 4 a.m. are combined with constant bending over. Is it ethical to allow these kids to suffer so much so that we can enjoy lower-cost fruits and vegetables? Why should these children work under different protections than other children? It’s well known that child labor reduces wages for adult workers. Wouldn’t it be better to restrict this work to adults and pay them a living wage?

Please consider contacting your member of Congress and telling them that you would like them to cosponsor HR 3564, the Children’s Act for Responsible Employment—CARE. The legislation has been endorsed by both of America’s largest teacher unions, the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers, a co-chair of the Child Labor Coalition. The AFL-CIO, Change to Win, the Teamsters, and the Communications Workers of America have each endorsed it. The United Farm Workers of America and the Farm Labor Organizing Committee—the country’s two largest farmworker unions—have endorsed it. Farmworker Justice, the National Migrant and Seasonal Head Start Association, the National Association of State Directors of Migrant Education, and the National Farmworker Ministry have also announced their support for CARE. Human Rights Watch, Interfaith Worker Justice, and the International Labor Rights Forum—groups that monitor human and worker rights abuses—have endorsed it as well. Please help us pass the CARE Act.

If you would like more information about the CARE Act or the Children in the Fields Campaign or would like to receive updates about CARE, email Reid Maki at reidm@nclnet.org.

Former Child Farmworker Advocating for Change

By Reid Maki, Child Labor Coalition Coordinator

Norma Flores (left) speaks with Labor Secretary Hilda Solis at the 2009 Trumpeter Awards Dinner.

At the National Consumers League‘s (NCL) annual Trumpeter awards dinner earlier this month, I watched a young women with a surprising background mesmerize nearly 500 people with her story. We heard terrific speeches by award recipients U.S. Secretary of Labor Hilda L. Solis, CBS News’ Steve Kroft, and California Business Reporter Lynn Jimenez, but the most surprising speech to me was from Norma Flores Lopez, who spoke about her childhood harvesting fruits and vegetables in American fields.

Norma, who is now in her mid-20s, was one of the hundreds of thousands of farmworker children who toil daily in American fields to feed us consumers. She began working with her four sisters in the fields when she was only 12 because of loopholes in United States child labor law that allow children working in agriculture to work at younger ages than children in other industries.

“I can still remember waking up at four in the morning, sitting at the edge of my bed, lacing up my muddy boots, grabbing my hoe and walking towards the old school bus waiting for us in the [migrant] camp parking lot,” said Norma. Because of the heavy morning dews, she often started work in a raincoat. A few hours later, the blazing sun made her sweat like crazy.

“I hated it,” said Norma. “I hated to work in the fields.  I hated getting sweaty and dirty. I hated getting blisters and cuts and sunburns. I hated finishing my row of work only to see there was no water to drink at the end. I hated to have to walk half a mile to go to a dirty portable toilet. I hated how the work affected me outside of the fields. I hated having to enroll in school late every year, to have to make up months of assignments and have to fight to get my school credits. More than anything, I hated knowing my parents needed me out there to make ends meet, because it meant I couldn’t say no. Even though I was only a kid, I knew I didn’t belong there. I knew I could do more than hoe weeds for 70 hours a week.”

“Child labor in agriculture wears you down emotionally and physically, and is one of the most dangerous occupations,” added Norma, who now works on the Children in the Fields Campaign for the Association of Farmworker Opportunity Programs based in Washington, DC. NCL and the Child Labor Coalition, which NCL co-chairs, are partners on the campaign, which seeks to remove the loopholes that allow children like Norma and her sisters to work at very young ages in the fields.

An estimated 400,000 children help harvest our food. Norma is aware she is one of the lucky survivors of the years of hard work. She worked hard to get into a prestigious high school in Texas, did well, and went on to graduate from college. Many farmworker kids are not so lucky. Advocates believe the school dropout rate for migrant children is between 50 and 80 percent.

Norma worries about the kids left to work with their families, and she urged her attentive audience to help pass the Children’s Act for Responsible Employment, a bill introduced by Representative Lucille Royball-Allard of California this September. The CARE Act will address the inequities and harsh conditions faced by children currently employed in agriculture in the United States by amending the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 to remove the exemptions that allow children in agriculture to work at younger ages than other industries — unless they are working on their family’s farm, noted Norma. It will also increase the penalties for violators of the child labor laws and require greater data collection from the Department of Labor.

With Secretary of Labor Solis listening on, Norma thanked the cabinet member for her co-sponsorship of an earlier version of CARE when she was in Congress, as well as her work on behalf of farmworkers.

“Although I am married now and working in DC, thousands of miles away from the fields I grew up working in, I am still very connected to the migrant farmworker community, said Norma. “My parents are currently working in Iowa’s corn fields, and my two younger sisters continue to help them by working by their sides. I continue to see the problems that have plagued the farmworker communities—from the housing conditions, to the working conditions, to the plight of child labor in agriculture.”

“Changes need to be made now to ensure all children have a healthy childhood and access to quality education,” Norma urged.

Anyone interested in being placed on a listserve to get updates about the Children in the Fields Campaign and the progress of the CARE Act should email NCL at reidm@nclnet.org.

C.A.R.E. Act Introduced to Protect Young Farmworkers

Today, Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-CA) has introduced H.R. 3564, the Children’s Act for Responsible Employment (CARE), legislation that would close loopholes that permit the children of migrant and seasonal farmworkers to work for wages when they are only 12- and 13-years-old.

NCL’s Sally Greenberg says: “Child farmworkers are exposed to many dangers—farm machinery, heat stroke, and pesticides among them—and perform back-breaking labor that is not fit for children. It’s time to level the playing field by closing these archaic loopholes and offering these children the same protections that all other American kids enjoy. We applaud Rep. Roybal-Allard’s leadership in introducing CARE.”

Read what the Child Labor Coalition and Human Rights Watch have to say about the new bill.