For Child Farmworkers, Lives of Poverty and Danger, By Zama Coursen-Neff, Deputy Director, Children۪s Rights Division, Human Rights Watch
Victor was only 11 when he went to workfull time. At that age he could not legally work in an office or a store. Instead,he weeded, picked, and packed collards and kale on a Michigan farm.*
“I was a little kid,” he told me. “Iwas used to playing with toys. They took me to their fields and I was like,Where am I?۪”
Although the legal age to work on thissize of farm is 12, Victor۪s parents were deeply in debt and the farm۪soperator did not check his age.
The following year Victor was given aknife to cut greens. “Week after week I was cutting myself,” he said.
“My hands have a lot of stories. Thereare scars all over.” When I interviewed him last summer, Victor was 17 and hadbeen promoted to driving a tractor, typically working from seven in the morninguntil eight at night.
Victor still turns over his check to his parents. “I can۪t afford to miss any day [of work],” he told me. “Half ofmy family depends on the money I earn. My money counts.”
Right now, hundreds of thousands of children like Victor are working for hire on farms across the United Statesweeding,detasseling, harvesting, and packing our fruits and vegetables, as well astobacco, cotton, and other crops.
Most are Hispanic and most are poor.
Because of an exception in the federal childlabor law, they can work for hire in agriculture at far younger ages, for farlonger hours, and in far more hazardous conditions than other working children.In the last year, I۪ve interviewed dozens of children who worked on farms in 14states across the country. For too many, farmwork means an early end to childhood,long hours at exploitative wages, and risks to their health and sometimes theirlives.
These children typicallystart at age 11 or 12 working ten or more hours a day during summers andweekends, and sometimes on school days. Many start earlier, thoughIinterviewed some as young as seven. Remarkably, federal law provides no minimum age for work on small farms withparental permission, and children ages 12 and up may work for hire on any sizedfarm. Outside of agriculture, children must be at least 14. Even then the jobsthey can perform and their hours are tightly restricted.
The legal loophole for agriculture,which dates back to a more rural era, is particularly incongruous because farmworkis the most hazardous occupation open to children. Working with sharp tools andheavy machinery, being exposed to pesticides, climbing up tall ladders, luggingheavy buckets,