By Sally Greenberg, NCL Executive Director

It turns out that if you have credit card debt where the statute of limitations has run on collecting that debt, you can be sued again by a second company for a lot more than the original debt. Why? Because the law allows claims to be sold on debt collection Web sites where “out of statute debts” – that’s what they are called – are bought for pennies or less on the dollar. The new debt collector can’t sue or threaten to sue, but they can do everything else to collect the debt. And here’s the catch – if you pay anything toward that old expired debt – the statute of limitations starts up again.

This news came as a big surprise to me – but the New York Times featured a Montana man who hasn’t had a credit card in 8 ½ years, couldn’t pay off his debt in 1999, and wrote the court to explain his circumstances.

The statute of limitations has run on the debt, and now he’s being chased by a new company. As one consultant explained “It’s so cheap, if you can work it smart, you don’t need to collect that much.” Investors in old debt apparently recoup 2 ½ times what they pay for the bucket of debts. So what’s wrong with that?

Because these collectors can’t sue, they are more prone to use abusive tactics to get money out of old debtors. Some firms violate the law by filing suits they are not supposed to bring. And they harass people years after a debt has been written off. The Federal Trade Commission studied the issue and recommended that states enact reforms to their rules governing these debts, including forcing collectors to prove the debt is not out of statute. That sounds like a great place to start to protect consumers.

By Elizabeth Gardner, NCL public policy intern

I’ve been going through a mental checklist of some of the 12-year-olds that I’ve known. The list includes some extremely rambunctious boys and some spirited girls—my little sister’s friends, an old coach’s son, a family friend, girls that I coached at volleyball camp. It’s these kids that I’ve been thinking back to as I’ve read the recent press that’s come out regarding child soldiers in Somalia.

The reports are disheartening. Although the United Nations believes the use of child soldiers around the world is on the decline, an estimated 250,000 children continue to be enslaved as soldiers—in Burma, Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, and other countries. They’re not always forced into the fighting by rebel groups either, for in Somalia these kids are on the government’s payroll. Children as young as nine years old serve in the Somali military. Twelve-year olds man checkpoints and wave Kalashnikov assault rifles. Somalia is one of “the most persistent violators of children in armed conflicts,” according to the UN. And what’s worse is that the United States is funding Somalia’s military—sending arms and funds.

This wave of recent media attention has initiated some positive steps. Although the Somalian government has avowed that all their soldiers are at least 20 years old, it has promised an investigation of the matter. That may mean very little, but the chances that this issue will be addressed are seemingly a lot higher now that the public spotlight is shining glaringly down on the situation. The UN is looking to implement measures against the use of child soldiers. Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) is raising concerns. American officials are being forced to answer some tough questions about where U.S. funding is going. And the State Department just published its annual Trafficking in Persons Report, which highlights the concern of child soldiers in Somalia. Recent stories, covering the challenges facing former child soldiers as they try to reintegrate into their communities, further highlight the need to keep pressing this issue.

With Maoists in Nepal and rebels in the Philippines, the UN has found that publicly calling out groups that violate children’s rights—or “naming and shaming”—is an effective method for bringing about reform. Knowing that this method has worked and can work is encouraging. As I think back to the kids in my life, I’m reminded of why it is so important that we push this issue. No 6^th grader or junior high student should be handed a gun and forced onto the front lines. This is just simply something that we cannot afford to let fall off the radar.

By Sally Greenberg, NCL Executive Director

Safety is a critical component of consumer protection, and now that summer upon us, the issue of safety and the risk of drowning – especially in minority communities –is an important topic for discussion. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, children and minorities are at much greater risk. In 2007, of children ages 1 to 4 who died from unintentional injuries, almost 30 percent were drowning accidents. From 2000-2007, the drowning rate for African Americans was 1.2 times that of whites.

The evidence shows that fear of drowning – not financial or geographic challenges – keeps most inner-city children from taking swimming lessons. For my siblings and me, learning to swim was like learning to eat – you just did it. By 6 and or 7 years old, every kid I knew could swim across the length of the pool. In fact, my friends and I spent entire days in the water, either at the swimming pool or at the lake, where we were utterly confident of our ability to stay afloat. We learned to float first, then learned the crawl, the backstroke, and the sidestroke, and I always figured everyone else felt comfortable in the water too.

But a recent series of focus groups in the African American community shows that parents are less likely to allow their children to take swimming lessons because they fear they will drown. The ironic result is that the risk of drowning increases greatly for minority children.

To address the issue of kids from minority groups not learning to swim or being competent and comfortable in water, there’s an important new program from the USA Swimming Foundation called Make a Splash aimed at such kids. As Make a Splash’s Katrina Florence said in a recent Washington Post article, “No one ever drowned at a swim lesson. They are safest when they are learning.” This is a life-saving program that all members of the community should support. We have many community pools, and now we need communities to embrace programs like Make A Splash, which will save lives and open up a wonderful form of exercise, relief from the heat, and fun to kids across the country.

By Reid Maki, Coordinator of the Child Labor Coalition

Did anyone catch NBC Dateline’s excellent expose, the “Children of the Harvest”, about the plight of migrant farmworker children Sunday night? In the show, Dateline returned to a subject it had covered in an Emmy Award-winning broadcast in 1998 and found that 12 years later, significant numbers of small children and young teens are still helping harvest the nation’s fruits and vegetables.

The show followed the Cruz family as it migrated from the Rio Grande Valley in Texas to Minnesota where it hoed sugar beet fields and cleared fields of rock. Ulysses or “Uly”, the family’s 10-year-old, was just one of many children shown by Dateline cameras working in agriculture, including several children even younger picking blueberries. “Consumers would never know that the berries on their morning cereal were picked by five- and six-year-olds,” said reporter Dennis Murphy.

Exemptions in U.S. child labor law allow children as young as 12 to work in the fields legally. They do this work at considerable risk. Machinery, tools, and pesticides combine to make agriculture a particularly dangerous industry to work in—with a child fatality rate four times that of other job sectors. Young Uly is seen driving a tractor and told NBC that he started driving an ATV used for picking rocks when he was only six.

The children also suffer educationally. A teacher said that Uly was three years behind in his writing and reading levels. The disruptions and exhaustion that comes along with a migrant lifestyle cause farmworker children to drop out at four times the rate of other children, according to NBC. Uly routinely leaves school in Texas in early May to migrate and doesn’t return to his home school district until late November.

For their efforts, most kids are compensated below minimum wage rates.

U.S. child labor laws seem irrational when it comes to agriculture. A 12-year-old child can pick blueberries all day long in the sun, but can’t sell those blueberries in an air-conditioned grocery store. “We don’t let parents take their kids into the mines. We shouldn’t let them take them into the fields,” said Zama-Coursen Neff, the author of the Human Rights Watch report, Fields of Peril. “Agriculture is dangerous. It shouldn’t be the only industry that small children can work in legally,” she added.

Department of Labor official Carl Fillichio, a senior advisor to Secretary Solis, suggested that the fields are not a good environment for children: “The nature of the work—it is outdoors, it is back-breaking—it is not a place for a kid.” The Department of Labor has stepped up enforcement efforts— but as Dateline pointed out—only $60,000 out of the $4 million of child labor fines levied by the Department in 2009 were in U.S. agriculture, and the average fine was only about $900. Still, the Department has hired 250 new investigators, recently announced plans to increase fines, and says it is determined to make the fields safer for children.

The larger problem is that U.S. laws allow children to work at 12. The National Consumers League is among a handful of groups working on a daily basis to pass the Children’s Act for Responsible Employment (CARE), legislation that would keep 12- and 13-year-olds out of the fields unless they are working on their parent’s farm. The bill would extend protections, including hour restrictions, to 14- and 15-year-olds, and it would bar tasks considered hazardous for 16- and 17-year-olds, who are currently allowed to perform dangerous work because of the agricultural exemption.

Despite having more than 100 cosponsors and the organizational support of 106 groups, the bill has not moved out of the Subcommittee on Workforce Protections where it was initially referred. Our hope is that folks will be moved by the plight of Ulysses Cruz and urge Congress to protect migrant farmworker children. The Dateline piece ends on a hopeful note as it points out that some of the children from the 1998 segment went on to college and are successful professionals, but the sad truth is that most farmworker children do not graduate high school.

By John Breyault, Vice President of Public Policy, Telecommunications and Fraud

Over the past month, NCL has filed two rounds of comments in the Federal Communications Commission’s proceeding regarding cellular “bill shock.” What is “bill shock,” and why is the FCC taking an interest, you ask? “Bill shock” describes consumers’ reaction to unexpectedly high wireless bills. The FCC released its notice in response to regulations adopted by the European Union that require wireless carriers there to provide notification to their subscribers when they are about to incur high fees for using their cell phones on a network other than that of their own carrier (known as “roaming”). Notification is also required when a European user is approaching their limits for other wireless services, such as texting or data usage.

The FCC is now considering instituting similar regulations in the U.S. After releasing it’s Public Notice on this issue, the Commission released statistics showing that 1 in 6 Americans (approximately 30 million people) have experienced “bill shock.” The headlines are also rife with stories of consumers getting the “shocks” of their lives when they open their cell phone bills and see four or five-figure balances staring them in the face. Here is just one of the examples we noted in our filing:

Wayne Burdick, an AT&T customer, received a $28,067.31 bill after he watched a Chicago Bears football game on his computer. At the time, Burdick was on board a cruise ship docked at a U.S. port. Burdick’s AT&T mobile broadband card had connected to the ship’s microcell rather than the local preferred tower. Because of this, Burdick’s data use was billed at extremely expensive roaming rates. Had his card connected to AT&T’s local tower, he would have been billed at normal rates. This problem was only resolved after Burdick contacted the Chicago Sun-Times, which in turn contacted AT&T on his behalf.

Had regulations like the ones in the EU been in place, Burdick would have received notifications from AT&T (likely via text message) that he was exceeding his data plan limits. AT&T would also have been required to shut off service until Burdick consented to the high rates he was being charged (or, more likely, finding a less-expensive way to watch his Bears game).

We believe that a solution like the one instituted in Europe would be a win-win for consumers and carriers. In the credit card industry, for example, consumers are routinely contacted by their credit card company if the company begins to see a pattern on unusual purchases on the account. The company may even block purchases until the consumer affirms that they — as opposed to a thief who had stolen then card — intended to make those purchases. Personally, when I was contacted by my card company in a similar situation, I was grateful that the credit card issuer took this step to make sure my account had not been compromised.

Similarly, we think that a notification and shut-off requirement would give consumers more faith in their cell phone companies. If a consumer who has never gone over their data limit suddenly starts racking up big overages, they would likely appreciate being asked by their cell phone carrier if they really meant to incur those charges, increasing customer loyalty.

Going forward, the FCC will review all of the comments submitted in this proceeding and decide what action (if any) to take. We, along with other public interest groups, the Attorney General of Massachusetts, and industry players support the adoption of EU-style regulations in this area. Stay tuned for developments on this issue!