March 25, 2024<\/p>\n
Media contact: National Consumers League \u2013 Reid Maki, reidm@nclnet.org, (202) 207-2820<\/p>\n
Washington, DC \u2013 With the beginning of Farmworker Awareness Week today, the Child Labor Coalition (CLC), representing 37 groups engaged in the fight against domestic and global child labor, applauds Senator Ben Ray Luj\u00e1n (D-NM) and for introducing the Children\u2019s Act for Responsible Employment and Farm Safety (CARE<\/em>). The legislation, introduced on March 21, would close long-standing loopholes that permit children in agriculture to work for wages when they are only 12 and 13\u2014younger than other teens can work. The bill would also ban jobs on farms labeled \u201chazardous\u201d by the U.S. Department of Labor if workers are under the age of 18. Current U.S. law allows children to perform hazardous work at age 16.<\/p>\n \u201cWith their whole future ahead of them, our country must do better protecting children working in the agriculture industry,\u201d said Senator Luj\u00e1n. \u201cAcross the country, thousands of children are working under hazardous conditions in the agriculture sector, risking their health and education. I\u2019m introducing the CARE Act to raise the floor and bring our agricultural labor lines in with other industries to better protect children and improve the working conditions they operate in.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s amazing to us that discriminatory loopholes, which allow very young kids to work 70- and 80-hours a week, performing back-breaking labor on farms, have been allowed to exist since the 1930s,\u201d said Reid Maki, Director of Child Labor Advocacy for the National Consumers League and the Child Labor Coalition. \u201cThe impact of the exemptions on farmworker children educationally is harmful and their health is at significant risk on farms.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re grateful for Senator Luj\u00e1n\u2019s tremendous leadership on this issue.\u201d said the CLC\u2019s Chair Sally Greenberg, also the CEO of the National Consumers League. \u201cIt\u2019s been 22 years since we\u2019ve had a Senate bill that would fix our weak child labor laws that discriminate against farmworker children and leave them unprotected from farm dangers. This day was long overdue. We applaud Senator Lujan for taking action to protect child farmworkers.<\/p>\n “Growing up as a migrant farmworker child, I saw first-hand the detrimental consequences of our inequitable child labor laws,” says Norma Flores L\u00f3pez, Chair of the Child Labor Coalition’s Domestic Issues Committee. “Working 70 hours a week, performing back-breaking work did not prepare me for a career in agriculture. Rather, it robbed me of my childhood and my health. Working children must be protected from dangerous work that is not age-appropriate, and the CARE Act provides this critical change in our labor laws.”<\/p>\n In the House, Rep. Raul Ruiz introduced a version of the CARE Act<\/em>, H.R. 4046, earlier in the congressional session; it has 45 cosponsors.<\/p>\n