Human rights organization reports on woeful conditions of child farm workers

Watchdog organization Human Rights Watch released its first report on deplorable working conditions for U.S. child farm workers 10 years ago. In a report released Wednesday, the group says little has changed. The report says "conditions for the estimated 300,000 to 400,000 child farmworkers 'remain virtually as they were' and faulted Congress, the Labor Department and the Environmental Protection Agency for failing to take effective action," David Crary of The Associated Press reports. "The Labor Department has done a very bad job up to now," report author Zama Coursen-Neff, deputy director of HRW's Children's Rights Division, told AP. "I've investigated child labor in India, in El Salvador. Child labor in America looks like some of those places. It looks like what people think happens only in other countries."

Children working on farms generally make less than minimum wage, drop out of school at four times the national rate and face high safety risks, HRW reports. At least 48 child farm workers died between 2005 and 2008, Crary writes, and 16- and 17-year-old farm workers are allowed to perform work deemed "particularly hazardous" by the Labor Department. In nonfarm sectors no one under 18 can perform such tasks.

"We simply cannot — and this administration will not — stand by while youngsters working on farms are robbed of their childhood," Labor Secretary Hilda Solis told AP. The agency has added more than 250 new field investigators in the last year and plans to add more, Crary reports. EPA drew the report's ire for failing to adequately consider the special vulnerabilities of child workers in its regulations regarding pesticide use on farms. EPA characterized many of the concerns raised by HRW as "sound" and said the agency is strengthening "its assessment of pesticide health risks, in part to improve conditions for child workers," Crary writes. (Read more)