Sec. 2. Findings

439 words·~2 min read·/bill/118/hr/4046/ih/section-2

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Congress finds the following: Across the United States, there are hundreds of thousands of children younger than 18 years old who are working in the agricultural industry. It is difficult to know exactly how many children are performing the grueling work that is required to plant, pick, process, and pack the food that people eat every day. For farmworkers, many of whom are immigrants, all of whom are poor and some of whom are undocumented, it is challenging to capture accurate data that reflects both the percentage of children working in one of the Nation’s most dangerous occupations, as well as the scope of the work that they are engaged in.

One thing that is notable is that unlike virtually every other job in the labor market, Congress has made exceptions to allow children to lawfully work in this industry. Historically, children have been permitted to work in agriculture at younger ages, for longer hours and under more hazardous conditions than other working children. Like most other agricultural workers, they remain excluded from basic protections provided to workers in other industries under Federal employment laws.

Even where protections exist under Federal law, they are seldom ever enforced. Allowing children to engage in agricultural work from a young age can result in long-term negative consequences, especially when the child worker is not employed on a family farm where family members take precautions for their children and family members. Working in agriculture as a child can result in an early end to childhood, and long hours worked at unfair and unlawful wages can pose risks to their overall health and lives.

Child farmworkers suffer work-related fatalities at over four times the rate of other young workers, often because exceptions are made that allow farmworker children to operate heavy, dangerous equipment and to be exposed to other hazards. Yet, great efforts have been taken to strictly limit the possibility of children in other industries from engaging in dangerous work activities or jobs. The demands imposed by doing agricultural work, coupled with the low pay and poor working conditions, result in shocking drop-out rates from school.

Aside from these risks, farmworker girls are exceptionally vulnerable to sexual abuse and harassment by supervisors, company owners, crew leaders, co-workers and others. While the focus of this Act is on improving the health and safety for all children engaged in agricultural labor, primarily through strengthened general wage and hour protections, the high rates of workplace sexual violence against farmworker women and girls should not be ignored, particularly given that they are susceptible to this violence due to the overall lack of workplace protections available to them.