Shelley J. Sparks
November 30, 2011
Introduction to Business

Child Labor Law Changes Proposed For Farms
The U.S. Department of Labor wants to revise the child labor rules on the employment of minors in the agricultural field. They are proposing recommendations that will bring the minors of working in agricultural and nonagricultural fields closer together. Some of the recommendations have been made by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health and by findings of their own actions.
The recommendations that have been proposed should only impact the hired hands and not the farmer’s children. They are recommending that if the 14- and 15-year-olds complete a specified training program, they will be permitted to do certain tasks that they would have been unable to perform otherwise. In making some of these changes they are hoping to bring parity between the current rules for agricultural workers and nonagricultural workers. They want to update all the general rules, since the child labor rules were issued over 40 years ago.
By some of these new rules, hired workers under the age of 16 will not be able to work with certain animals, working in feed lots or stockyards, grain bins and elevators, handling pesticides, working around manure pits and/or storage bins. Also, they will not be allowed to work in cultivation, harvest and curing of tobacco and from using electronic devices while operating power-driven equipment. The Department of Labor, also, wants to make child hired workers take a class to be able to drive any agricultural tractors.

With all the new recommendations, who is going to want to work on a farm? Most kids that work on the farm enjoy the outdoors, working with the animals and driving tractors. On the farmers, point of view, who is going to want to hire kids that are hardly going to be able to do anything? Yes, they are wanting to make the kids take courses, but at whose expense? Will the farmers want to go out the expense to hire someone that may only work for a short period? The kids aren’t, most likely, going to be able to afford to pay for courses and are they going to want to sit in a school area just to take a course for the summer? These new recommendations are going to hurt a lot of people. I would definitely not recommend this law. I grew up on a farm and date a farmer now and that is how farms survive is the hiring high school boys. Our government is getting too involved in some things and is taking away some values that shouldn’t be taken away. There is nothing wrong with kids working on a farm. They learn how hard working on a farm is and how important it is. All jobs can be dangerous, if not done properly. A child should be able to work at the job he or she likes. I know a lot of kids that work for farmers and this law will kill them. My son has worked on a farm since he was 13 and that has made him the great person he is today. He has learned valuable information and gotten a lot of knowledge on farming and where some of our food comes from.
What’s really sad is that with this new proposed law, grandchildren can’t even work on their grandparent’s farm. That’s sad because most farming grandparents love having their grandchildren help them. With the new law the grandkids won’t be able to work and they can’t even help out if someone is hurt and in the hospital. Family is supposed to help each other out and our wonderful government is taking that away from family values.
Farm Progress. (2011, October 24). Retrieved November 30, 2011, from http://farmprocess.com