So Apparently It's Legal for Seven-Year-Olds (!) to Work On Tobacco Farms

[xchrom]

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2014/05/14/tobacco_farm_minors_children_as_young_as_seven_report_health_consequences.html



The Wire highlights a concerning study released by Human Rights Watch about the effects of nicotine, pesticides, and other health hazards on 7-to-17-year-old American tobacco farm workers, many of whom suffer from symptoms including—wait, hang on, there are seven-year-olds in the United States working on tobacco farms? Apparently so:

According to the report, children 12 and over can work on a tobacco farm of any size, for unlimited hours, as long as they are granted parental permission and don't work instead of going to school. Children under 12 can work on small, family farms. Agriculture is the only industry that allows children of this age to work.

The Department of Labor proposed changing this rule in 2011, but backed down after farmers objected. Three-quarters of the 141 underage laborers interviewed for the HRW report said they had experienced symptoms including "nausea, vomiting, loss of appetite, headaches, dizziness, skin rashes, difficulty breathing, and irritation to their eyes and mouths" while working with tobacco.

http://www.hrw.org/reports/2014/05/13/tobacco-s-hidden-children

[JDPriestly]

1. Can they become addicted while working on the farms?

[xchrom]

2. i'm no expert -- my first thought is i wouldn't think so.

but i don't know.

[Sancho]

3. I picked tobacco when I was 12-13 in rural Georgia....

I grew up in the South. My grandfather owned a farm with tenet help living in old houses and trailers. My grandfather grew tobacco, onions, soybeans, etc., but his big "cash crop" of the 50's and 60's was 150 acres of tobacco.

When I turned 12, I picked tobacco leaves, tied them on drying sticks to hang, and worked along side the undocumented help (this was the 60's). It was hot, sticky, and dirty work, but paid better than cutting grass or babysitting and I was too young to work in a traditional job. The big cigarette companies would buy the tobacco at a local auction.

I was paid well for the times. Probably about a dollar an hour or a little more. We rode in the back of trucks or trailers. Lunch was free (usually ham, lots of vegetables, biscuits, country food). I just did it because it was my grandfather's farm and I wanted spending money. I was really never dependent like the migrant and tenet farmers. I felt sorry for the really poor migrants. Many of them didn't go to school and they ate the free lunch like they were starving. Most didn't have a car or way to get to the grocery store anyway. Picking tobacco was one of the better jobs for the migrants - and preferred over picking cotton.

It was a long time ago, but I remember being very grateful that it was just a summer job for me and not something I was forced into. My depression era grandfather thought he was a good person to offer any kind of job to anyone and he saw himself as barely one step more successful than the migrants and tenets. He made it out of rural GA by getting a job with the railroad who trained him as an electrician. When he retired, he bought the farm.

I was lucky. My father used the GI bill after WWII to go to college and medical school, but I learned early on that picking crops was pretty miserable.

[giftedgirl77]

4. Did you feel any ill effects from it?

Not to include the effects of the heat?

[Sancho]

6. Not really, but I'm sure we were exposed to pesticides.

There was spraying all over the farm.

Who knows? Maybe I lost some brain cells. I don't think anyone ever thought about cancer or exposure to chemicals.

In fact, most adults smoked and I don't remember warnings about smoking until the 70's.

[A Little Weird]

5. I worked in tobacco on the family farm from a young age (not sure how old)

I suspect that some of the laws allow kids to work so young because it was such a common thing on family farms. I remember there was a big outcry around 6th or 7th grade when the school said they would no longer turn a blind eye to parents pulling kids out of school for farm work. I don't know if the law changed then or if it was just ignored up until then. Now there are rules about how many hours kids can work on school days and stuff like that. But I think it is absurd to allow anyone to hire an outside laborer that is so young.

On the family farm, I was working alongside my parents and grandparents. They were looking out for me and didn't want anything bad to happen to me. There were some jobs I was not allowed to do because they were dangerous. On a big, commercial farm, I'm sure the focus is not on the well-being of the child but on how much they are getting done and how fast they are working.

The family farm (at least for tobacco) has pretty much gone the way of the dodo bird. The laws should be changed to reflect the way agriculture is done now. I don't think anyone younger than 14 should be able to work on a commercial farm (and even then they should have restrictions on the number of hours they can work). Family farms should have to abide by the same rules as commercial farms for kids who are not part of the family.

[ChisolmTrailDem]

7. I spend the early summers of my life working my grand-aunt and uncle's tobacco

farm in N. Carolina. Never felt a bit different doing it nor did any of us suffer health hazzards. Another uncle who lived on the tobacco farm did die eventually from lung cancer from smoking his own product since he was old enough to work the fields.

[TBF]

8. Farm work has always been like this -

and the migrant workers have been doing it for decades.

[Sunlei]

9. all the families who live in the rental 'homes' around those huge farms are expected to ALL work.

The little one are paid as 'half a hand' or a 'quarter hand', or they can just dump their work into mom or dads pile.

If Big Ag could keep those little workers from going to school they would, we'd be back in the days of not long ago in America.

In fact the way republicans today try to block the children of 'undocumented people' from an education. We may today have children who are not in school from fears of undocumented parents getting 'caught'.