Luján Reintroduces Legislation to Improve Child Protections and Safety Standards for Agriculture Industry

Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.), a member of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry, reintroduced the Children’s Act for Responsible Employment in Agriculture (CARE) Act to ensure child protections and safety standards for children in the agricultural workforce. Agriculture is the only industry with labor laws that allow children as young as 12 to work with virtually no restrictions on the number of hours they work outside of school. Across the United States, there are hundreds of thousands of children who are working in the agricultural industry and performing the grueling work required to plant, pick, process, and pack food that Americans eat every day. The CARE Act takes steps to improve child worker safety by adjusting the age and work hour standards for children in agriculture to the standards for children working in all other industries. Among its other provisions, the bill would also increase the civil and criminal monetary penalties for child labor violations and provide children with greater protection against pesticide exposure. The CARE Act’s child labor protections would not apply to the children of farmers working on their parents’ farm. “Children have their whole futures ahead of them, and our country must do more to protect those working in the agriculture industry,” said Senator Luján . “Across the country, thousands of children work under hazardous conditions in the agriculture sector, putting their health and education at risk. That’s why I’m reintroducing the CARE Act to raise the standard and bring our agricultural labor laws in line with other industries to better protect children and improve their working conditions.” The Children’s Act for Responsible Employment in Agriculture (CARE) Act: Amends the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) by bringing the age and work hour standards for children working in agriculture up to the standards set under FLSA for all other forms of child labor; Protects family farm and 4-H, educational, and vocational training exemptions so that children would continue to be able to work for educational programs to expose and encourage them to pursue agricultural careers; Protects and expands the family farm exception to ensure children can continue to work on their family farms; Increases maximum civil monetary penalties for child labor violations from $11,000 to $151,380, adjusted annually to CPI, and for violations that result in death or serious injury from $50,000 to $690,000, adjusted annually to CPI; Increases maximum criminal penalties for child labor violations to $750,000, adjusted annually to CPI, or five years imprisonment; Repeals the wavier provisions for hand harvest laborers and pesticide-related worker protection standard to better protect children from pesticide and chemical exposure; Expands FLSA protections against child labor to independent contractors; and mandates annual reports to Congress on child labor and work-related injuries to children, requires employers to report the ages of workers injured or killed on the job as a part of existing fatality and injury reporting requirements, and mandates a memorandum of understanding between the Assistant Secretary of Labor for Occupational Safety and Health and the Administrator of the Wage and Hour Division of the Department of Labor to ensure better data sharing between agencies and states. This legislation is endorsed by the Child Labor Coalition. Full text of the bill can be found here . ###