Will My Children Be Allowed to Work on Our Farm?

Chris, 

Thank you for taking time to travel to Washington, D.C. and testifying!! Great post!

Thank you for reading it Jenny. 

I am not part of the farming community – I had no idea this was going on. You should bring this out into the public eye – I bet a lot of people would be as outraged as I am. That is absolutely ridiculous! 

I typed this up before I ran across your article. Sometimes we just have to scratch our heads and wonder what in the world they are thinking up there in Washington…. I agree 100% with your article. Keep up the good work. Thought I would go ahead and add my 2 cents.

I’m trying to work on a short video about how this new proposed farm child labor
law could/would affect our kids and their futures on the farm. I’m curious to
know how you all feel this would directly affect your families. Comments…

    My personal opinion is that these
kids are a different breed. They have been raised to respect their surroundings
and to make good choices.

    As a mother of 3 farm boys, I can
HONESTLY say that each child is different and just because my 14 year old has
been driving tractors since he was 9ish does not mean that I am going to put my
2nd child, a 10 year old, in the driver seat anytime soon. Not because I
wouldn’t love for him to be out there, but because he is certainly NOT READY
and quite honestly, may not be for a long time. It just doesn’t seem to be his
“thing” and if he doesn’t respect it, it’s not safe for him to be
there. I’m pretty sure the baby, 7 year old, will be helping before his
brother, but he has the same passion for farming as his oldest brother does.

    We don’t put our children in
harms way, nor would we danger the lives of others. I can honestly say that I
would rather meet my 14 year old driving a tractor down the road than someone
whom I had to hire, just because he was old enough to drive the dang thing. My
child knows first-hand from years of experience what works and what doesn’t
when handling that big equipment. Joe Blow from town may be able to drive a
straight line, but that’s not even the half of it.

   I also feel like this is the government
wanting our kids to sit on their butts till they are 18 and then b-and moan
about how our youth doesn’t do a dang thing. COME ON! They don’t even want them
to be within so many feet of an animal. I understand bad things happen, and it
is our biggest fear as parents, but lots bad things happen to so many more
children just walking the streets with NOTHING to do but get into trouble. Idle
hands are the devils handy work! Can I get an Amen? 

    And with the world population
growing at such an alarming rate, this next generation of farm kids are going
to have a big enough challenge trying to figure out how to produce enough food
and fiber to feed and clothe us all. I sat in on a meeting last night that
said, “In the next 40 years, we as farmers are going have to find a way to
increase our production by 70% in order to even make it work.

(70%!!!!)In the year 2050 we will have to raise as many crops in that one
year as we have in the history of Ag to date just to produce enough food to
feed everyone.” Can you imagine what that is going to in tale?

 These kids need a jump start. They
need to be learning, plant and animal disease, pest control, animal husbandry,
conservation, and good farming practices NOW, even if they are just 14 years old!
I’m sorry, but you can’t learn how to be a farmer from a school book. It’s a
hands on knowledge that you can only learn by doing. Text books only get you so
far, and we all know things don’t always go by the books. I’m not dissing Ag Ed
at all, (yahoo did a great job of that. Boo yahoo!) But they need to see it
work to understand it.

   I do understand that equipment is
MUCH bigger than it was 50 years ago, but I would also argue that it is WAY
safer than it was 50 years ago. We don’t NEED our kids to work on the farm, we
could still make it work without them, but we WANT our kids to work on the farm
to learn life lessons and get a good work ethic, to be contributing members of society.
We want to work side by side with our children because it brings joy to our hearts
to be able to share our goals, dreams, and drive with them as well as teaching
them a skills that benefits the whole world!

  Yes, sometimes we DO need them, but
we don’t expect them to do things they are not comfortable with, or confident
they can’t handle. Sometimes we need someone to drive seed to the field, or
work ground, or sit at the end of the field with a pallet of seed so we can
fill the planters, feed cows, water animals and move equipment around. It would
be a little bit of a pain in the butt to hire someone for 30mins of work to
move tractors on a Sunday. These kids are a very vital part of our operations,
and we value them.

   These kids don’t work hard because
they have to, they work hard because they want to! I’m sure there are some farmers
out there that maybe make their children do some questionable things, but let’s
face it, law or no law, those people will continue to do what they are doing regardless
of what anyone else says.

  That pretty much wraps up my
“can’t sleep rant” and I know it kinda jumps back and forth, and the
spelling and punctuation are pretty sad, but it is 4:30 in the morning!

  Honestly, I am curious to hear what
you have to say. This argument is pretty much one-sided, so I am looking
forward to hearing points from both sides of the fence. Just try to not get
super upset and post harsh things if you are giving an opinion from the other
side. I do value your opinion, as I hope that you can respectfully value mine.

Thanks for your time! Happy posting!

This article is full of lies. DOL proposed these rules with a “parental exemption” so that any child working on their parents’ farm would be exempt from coverage. Let me repeat, any child can do any job, no matter how dangerous, on their parents’ farm! Mrs. Chinn knows this but she can fool a lot of people who have not read the rule into believing her if she misstates the scope of the rule, which prohibits kids from engaging in hazardous work when they are working for wages. Among the other lies in this article: the rules would prohibit building fences or using flashlights or hoses. The argument that parents alone can protect children on farms ignores the fact that 100-plus kids a year die on farms. Mrs. Chinn’s testimony may help scuttle the DOL child safety rules. Fifty to 100 children will die in the next decade if that happens, and Mrs. Chinn, because of her testimony,  will share some of the blame for that.

–Reid Maki, Child Labor Coalition

Mr.
Maki,

With
all due respect, Mrs. Chinn’s testimony is very accurate, based upon what we
have seen in writing from the DOL. Yes, they are planning on releasing another
draft for comment, but none of us have seen that. If your comments above are
based on the proposed re-release, which the public has not seen, I would like
to know how you were able to do so.

Specifically,
to the issues you call into question, I would encourage you to re-read the
proposed rules again.

Perhaps
you are not familiar with rural relationships. Farmers and ranchers are one big
family, ignoring what the last names are. It is common practice to share
labor to get work done, especially when weather threatens and during the bustle
of harvest season and in the spring and fall when cattle need to be worked to
get out to pasture, up to the range or in for the winter. . I love my neighbor’s
children as my own and he mine. They are our lifeblood and future of our farms
and ranches. Their safety is first and foremost in all of our minds and hearts.

Our
children are just as valuable to us a grownup and often times, have greater
skills and abilities to offer on many tasks. In fact, their involvement
decreases the chances of injuries even occurring

Fencing: H.O. #6 prohibits youth under
age 16 from working in “occupations involving work in construction.”  The
proposed H.O. explicitly states that such restrictions “will be applied in the
same manner as in 29 CFR 570.33(n).” In addition, the Secretary of Labor
has declared that  ‘If a task is not specifically permitted, it is
prohibited.’”  Therefore, unless the Secretary specifically permits the
construction fences, it is prohibited. In other words, my son cannot help me,
his grandparents or our neighbors in the building or repair of fences, carrying
wire, hammering staples, etc. 

Batteries
and Hoses: H.O. #2 specifically prohibits occupations involving the
operation of power-driven equipment.  The proposal (page 54857 in the
Federal Register) states “Equipment operated by any source of energy, such as
wind, electricity, fossil fuels, batteries, animals, or water, would all be
considered ‘power-driven’….  Since a hose is under water pressure which is
defined in the rule as power-driven, the department has prohibited youth under
the age of 16 from being employed in occupations that require the use of hoses.
In other words, my son could not use our pressure washer to clean livestock
trailers, trucks, tractors and equipment, for me, his grandparents, our
neighbors or the fellow who we help with custom farming.

I
would also encourage you to take a look at a post that I wrote several weeks
ago on this very issue. http://commonsenseagriculture.com/2011/10/07/dol-department-opposed-to-labor-strikes-again/

 
Jeff Fowle
Farmer & Rancher
California

I have a cooperative program where students in FFA or 4-H clubs can come out to my farm and work in exchange for feed and housing of their animals or on a volunteer basis and as I understood the rules from DOL, the educational program exemption would be eliminated, too. That means my educational program would be illegal. It’s not just kids working for wages who would affected.

Many people have voiced a correct assessment of farm life
and why it is so important. City dwellers such as yourself should never be
involved in a law where you have no idea what you are talking about. I do not
need to repeat what we all know about children, responsibilities, common sense
and the problems associated with the lack of it.

Your only argument seems to be with tragic accidents that
happen in life. To put that in perspective perhaps you should investigate;

1.  
Children that drown every year in the family swimming
pool.

2.  
Children that get ran over in their own driveway

3.  
Children that are killed in car accidents

4.  
Children’s minds that are harmed by Video game
and television

5.  
Children who suffer the health problems of obesity
because of the lack of exercise   

I could go on and on but, I will take all the positive
aspects of farm/ranch life!

I would like to apologize to Mrs. Chinn if my earlier comments questioned her integrity. I’m sure she loves her children and seeks nothing more than their protection. I also used harsh language to describe what I perceive as inaccuracies and misleading arguments in her blog. I wish to question the content of the blog but not Mrs. Chinn’s integrity.

I do believe that the final rules implemented by DOL will expand the current parental exemption and be much more palatable to the farm community.  I also believe that DOL will make it clear that they will not ban flashlights and other non-hazardous equipment.  There may be some some inconvenience to farmers if these rules are implemented, but the trade-off is that the farm community will see more children survive to adulthood unscathed–more children who are able to take over the family farm. 

Currently, you have to be 18 to perform hazardous work in America–unless you work on a farm.  You have to be 14 and older to hold most jobs in American–unless you work in agriculture. Agriculture enjoys wide and pervasive exemptions to child labor and child safety laws. For this reason, the federal government has a responsibility to protect workers  15 and under who are employed on farms and performing dangerous tasks. There will still be a wide range of safe jobs for child employees to perform beginning at the age of 12. And as I noted previously, any child working on their parents’ farm can do any job at any age. So many of the fears expressed in Mrs. Chinn’s blog about her own children being prevented from performing work on her own farm are unfounded.It seems undeniable to me that DOL’s agricultural child safety rules will save lives and prevent many serious injuries.Reid Maki,Child Labor Coalition

AS IT TURNS OUT FARMS ARE PRETTY GOOD PLACES FOR “GROWING” PEOPLE TOO.
It teaches the value of a dollar and  a hard day’s work. It’s where parents are always nearby, and the problems of the world often seem far away. And though a farm may not always be a perfect place, very few others come as close!  (I took this saying out of a farm magizine years ago, and it says it all)…..I would not trade one moment of life on a farm   I loved raising my children on the farm!!!  Very many wonderful memories!

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