After farm groups complain, Obama administration drops plan to restrict child labor on farms

WASHINGTON — Under heavy pressure from farm groups, the Obama administration said Thursday it would drop an unpopular plan to prevent children from doing hazardous work on farms owned by anyone other than their parents.

The Labor Department said it is withdrawing proposed rules that would ban children younger than 16 from using most power-driven farm equipment, including tractors. The rules also would prevent those younger than 18 from working in feed lots, grain bins and stockyards.

While labor officials said their goal was to reduce the fatality rate for child farm workers, the proposal had become a popular political target for Republicans who called it an impractical, heavy-handed regulation that ignored the reality of small farms .

“It’s good the Labor Department rethought the ridiculous regulations it was going to stick on farmers and their families,” said Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa. “To even propose such regulations defies common sense, and shows a real lack of understanding as to how the family farm works. ”

The surprise move comes just two months after the Labor Department modified the rule in a bid to satisfy opponents. The agency made it clear it would exempt children who worked on farms owned or operated by their parents, even if the ownership was part of a complex partnership or corporate agreement.

That didn’t appease farm groups that complained it would upset traditions in which many children work on farms owned by uncles, grandparents and other relatives to reduce costs and learn how a farm operates. The Labor Department said Thursday it was responding to thousands of comments that expressed concern about the impact of the changes on small family-owned farms.

“The Obama administration is firmly committed to promoting family farmers and respecting the rural way of life, especially the role that parents and other family members play in passing those traditions down through the generations,” the agency said in a statement.

Instead, the agency said it would work with rural stakeholders, including the American Farm Bureau Federation, the National Farmers Union and 4-H to develop an educational program to reduce accidents to young workers.

Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., a grain farmer known to till his fields on weekends away from Washington, had come out strongly against the proposed rule. The Democrat continued to criticize the Obama administration rule even after it was tempered earlier this year, saying the Labor Department “clearly didn’t get the whole message” from Montana’s farmers and ranchers.

Tester, who is in a tough race for re-election, on Thursday praised the decision to withdraw the rule and said he would fight “any measure that threatens that heritage and our rural way of life.”

The move is sure to disappoint child safety groups who said the rules represent long-overdue protections for children working for hire in farm communities. Three-quarters of working children under 16 who died of work-related injuries in 2010 were in agriculture, according to the Child Labor Coalition.

Last month, the child advocacy group criticized GOP legislation that would have stopped the Labor Department from issuing the rules.

“They will save lives and preserve the health of farm children so they can grow up to be farmers,” said Reid Maki, the CLC coordinator. “The department should implement them as soon as possible.”

LandBeluga posted:

lol like any white kids are working those fields

Edited by TROT_CUMLOVER (April 27, 2012 22:05:23)

cleanhands posted:
family farm is definitely my favourite american fairytale

http://www.ers.usda.gov/statefacts/US.HTM#FC

girdles_gone_wild posted:
both sides of my family are or were farmers and had the whole family farm thing.
my great grandfather got malaria and it became my grandfather's duty to harvest that years sugar cane crop. My grandfather was 14 at the time. He eventually got malaria too and lost the crop. My family has tons of these types of stories and anytime there's a family get together, like christmas or whatever, they always reminisce about how shitty and awful their lives were... like retelling war stories or some shit. Some of them are actually pretty wild and funny, but whatever. Anyway, I guess my point is that anyone who tries to romanticize or hype of the "family farm" doesn't know what the fuck they're talking about and that life is actually fucking terrible.

i grew up on a family farm and it was pretty nice, but it probably helps a lot to be north of the 30th parallel

discipline posted:
it doesn't matter if you're working for your family, child labor should be illegal in the USA of all places, full stop

But where does one draw the line between chores and labour?

discipline posted:
it doesn't matter if you're working for your family, child labor should be illegal in the USA of all places, full stop

true but american farmers can't threaten to have their actual family deported if they start getting uppity about dying of dehydration

Groulxsmith posted:
well it's a bit callous to casually dismiss the family farm as a myth, just as it is to use it to justify exploitation of children for labor

as a non american im in a position where i can enjoy the myth itself divorced from its material origins, presumably just like the vast majority of americans but idk

tpaine posted:
heres how i coke.

coke'izza

babyfinland posted:
attention queermmunist latte liberal internet posters: "agriculture" is real

so are adult agricultural workers. i propose a new rule of thumb: if the machinery wasnt created the old fashioned way on the farm itself, neither should the labor force

babyfinland posted:
i buy a lot of food from family farms when i'm out here so uh

lol LISTEN ALL LATTE LIBERAL COMMUNISTS:: I SUPPORT RICH WHITE LANDOWNERS.