Death by Youth

Child labor creates quite a conundrum. In the poorest societies, there is a predominance of children working. This blog is about manual labor, not child sex trafficking, which is obviously horrendous, but I am tackling a different topic today. UNISEF (United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund) tells us that in the poorest nations, a quarter of children aged 5 thru 17 have to work. “Sub-Saharan Africa has the largest proportion of child labourers (29 per cent of children aged 5 to 17 years). In the Middle East and North Africa, fewer than 1 in 10 (7 per cent) of children in this age group are performing potentially harmful work compared to 11 per cent of children in Latin America and the Caribbean,” according to UNISEF’s website.

Sure, we can refuse to import products that might involve child labor, demand that factories overseas cease engaging children… and watch their families starve to death. When you are on the edge of starvation, the contributions to the family from even small children just might be the difference between life and death. Survival is one of the essential ingredients in most of the world’s child labor. So, when we tell companies to stop hiring children but do not replace the income lost to a desperate family, exactly how have we improved the lot of the displaced kids?

Further, to so many Americans, the notion of socially acceptable child labor is always “over there” in developing nations, not here in the good old U.S.A. Sorry fairness fans, it happens here all the time, and so much of it is legal, particularly when kids work in their parent’s family business. “Child labor exists in the United States in the 21st century. It’s legal and widespread, and it’s also, in some cases, dangerous… Children were killed on the job in construction, retail, transportation and even manufacturing and logging. But most of them, 52%, died working in agriculture.” Los Angeles Times, December 22^nd.

It’s almost an American tradition for farm kids, especially on family farms, to do “chores.” Milking the cows, baling hay, feeding the chickens and collecting the eggs and helping mom or dad do more complicated tasks. Increasingly, children too young to get drivers’ licenses are operating tractors, harvesters and other very powerful machinery, some of which is old and not completely properly functional. According to the United Farmworkers, there are somewhere between two and three million farmworkers in the United States, most (75%) of whom were born in Mexico. 53% of all farmworkers are undocumented (a number calculated before Trump’s immigrant purge), 25% U.S. citizens and 21% are legal residents.

As Donald Trump is pushing undocumented farmworkers out of the United States, given that most U.S. citizens seems to be unwilling to perform the most menial farm labor given to such workers, there is increased pressure for the farm-owners’ children to do more. But don’t “kid” yourself, U.S. children-citizens are all over our workforce.

The LA Times tells us that: “We can piece together a picture of the nation’s entire child workforce from several sources… Labor Department figures show the number of children working in the United States hit a post-recession high of 2.5 million in the summer of 2017, the most recent year for which numbers are available. We have the most data for children ages 15 to 17. They are covered by the Labor Department survey that provides data for statistics such as the unemployment rate.

“The figures probably undercount child labor in agriculture, as it leaves out large populations of household workers and workers younger than 15. Most children injured on farms were younger, below age 14. Two out of three of those injured were hurt while working on their family farm…

“The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Child Agricultural Injury Survey separately found about 524,000 children worked on farms in 2014. The survey found about 375,000 ‘working household children’ that same year. Two-thirds of them were 14 or younger, according to the GAO’s analysis.

“The law includes protections for child laborers, although oversight varies. Specific states may be more strict… But for the first time since 2012, 2016 marked a rise in Labor Department investigations of child labor and in the number of violations. Most violations were found in leisure and hospitality, a large sector that includes restaurants, recreation and the performing arts.

“The Labor Department allows children ages 16 and 17 to work, but it bars them from hazardous tasks such as mining coal, operating a lathe, roofing a house or handling radioactive materials… Children ages 14 and 15 can work for limited hours in less dangerous jobs such as office work, food service and pumping gasoline…

“A total of 452 children died as a result of workplace injuries from 2003 to 2016, according to the Government Accountability Office. Seventy-three of those who died were age 12 or younger… Children working in agriculture are killed at a far higher rate than their peers in other industries. Farmworkers make up less than a fifth of America’s child workforce — perhaps much less — yet they suffered more deaths in 2003 to 2016 than all other child workers combined.

“Young workers made up a small fraction of all those injured on the job. The government doesn’t have a comprehensive measure of the child workforce, but it tracks deaths carefully… Among workers ages 15 to 17, 52% of those employed in the summer of 2017 were female… About 87% of child workers who died from 2003 to 2016, of all ages, were male.”

The rules for American children legally in the workforce vary by industry: “The Labor Department allows children ages 16 and 17 to work, but it bars them from hazardous tasks such as mining coal, operating a lathe, roofing a house or handling radioactive materials… Children ages 14 and 15 can work for limited hours in less dangerous jobs such as office work, food service and pumping gasoline… Children ages 13 and younger are allowed in just a handful of exempt, regulated professions. Most notably, they can baby-sit, deliver newspapers and act in plays or movies… But there are few restrictions to working on a family farm.

“According to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, ‘youths of any age may work at any time in any job on a farm owned or operated by their parents.’ Keep this exemption in mind when reading the standards that follow… Children younger than 14 need a parent’s permission to work on a farm. They can’t work during school hours. Children younger than 12 can work only on farms so small that they’re not required to pay the minimum wage.

“Farmworkers ages 15 and younger can’t operate a combine harvester or most larger tractors, use dynamite or other explosives, or perform other hazardous tasks. There are exceptions for children who have been trained on certain tasks and machinery in a program such as 4-H.

“In 2012, the Obama administration backed off an attempt to protect children in more hazardous farm occupations. Critics claimed it ignored the realities of rural life and would prevent children from doing their chores. It exempted work on the child’s family farm.” LA Times. American traditions, those of hardworking, God-fearing folks who can take care of themselves and their own, are born in these rural roots. In terms of numbers, there are 2.1 million farms in the United States, and 99% of them are family-owned. Yet farming accounts for only about one percent of our gross domestic product. Our farms are among the most efficient and productive in the world.

As our country has shifted from a nation that was once 15% urban to one that is 85% urban, the conflict between progressive and conservative values has led to a level of polarization not seen since the Civil War. Our sympathy for child laborers, anywhere, is often a product of that rural/urban rift. We like cheap goods and are likely to turn away when we might discover that these were made with slave labor (see my recent Sew Bad! blog) or by children. Not all child labor is bad, and not all child labor is dangerous.

Rural values like to inculcate frugality, self-reliance, hard work, often religiously-driven, into young minds. Solid values. Urban values favor formal education and social integration. And so it goes. But to bring our nation together, to return to a world where the United States was a “giver” and welcoming nation, we need to understand our innate prejudices, our historical patterns and how the earth reconfigured in so many ways to make life harder for children.

              I’m Peter Dekom, and for Americans to reopen their hearts, they must first reopen their minds, starting with embracing kindness to children everywhere… including their own.