NC must do more to protect child workers

We need N.C. Labor Commissioner Cherie Berry to act. While national Labor Secretary Thomas Perez is tweeting about ending child labor around the world, reports from researchers and journalists are calling out North Carolina for something we have known for years: Our state is home to thousands of child farmworkers laboring in tobacco fields under hazardous conditions.

It is becoming more difficult to turn a blind eye to the photos and the facts. Yet in 2012 when public health and farmworker advocates met with Berry and urged her to do the job her agency is charged with – protecting workers – she refused to support efforts that would bring19th century labor laws up to speed with 21st century realities.

Despite an increasingly glaring spotlight on these realities, especially for child farmworkers, there continues to be no reaction from our labor department. Earlier this year, Human Rights Watch released a report based on disturbing interviews with child tobacco workers as young as 7 years old working in North Carolina and other Southern states. Nearly three-fourths reported getting sick at work with symptoms like nausea, headaches, skin conditions and respiratory illness; over half had seen pesticides being sprayed in the fields where they worked or in neighboring fields. Many of these pesticides are poisonous neurotoxins linked to long-term effects such as cancer, learning and cognitive problems, and reproductive health issues.

In September, the New York Times published a front-page story on child labor on North Carolina tobacco farms. Children described wearing plastic garbage bags to protect themselves from nicotine poisoning while working 12-hour shifts, working in hot and dry conditions with no water to drink and feeling dizzy, nauseous and vomiting while working.

Tobacco growers are starting to take notice. A recent Associated Press article cited a policy statement issued by the Tobacco Growers Association of North Carolina that says growers should not employ children under age 16 to work in tobacco fields and should “be cautious” about using workers ages 16 and 17. Current law allows children to begin working on farms at age 12, while the legal age in almost every other industry is 14. They can do “hazardous” agricultural work at age 16, while all other industries limit such work to adults 18 and older. The children who labor in our tobacco fields are far too young to legally buy cigarettes, yet our laws allow them to be poisoned by this harmful substance on the job daily.

A campaign organized by Farm Labor Organizing Committee is pressuring tobacco giant R.J. Reynolds to guarantee labor rights in its supply chain.

FLOC is a member of the Farmworker Advocacy Network, an active coalition organizing to pressure state officials to ensure safer and more dignified working and living conditions for farmworkers and their families, including child workers. Our messages include raising the minimum age to perform hazardous agricultural work from 16 to 18 years old, as it is for every other type of work. We owe these basic protections to the thousands of children in North Carolina whose hard work feeds us all.

Nadeen Bir of Durham is advocacy and organizing director for Student Action with Farmworkers.

This story was originally published October 30, 2014 at 5:56 PM with the headline "NC must do more to protect child workers."