Another era when it comes to child labor on farms

NYT story on how Labor Dept. is cracking down on farms that employ children and pay them less than the minimum wage.

Story caught my eye because I spent a few years as a child (above 12 but below 18) working on a local farm for what was then less than the minimum wage (I got paid $3/hr and thought that was pretty good in the late 1970s).  A 1938 US law allows kids 12 and over to work on farms with almost no limitations or rules, but Labor is changing that landscape because nowadays, it's most migrant kids doing the labor.

The Obama administration has opened a broad campaign of enforcement against farmers who employ children and underpay workers, hiring hundreds of investigators and raising fines for labor and wage violators.

A flurry of fines and mounting public pressure on blueberry farmers is only the opening salvo, Labor Secretary Hilda L. Solis said in an interview. Ms. Solis, the daughter of an immigrant farm worker, said she was making enforcement of farm-labor rules a priority. At the same time, Congress is considering whether to rewrite the law that still allows 12-year-olds to work on farms during the summer with almost no limits.

The blueberry crop has been drawing workers to eastern North Carolina for decades, but as the harvest got under way in late May, growers stung by bad publicity and federal fines were scrambling to clean up their act, even going beyond the current law to keep all children off the fields. The growers were also ensuring that the workers, mainly Hispanic immigrants, would make at least the minimum wage of $7.25 an hour.

“I picked blueberries last year, and my 4-year-old brother tried to, but he got stuck in the mud,” said Miguel, a 12-year-old child of migrants. “The inspectors fined the farmers, and this year no kids are allowed.”

Child and rights advocates said they were encouraged by these signs of federal resolve, but they were also waiting to see how wide and lasting the changes would be. Across the country, hundreds of thousands of children under 18 toil each year, harvesting crops from apples to onions, according to a recent report by Human Rights Watch detailing hazards to their health and schooling and criticizing the Labor Department for past inaction.

Most definitely a different era, but hard to argue against improving the lot of low-tech, low-education workers in this country, because impoverishing them serves nobody's needs.

I remember my farm labor with a certain romanticism, although I don't know any grown-up former farm kids who do, because they worked the longest hours and didn't really get paid.  Plus, there was no quitting the family farm until adulthood got them an out, which most took, happy enough if they left with all their fingers in tact.