Hundreds of thousands of child farmworkers are laboring under dangerous and grueling conditions in the United States, Human Rights Watch charged in this report. The international rights group found that child farmworkers often work twelve- and fourteen-hour days, and risk pesticide poisoning, heat illness, injuries and life-long disabilities. The vast majority of child farmworkers are Latino. The laws governing minors working in agriculture are much less stringent than those for other sectors of the economy, Human Rights Watch said, allowing children to work at younger ages, for longer hours, and under more hazardous conditions than children in other jobs. The 1938 federal law governing this type of labor specifically exempts farmworker youth from the minimum age and maximum hour requirements protecting other children. At the state level, eighteen states have no minimum age for farmwork, while in some other states the minimum age is as low as nine or ten. "Fingers to the Bone: United States Failure to Protect Child Farmworkers," focuses on children aged thirteen to sixteen. Some of these young workers told Human Rights Watch that they work as many as seventy or eighty hours a week. Often, their workdays begin before dawn. (2491) , 6/00, 112pp., $10.00 |