Should government's child labor plan be scrapped?

Kurt Winter (left), 13, and Phillip Winter, 16, get ready to deliver hay to a neighbor from their father's farm near Wichita, Kan. (Peggy Lowe/Harvest Public Media)

It took 18,000 public comments and the opposition of 98 lawmakers, but the U.S. Department of Labor has backed off on those controversial plans to limit kids under 16 from some farm work.

I’ve been covering this issue since last September, when I first asked folks from the Harvest Network what they thought of the plans. I spent time in Boone, Iowa, with Julie and Scott Wilber and I also got to meet up with the Winter family near Wichita, Kan.

This has been a big issue in farm country and I hear about it when I travel to conferences and shows. People wonder how they will run their farms if their kids can’t drive a tractor or work around animals. And they wonder how their kids will earn money if they can’t work on their neighbors’ farms and ranches.

So this month the department announced it will rewrite its plan, softening up its stance on the parental exemption from the rule. The proposal will now be rewritten to include a broader definition of the exemption, taking into account that kids work on the farms of extended family members – like uncles, aunts or grandparents – or that some family operations are now organized as legal corporations.

But Sen. Pat Roberts, the Kansas Republican who sits on the Agriculture Committee, is calling for the department to toss out the plan entirely. He mentioned it to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack during hearings on Capitol Hill last week, and he mentioned it in this interview with the folks over at Agri-Pulse. (This issue comes up at about 4:45.)

Roberts told Agri-Pulse that the proposal doesn’t pass “the common-sense test,” and that he worries that under the plan, his son or daughter couldn’t work on his neighbor’s ranch.

“Nobody cares more about the safety and the protection of our young people in the countryside than their parents and neighbors,” Roberts said. “They don’t need the Department of Labor rolling onto the farm saying ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’ No thank you.”

Another farm country lawmaker, U.S. Rep. Denny Rehberg, R-Montana, has created a website called “Keep Families Farming” for the many people who want to send comments to the Department of Labor.

Rehberg has also vowed to block the proposed rules, which angered Justin Feldman of Public Citizen, a congressional watchdog group. Feldman issued this statement, saying Rehberg's key donors are agribusinesses, which have also lobbied Congress to kill the rules.

"Rehberg’s proposal would protect the interests of agribusiness instead of the lives of children," Feldman said. "It should be roundly rejected."

What do you think? Should the government, as Roberts suggests, dump this plan? Or does the proposal go far enough? Should the government do more to protect kids in some of the most dangerous jobs?

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