Feds to reconsider rules for child labor on farms

WASHINGTON — The federal Labor Department Wednesday backed away from a proposal that could have kept some youths younger than 16 from working on the family farm, saying it will take more time to consider changes to the so-called “parental exemption” on farm child labor.

Farm groups and the chairwoman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., hailed the move, which resulted in part from pressure brought by lawmakers, farmers and agricultural organizations. But some, including New York Farm Bureau, warned that other parts of the regulation that were not held up could discourage youths from farm work.

With the final regulations in limbo, the Labor Department said the parental exemption will apply to children whose parents are partial owners in a farm, partners in a farm ownership or officers in a corporation that owns a farm, so long as the ownership interest is “substantial.”

The parental exemption, created by Congress in 1966, allows children younger than 16 to perform any job on a farm owned or operated by a parent or someone standing in as a parent. That basic principle was never threatened, but children might have been barred from working on farms with more complicated joint ownership — an arrangement that has become more common as farms have grown in recent decades.

Farm groups also said they worried that children would be barred from working on farms owned by their grandparents or other extended relatives, a situation the Labor Department said it would consider. Those jobs could include operating machinery or working around breeding cattle, the National Milk Producers Federation said.

Other sections bar youths from jobs that might inflict pain on an animal, which farm groups say could be as routine as picking a horse’s hooves or leading a cow around a barn.

A new set of proposed regulations will be published this summer, the department said, giving the public more time to submit comments.

The rules, proposed last September, followed reports that children are much more likely to be killed in farm accidents than in all other types of work combined. But farm groups, including the NMPF, questioned that and other assertions, suggesting the department’s data was incomplete or not entirely reliable. The Milk Producers Federation represents farmers’ bargaining cooperatives.

The Labor Department has said hundreds of thousands of people younger than 18 work on farms, but acknowledged that accurate data is not available and that the number of children affected by the proposal is “quite small.”

Mrs. Stabenow, who wrote to Labor Secretary Hilda Solis in October to complain about the proposal, has warned that such restrictions on child labor could undermine not only traditional work on farms but youth programs such as 4-H. Other lawmakers, including Rep. William L. Owens, D-Plattsburgh, and other members of the upstate New York delegation complained to the department as well.

In a statement Wednesday, Ms. Stabenow said, “Of course there should be safeguards to protect children from dangerous situations, but there needs to be an understanding that many children in rural communities learn about safety by helping their family on the farm.”

The American Farm Bureau Federation praised the move but said the proposed regulations as they stand should be further rolled back.

“Farm work has always played a significant role in the lives of rural youth across the country, whether they are milking cows on their grandparents’ farm or harvesting apples as a summer job,” said AFBF President Robert Stallman. “DOL’s rule would have a detrimental effect on family farms and would create an even tighter supply of farm labor when it’s already in short supply.”