FJ on NY NPR: Farm Safety for Kids- The battle over proposed DOL regulation changes
NPR story featuring Virginia Ruiz, FJ Director of Occupational and Environmental Health, on farm safety issues for children working in agriculture. FJ supports the Department of Labor proposed updates to the hazardous orders that limit the types of dangerous jobs children employed in agriculture can undertake.
From North Country Public Radio:
Farmers and members of Congress are pushing back hard against a plan by the Obama administration's to impose new safety rules on farms that employ children.
Critics say the proposed regulations would limit the ability of farm families to employ their own kids and could threaten a traditional way of life in rural America.
But supporters of the new rules say far too many teenagers are suffering serious injuries or dying on farms.
And they say many of the teenagers who work on farms in the US are hourly workers, with no family ties to the farmers who hire them.
As Brian Mann reports, this is a political fight that could reshape the way Americans think about farms and farm work.