Even though farm injuries are on the decline the Labor Department wants to limit or prohibit youth from working on farms – because of age, equipment or crop. Many feel that this threatens their way of life and goes too far.
Proposed federal rules would limit kids’ work on farms
By Judy Keen
USA Today
GRAND RIDGE, Ill. – Tossing hay into cattle pens is the first chore Austin Walter remembers doing on his parents’ farm. When he was 9, he got his first lesson in operating a tractor — in first gear only, his dad, Darren, says, “so I could go catch him.”
Austin, who is now 14, tends heifers, makes sure the barbed-wire fence around the pasture is intact and helps clean equipment and care for calves on his grandfather and great-uncle’s bigger farm a couple of miles down the road.
“This is what I want to do,” says Austin, an A student and football player who has won many awards for showing livestock at fairs. “If you grow up in the farm atmosphere and you’re safely trained and you enjoy it, I think you should be allowed to.”
Proposed federal regulations could alter Austin’s plans to work part time for pay on his relatives’ farm. The Labor Department wants to update child-labor rules governing agricultural work for the first time in four decades.
See the new proposed regulations and read the complete article and more from USA Today – HERE
One Comment
“The proposed regulations would not apply to children working at farms owned by their parents….”
But for how long?
Once this legislation moves forward, it’s only a matter of time.