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44–562 PDF 2008

CHILD LABOR ENFORCEMENT: ARE WE

ADEQUATELY PROTECTING OUR CHILDREN?

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON WORKFORCE PROTECTIONS 

COMMITTEE ON 

EDUCATION AND LABOR

U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION

HEARING HELD IN WASHINGTON, DC, SEPTEMBER 23, 2008

Serial No. 110–111

Printed for the use of the Committee on Education and Labor

(

Available on the Internet: 

http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/house/education/index.html 

(II)

COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION AND LABOR 

GEORGE MILLER, California, Chairman

Dale E. Kildee, Michigan, Vice Chairman 

Donald M. Payne, New Jersey 

Robert E. Andrews, New Jersey 

Robert C. ‘‘Bobby’’ Scott, Virginia 

Lynn C. Woolsey, California 

Rube ́n Hinojosa, Texas 

Carolyn McCarthy, New York 

John F. Tierney, Massachusetts 

Dennis J. Kucinich, Ohio 

David Wu, Oregon 

Rush D. Holt, New Jersey 

Susan A. Davis, California 

Danny K. Davis, Illinois 

Rau ́l M. Grijalva, Arizona 

Timothy H. Bishop, New York 

Linda T. Sa ́nchez, California 

John P. Sarbanes, Maryland 

Joe Sestak, Pennsylvania 

David Loebsack, Iowa 

Mazie Hirono, Hawaii 

Jason Altmire, Pennsylvania 

John A. Yarmuth, Kentucky 

Phil Hare, Illinois 

Yvette D. Clarke, New York 

Joe Courtney, Connecticut 

Carol Shea-Porter, New Hampshire 

Howard P. ‘‘Buck’’ McKeon, California, 

Senior Republican Member 

Thomas E. Petri, Wisconsin 

Peter Hoekstra, Michigan 

Michael N. Castle, Delaware 

Mark E. Souder, Indiana 

Vernon J. Ehlers, Michigan 

Judy Biggert, Illinois 

Todd Russell Platts, Pennsylvania 

Ric Keller, Florida 

Joe Wilson, South Carolina 

John Kline, Minnesota 

Cathy McMorris Rodgers, Washington 

Kenny Marchant, Texas 

Tom Price, Georgia 

Luis G. Fortun ̃ o, Puerto Rico 

Charles W. Boustany, Jr., Louisiana 

Virginia Foxx, North Carolina 

John R. ‘‘Randy’’ Kuhl, Jr., New York 

Rob Bishop, Utah 

David Davis, Tennessee 

Timothy Walberg, Michigan 

[Vacancy]

Mark Zuckerman, Staff Director 

Sally Stroup, Republican Staff Director 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON WORKFORCE PROTECTIONS 

LYNN C. WOOLSEY, California, Chairwoman

Donald M. Payne, New Jersey 

Timothy H. Bishop, New York 

Carol Shea-Porter, New Hampshire 

Phil Hare, Illinois 

Joe Wilson, South Carolina, 

Ranking Minority Member 

Tom Price, Georgia 

John Kline, Minnesota 

(III)

C O N T E N T S 

Page

Hearing held on September 23, 2008 ..................................................................... 1

Statement of Members: 

Roybal-Allard, Hon. Lucille, a Representative in Congress from the State 

of California, prepared statement of ........................................................... 33

Wilson, Hon. Joe, ranking minority member, Subcommittee on Workforce 

Protections ..................................................................................................... 4

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 5

Woolsey, Hon. Lynn C., Chairwoman, Subcommittee on Workforce Protections ................................................................................................................ 1

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 3

Statement of Witnesses: 

Flores, Norma, former child worker ................................................................ 21

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 23

Greenberg, Sally, executive director, National Comsumers League ............ 16

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 18

Additional submissions: 

‘‘Protecting Working Children in the United States,’’ June 2005 .. 21

‘‘The Government’s Striking Decline in Child Labor Enforcement 

Activities,’’ September 2006 ........................................................... 21

Passantino, Alexander J., Acting Administrator, Wage and Hour Division, 

U.S. Department of Labor ............................................................................ 6

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 8

Strauss, David A., executive director, Association of Farmworker Opportunity Programs ............................................................................................ 24

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 26

Additional submission: 

‘‘Children in the Fields,’’ May 2007 .................................................. 27

(1)

CHILD LABOR ENFORCEMENT: ARE WE 

ADEQUATELY PROTECTING OUR CHILDREN? 

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

U.S. House of Representatives 

Subcommittee on Workforce Protections 

Committee on Education and Labor 

Washington, DC

The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 11:05 a.m., in Room 

2175, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Lynn Woolsey [chairwoman of the subcommittee] presiding. 

Present: Representatives Woolsey, Bishop, Shea-Porter, Hare, 

Wilson, and Kline. 

Staff Present: Aaron Albright, Press Secretary; Tylease Alli, 

Hearing Clerk; Tico Almeida, Labor Policy Advisor; Jody Calemine, 

Labor Policy Deputy Director; Lynn Dondis, Senior Policy Advisor, 

Subcommittee on Workforce Protections; David Hartzler, Systems 

Administrator; Brian Kennedy, General Counsel; Sara Lonardo, 

Junior Legislative Associate, Labor; Joe Novotny, Chief Clerk; Robert Borden, Minority General Counsel; Cameron Coursen, Minority 

Assistant Communications Director; Rob Gregg, Minority Senior 

Legislative Assistant; Jim Paretti, Minority Workforce Policy Counsel; Chris Perry, Minority Legislative Assistant; Molly McLaughlin 

Salmi, Minority Deputy Director of Workforce Policy; Linda Stevens, Minority Chief Clerk/ Assistant to the General Counsel; and 

Loren Sweatt, Minority Professional Staff Member. 

Chairwoman WOOLSEY. A quorum is present. The hearing of the 

Subcommittee on Workforce Protections will come to order. 

I will present my opening statement, and then Ranking Member 

Wilson will present his. 

Good morning. I want to welcome all of you today for the hearing 

on, ‘‘Child Labor Enforcement: Are We Adequately Protecting our 

Children?’’

What a question that we have to ask in the United States of 

America. 

While we will primarily examine the current state of enforcement 

of our Federal child labor laws by the Department of Labor, I am 

hoping that our witnesses will also address how the Fair Labor 

Standard Act treats children who work in agriculture differently 

than those who work in other industries. The fact is that children 

who work on a farm are allowed to work at a younger age, for 

longer hours, and in more hazardous conditions than kids who 

work at a grocery store. This is unacceptable. This difference is a 

2

throwback, a throwback to another era, when one-quarter of Americans lived on family farms, and a majority of agriculture work was 

performed by family members, and children did their part, believe 

me. So while times have changed, and less than 2 percent of Americans live on farms today, our laws have not. 

As a result of technical advances in the growth of large-scale agriculture, most children working in the fields are hired as laborers 

on large commercial farms. This is not the family farm, and we 

must be aware of that, and we must deal with it to protect kids 

in a better way. 

Representative Roybal-Allard, Lucille Roybal-Allard, from California, has legislation called the CARE Act, and her legislation 

would correct this imbalance by raising protections for child farm 

workers to the same level of children working in other industries. 

I am proud to be a cosponsor of this legislation, and we are going 

to give it serious attention in the next Congress. 

Representative Bruce Braley has just introduced a bill to increase criminal sanctions on employers who exploit children. 

Last year, I introduced a bipartisan bill, with DOL cooperation, 

called the Child Care Protection Act, which increases penalties and 

establishes a civil penalty for a violation which causes the death 

or serious injury of a child laborer. My good friend, Ranking Member Wilson, is an original cosponsor of that bill. 

The provisions of the bill were signed into law this year as part 

of the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act. Well, this is 

progress. It is moving it along. However, as I said when the child 

labor penalty bill was passed, this is a first good step, but additional enforcement measures are needed to adequately protect our 

kids. 

Unfortunately, all the legislation in the world won’t help if we 

are not able to adequately enforce our child labor laws. It is clear 

that this administration doesn’t seem to be focused on enforcing 

the laws already on the books. 

Let me give you an example. The Wage and Hour Division has 

730, 730 inspectors, for the entire United States of America. That 

is down from 945 in 2001. These inspectors are charged with enforcing every aspect of FLSA which, in addition to child labor, includes minimum wage and overtime protections. It appears from 

the numbers that the Wage and Hour Division spends very little 

time investigating child labor complaints, as opposed to other violations. In 2005, for example, the division devoted less than 5 percent 

of its total investigatory time on child labor matters, and only a 

small fraction of this time was devoted to investigating agriculture 

issues. 

In fiscal year 2007, the DOL uncovered 4,672 children who were 

working in violation of Federal child safety laws. We know that 

that was just the tip of the iceberg. Four years earlier, DOL found 

double that number. I find it almost impossible to believe that child 

labor violations have decreased by half over the same time period. 

There are serious violations of child labor laws that need DOL 

attention. For example, on September 9th, the State of Iowa filed 

over 9,000 counts of State child labor law violations at 

Agriprocessors, a meatpacking plant in Pottsville, Iowa. You are 

probably all familiar with Agriprocessors in Iowa. It was the site 

3

of one of the largest workplace immigration raids in U.S. history 

just recently. 

The State alleges that 32 children, seven of whom were under 

the age of 16, were employed at the plant, in violation of the prohibition against children working in meatpacking facilities. In addition, these children were exposed to dangerous chemicals, and children under 16 were found to be illegally operating power machinery, working during prohibited hours, and in excess of the hours allowed by law. 

These allegations also appear to be violations of Federal law. But 

while the Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE, was out in 

droves, DOL has been missing in action. So it is hard to claim adequate enforcement with that kind of a record. 

I am looking forward to hearing Mr. Passantino today, and other 

witnesses, on this issue. Actually, I am really looking forward to all 

of you. 

With that, I defer to Ranking Member Joe Wilson for his opening 

statement. 

[The statement of Ms. Woolsey follows:]

Prepared Statement of Hon. Lynn C. Woolsey, Chairwoman,

Subcommittee on Workforce Protections 

I want to welcome you all today for a hearing on ‘‘Child Labor Enforcement: Are 

We Adequately Protecting Our Children?’’

While we will primarily examine the current state of enforcement of our federal 

child labor laws by the Department of Labor, I hope that our witnesses will also 

address how the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) treats children who work in agriculture differently than those who work in other industries. 

The fact is that children who work on a farm are allowed to work at a younger 

age, for longer hours and in more hazardous conditions than kids who work at a 

grocery store. 

This is unacceptable. 

This difference is a throwback to another era when one-quarter of Americans still 

lived on family farms and a majority of the agricultural work performed by children 

was done on behalf of their family. 

While times have changed and less than 2% of Americans live on farms today, 

our laws have not. 

As a result of technical advances and the growth of large-scale agriculture, most 

children working in the fields are hired as laborers on large commercial farms. This 

is a far cry from the family farm. 

Representative Roybal-Allard’s CARE Act, would correct this imbalance by raising 

protections for child farmworkers to the same level of children working in other industries. 

I am proud to be a cosponsor of this legislation, which we will give serious attention to next year. 

Representative Bruce Braley has just introduced a bill to increase criminal sanctions on employers who exploit children. 

Last year I introduced a bi-partisan bill, the Child Care Protection Act, which increases penalties and establishes a ($50,000) civil penalty for a violation which 

causes the death or serious injury of a child laborer. 

And my good friend, Ranking Member Wilson is an original co-sponsor of the bill. 

The provisions of the bill were signed into law this year as part of the Genetic 

Information Non-Discrimination Act. 

This is progress. 

However, as I said when the child labor penalty bill was passed, this is a first 

good step, but additional enforcement measures are needed to adequately protect 

our children. 

Unfortunately, all the legislation in the world won’t help if we are not able to adequately enforce our child labor laws. 

And it is clear that this Administration does not appear to be focused on enforcing 

the laws already on the books. 

Let me give you a few examples: 

4

The Wage and Hour Division has 730 inspectors for the entire country, down from 

945 in 2001. 

These inspectors are charged with enforcing all aspects of the FLSA, which in addition to child labor, include minimum wage and overtime protections. 

And it appears from the numbers that the Wage and Hour Division spends little 

time investigating child labor complaints as opposed to other violations. 

In 2005, for example, the Division devoted less than 5 percent of its total investigatory time on child labor matters. 

And only a small fraction of this time is devoted to investigations in the agricultural sector. 

In FY2007, the DOL uncovered 4,672 children who were working in violation of 

federal child safety laws. 

Four years earlier, DOL found double that number. 

I find it hard to believe that child labor violations have decreased by half over 

that time period. 

There are serious violations of child labor laws that need DOL’s attention. 

For example, on September 9, the State of Iowa filed over 9,000 counts of state 

child labor law violations at Agriprocessors, a meatpacking plant in Postville, Iowa. 

You are all undoubtedly familiar with Agriprocessors, which was the site of the 

one of the largest workplace immigration raids in U.S. history. 

The State alleges that 32 children, seven of whom were under the age of 16, were 

employed at the plant in violation of the prohibition against children working in 

meatpacking facilities. 

In addition, these children were exposed to dangerous chemicals, and children 

under 16 were found to be illegally operating power machinery, working during prohibited hours, and in excess of the hours allowed by law. 

These allegations also appear to be violations of federal law, but while the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was out in droves, DOL has been missing 

in action. 

It is hard to claim adequate enforcement with that kind of a record, but I look 

forward to hearing from Mr. Passantino and our other witness on this issue. 

With that, I defer to the ranking member, Joe Wilson, for his opening statement. 

Mr. WILSON. Thank you for yielding, Madam Chair, and I join 

you in welcoming our witnesses here today. 

Every year, millions of teens work in part-time or summer jobs 

that can provide valuable work experiences and opportunities for 

teens to learn important work skills. I know firsthand by distributing newspapers and working in a service station. That work is 

not completely without risk, however, and unfortunately, each year 

there are young workers who are either injured or killed on the job. 

But even one injury is too many. 

The Department of Labor has an important role in helping to ensure that young workers have safe and appropriate work experiences. While the employment of young workers is essential to helping instill a solid work ethic and in teaching the value of a dollar, 

their collective safety must be the highest priority. 

I look forward to hearing from the Department today about their 

enforcement initiatives and compliance efforts which help to educate teens, parents, and employers about the hours of work and 

types of jobs that young people can perform. 

Youth employment has been an ongoing focus for the Department, and I commend the administration for its work in this area. 

Last year, the Department submitted a legislative proposal to Congress to strengthen the Department’s ability to impose significant 

civil penalties for child labor violations that result in the death or 

of serious injury of a child, particularly where the violation is repeated or willful. 

I thank the Chairwoman for her important work on that proposal 

which she introduced in the House. I was pleased to join a senior 

5

Republican member of the full committee, Mr. Buck McKeon of 

California, as an original cosponsor of her bill, the provisions of 

which were enacted into law in May of this year. That has provided 

the Department with an additional tool to address serious child 

labor violations, decrease repeat occurrences, and to strengthen the 

overall enforcement of critical child labor laws. 

I look forward to hearing the testimony from all of our witnesses 

here today, and I thank the chairwoman for holding this hearing. 

I yield back the balance of my time. 

[The statement of Mr. Wilson follows:]

Prepared Statement of Hon. Joe Wilson, Ranking Minority Member, 

Subcommittee on Workforce Protections 

Thank you for yielding Madam Chair, and I join you in welcoming our witnesses 

here today. 

Every year, millions of teens work in part-time or summer jobs that can provide 

valuable work experiences and opportunities for teens to learn important work 

skills. That work is not completely without risk, however, and unfortunately each 

year there are young workers who are either injured or killed on the job. 

Because even one injury is too many, the Department of Labor has an important 

role in helping to ensure that young workers have safe and appropriate work experiences. While the employment of young workers is essential to helping instill a solid 

work ethic and in teaching the value of a dollar, their collective safety must be the 

highest priority. 

I look forward to hearing from the Department today about their enforcement initiatives and compliance efforts, which help to educate teens, parents, and employers 

about the hours of work and types of jobs that young people can perform. Youth 

employment has been an ongoing focus for the Department and I commend the Administration for its work in this area. 

Last year, the Department submitted a legislative proposal to Congress to 

strengthen the Department’s ability to impose significant civil penalties for child 

labor violations that result in the death of or serious injury of a child, particularly 

where the violation is repeated or willful. I thank the Chairwoman for her important work on that proposal, which she introduced in the House. I was pleased to 

join the Senior Republican Member of the Full Committee, Mr. McKeon, as an original cosponsor of her bill, the provisions of which were enacted into law in May of 

this year. This has provided the Department with an additional tool to address serious child labor violations, decrease repeat occurrences, and to strengthen the overall 

enforcement of critical child labor laws. 

I look forward to hearing the testimony from all of our witnesses here today, and 

I thank the Chairwoman for holding this hearing. I yield back the balance of my 

time. 

Chairwoman WOOLSEY. Thank you, Mr. Wilson. 

Now I have the honor on of introducing our witnesses. I will introduce them in the order that they will present. 

Let me talk first a little bit about the lighting system. We have 

a five-minute rule here. So when you start speaking, the green 

light goes on in front of you. When it gets to yellow, you have a 

minute left. And when it is red, the floor opens and your chair disappears. No, it doesn’t. But it means it is time for you to tie it up. 

If you have more to say add that in to your responses when we ask 

questions. 

We only get five minutes also. So if we sit up here and give you 

a speech and don’t ask our question, we have lost our five-minute 

time. 

First, I would like to introduce Alex Passantino, who is the acting wage and hour administrator for the Department of Labor. Alex 

has been with DOL since November, 2005. He previously served as 

the senior policy advisor to the assistant secretary for the EmployVerDate 0ct 09 2002 08:35 Dec 02, 2008 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00009 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 G:\DOCS\110TH\WP\110-111\44562.TXT HBUD1 PsN: DICK
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ment Standards Administration and as the deputy administrator 

for wage and hour. 

Mr. Passantino received his BA from Emery University and his 

JD from the University of Georgia School of Law. 

Sally Greenberg is executive director of the National Consumers 

League and co-chair of the Child Labor Coalition. She previously 

worked at Consumers Union, the nonprofit organization that is perhaps best known for publishing Consumer Reports. Prior to that, 

Ms. Greenberg worked at the Justice Department’s Foreign Claims 

Settlement Commission. She earned her BA from Antioch College 

and her JD from the Catholic University School of Law. 

Norma Flores grew up as a migrant child farm worker, traveling 

over 3,000 miles every year. She began to work full time in the 

fields at 12 years old, working 70 hours a week. Because of this, 

Ms. Flores started school late, had to leave before the school year 

was over, and switched schools often. 

With the help of migrant programs, she was able to graduate 

from high school. She went on to college and received her BA from 

the University of Texas Pan American. 

David Strauss is executive director of the Association of Farm 

Worker Opportunity Programs. He is on the steering committee of 

the Child Labor Coalition and the National Farm Worker Alliance 

and is a member of the Board of Directors of the East Coast Migrant Head Start Project. 

Mr. Strauss has a masters of arts in Public Administration and 

a BA in political science. 

All right. Mr. Passantino. 

STATEMENT OF ALEXANDER J. PASSANTINO, ACTING WAGE 

AND HOUR ADMINISTRATOR, DEPARTMENT OF LABOR 

Mr. PASSANTINO. Chairwoman Woolsey, Ranking Member Wilson, and distinguished members of the subcommittee. Thank you 

for the opportunity to discuss the Wage and Hour Division efforts 

to promote compliance with the Fair Labor Standard Act’s child 

labor provisions. As is detailed in my written testimony, the Wage 

and Hour Division staff’s dedication to ensuring that the Nation’s 

youth work safely and legally is second to none. 

Increasing compliance with the child labor provisions of the 

FLSA is a cornerstone of the agency’s annual performance plan. 

Every onsite investigation, complaint, or directive, has a child labor 

component. Every low-wage initiative requires that investigators 

examine child labor compliance, regardless of whether the case is 

designated as a child labor case. Indeed, last year, 47 percent of 

the cases in which we found child labor violations were not set up 

as child labor cases. 

Child labor complaints are given the highest priority within the 

agency, and every Wage and Hour investigator is trained to look 

for child labor violations. 

We employ a number of tools to fulfill our mission of ensuring 

compliance. We conduct investigations in industries in which young 

workers are likely to be injured or killed on the job. We provide 

compliance assistance to raise awareness of child labor requirements, and we participate in partnerships with numerous Federal 

and State agencies. 

7

Our local offices undertake targeted child labor investigations in 

grocery stores, shopping malls, theaters, restaurants. We conduct 

low-wage initiatives in other industries, such as construction and 

agriculture. Each of those investigations requires the district offices 

to examine an employer’s compliance with the FLSA child labor 

provisions. 

As a result of our enforcement efforts, Wage and Hour has levied 

fines against employers found in violation of the law. These fines 

are proportionate to the severity of the violations and exceeded 

$5,300 a case in the last fiscal year. In addition, we have secured 

future corporate-wide compliance and cooperative public awareness 

campaigns by many of the investigated employers. 

With over 7 million covered worksites in the United States, our 

efforts cannot be limited to enforcement. Rather, voluntary compliance with the child labor laws must be encouraged and supported. 

We have an active and effective compliance assistance program. 

Our managers and investigators speak regularly to employer-employee community and advocacy groups. We address student groups 

and work directly with school and work-permitting officials to educate issuing authorities on how to screen potential violations before 

the work actually begins. 

The centerpiece of our public awareness efforts is the 

YouthRules! Campaign. Since its inception in 2002, our Web site 

has received over 3 million views, and our PSAs have reached 27 

million radio listeners in 39 States, and generated 252 newspaper 

articles with a readership of approximately 15 million. We have 

had YouthRules! rallies in Philadelphia, New Jersey, Houston, and 

San Antonio. 

These efforts continue a longstanding Wage and Hour tradition 

of promoting safe and positive work experiences by educating 

teens, employers, educators and the public about the rules concerning young workers. Our goal is to increase compliance and prevent violations from occurring in the first instance, thereby safeguarding the lives and future of young workers. 

We employ the same tools to ensure compliance with the youth 

employment rules in agriculture. The nature of agricultural employment, its short duration, the remote locations, and the mobility 

of the work, pose particular enforcement challenges. As you all 

know, the standards for youth employment in agriculture have historically differed from nonagricultural employment. 

Wage and Hour is committed to providing the safe employment 

of youth in the agriculture industry. Our investigators who conduct 

investigations in agriculture are instructed to examine compliance 

with the provisions of all applicable statutes providing protections, 

including the child labor provisions. 

We have developed compliance assistance materials emphasizing 

occupational safety and health, disseminated public service announcements, and collaborated with other entities to educate parents and teens of age-appropriate task standards. 

Ensuring that young workers in this country have safe and appropriate early work experience has been, and continues to be, a 

high priority for Wage and Hour. As you mentioned, we were proud 

to have included in the President’s budget for several years the 

Child Labor Penalty Enhancement, and we thank you for your supVerDate 0ct 09 2002 08:35 Dec 02, 2008 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00011 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 G:\DOCS\110TH\WP\110-111\44562.TXT HBUD1 PsN: DICK
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port. The President signed that bill into law increasing the CMPs 

for serious injury or death to $50,000. 

We also continue to address youth employment through regulation and plan to send to OMB shortly a final rule updating the 

Youth Employment Provisions for the 21st century. 

Ensuring compliance in the Youth Employment Provisions is an 

integral part of every investigation. We believe that we have demonstrated success in these efforts but, as in every program, we look 

for opportunities to improve. Last year, we began working with an 

independent evaluator to assess our strategies and their effectiveness in increasing compliance with the FLSA child labor provisions. 

That study is ongoing, and we look forward to any recommended 

opportunities for improvement that may come. 

Although our measures of compliance are encouraging, the declines in workplace injuries and fatalities are the most significant 

indicators of improved working conditions for young workers in this 

country. According to NIOSH-provided statistics, in 2008, 38 youth 

under the age of 18 died from work-related injuries, a significant 

drop from the average of 61 youth who were killed on the job during the years 1998 to 2002. Injuries to young workers have also declined in recent years. 

These injury and fatality results demonstrate significant 

progress in addressing child labor violations. The actions and activities of many parties have contributed to these declining statistics, but many minors continued to be injured while working, and 

even one death of a working teen is one too many. 

The challenge of protecting the welfare of young workers is a 

shared responsibility. It rests with Federal and State officials, parents, educators, community-based and advocacy organizations, employers, and the young workers themselves. Wage and Hour remains committed to this challenge and will continue to promote 

legal employment opportunities for young men and women that are 

safe, positive, and do not distract from or interfere with their education. 

Thank you again for this opportunity to discuss this important 

issue. This concludes my prepared statement. I will be glad to answer any questions the committee may have. 

[The statement of Mr. Passantino follows:]

Prepared Statement of Alexander J. Passantino, Acting Administrator of 

the Wage and Hour Division, U.S. Department of Labor 

Chairwoman Woolsey, Ranking Member Wilson, and distinguished members of 

the Subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to discuss the efforts taken by the 

Department of Labor’s (Department) Wage and Hour Division (WHD) to promote 

compliance with the Fair Labor Standard Act’s (FLSA) child labor provisions. Let 

me begin by saying that WHD is committed to full and fair enforcement of all the 

laws under WHD’s jurisdiction, but WHD staff’s dedication to ensuring that youth 

in this country work safely and legally is second to none. As I will highlight, our 

accomplishments in strengthening child labor laws, raising public awareness of child 

labor requirements, and targeting industries in which young workers are likely to 

be injured or killed on the job have contributed to safer workplaces for young workers. 

Like all regulatory enforcement agencies, WHD employs a variety of tools and activities to enforce the law and achieve compliance. The agency’s mission is to promote and achieve compliance—not just to identify violations after they occur, but 

particularly in instances in which the health and safety of workers are concerned, 

to prevent violations in the first instance. The agency’s child labor activities and iniVerDate 0ct 09 2002 08:35 Dec 02, 2008 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00012 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 G:\DOCS\110TH\WP\110-111\44562.TXT HBUD1 PsN: DICK
9

tiatives are far too numerous to list individually, so I will point out our key efforts 

and accomplishments over the past several years. 

WHD Enforcement Priorities In Improving Child Labor Compliance 

WHD has prioritized its statutory enforcement responsibilities to maximize protections for the greatest number of workers, including those most vulnerable in the 

workforce—low-wage workers, immigrants, and young workers. The absence of a 

private right of action to address oppressive child labor underscores the importance 

of this agency’s role in safeguarding young workers. For this reason, increasing compliance with the child labor provisions of the FLSA is a cornerstone of the agency’s 

annual performance plan. Every on-site investigation—complaint or directed—has a 

child labor component. Every low wage initiative—targeted for child labor compliance or targeted for other compliance reasons—requires that investigators examine 

child labor compliance. Child labor complaints, although not numerous, are given 

the highest priority within the agency. Every WHD investigator is trained early in 

his or her career to look for child labor violations. With each national child labor 

initiative, investigators gain both a renewed focus and specialized training. 

Each year, WHD regional and local offices plan and undertake child labor compliance initiatives in a variety of industries and businesses, such as grocery stores, 

shopping malls, theaters, and restaurants. These industries are among those in 

which the agency has historically found high levels of non-compliance with the child 

labor Hazardous Occupations Orders (HOs) and in which large numbers of young 

workers are traditionally employed. The agency’s low-wage initiatives in other industries, such as construction and agriculture, also require district offices to examine an employer’s compliance with the FLSA child labor provisions in conjunction 

with a minimum wage or overtime investigation or concomitant with the labor 

standards statutes that apply to agricultural workers. 

In recent fiscal years, WHD regional and district offices have developed child 

labor compliance initiatives in industries or establishments that had a history of 

child labor HO violations or that have a high likelihood that a young employee 

might suffer a work-related injury or fatality. In fiscal year 2006, for example, WHD 

offices nationwide investigated discount department store operations to determine 

the level of compliance with the child labor provisions, in particular to determine 

their compliance with HOs that regulate paper balers, forklifts, and teen driving. 

In fiscal year 2007, district and regional offices continued their emphasis on reducing injuries and deaths to young workers by stressing compliance with the HOs. 

This year, the agency placed a particular emphasis on increasing compliance with 

HO No. 12, which regulates the loading and operating paper balers and compactors—a common and particularly hazardous piece of equipment found in many retail 

establishments and increasingly used in nursing homes, schools, and restaurants. 

The focus on HO No. 12 compliance will continue in fiscal year 2009 as offices develop their child labor initiatives for the upcoming fiscal year. 

Several key statistics support the agency’s continued emphasis on child labor enforcement. First, the number of enforcement hours charged to child labor compliance 

has averaged 57,900 over the last seven years (from fiscal year 2001 through fiscal 

year 2007). This is not significantly different than the 58,080 average child labor 

enforcement hours recorded during the preceding seven years (from fiscal year 1994 

through fiscal year 2000). 

Second, as noted above, WHD investigators examine child labor compliance in all 

on-site investigations. In the last three years, approximately 47 percent of the investigations in which a child labor violation was identified occurred in an on-site investigation initiated under another statute or program area enforced by WHD—primarily in investigations initiated to determine FLSA minimum wage and overtime 

compliance. 

Third, the percentage of child labor cases in which a child labor violation is found 

has increased steadily over the last three years. Thirty-seven percent of child labor 

investigations in fiscal year 2005 found child labor violations. By the end of fiscal 

year 2007, the percentage had increased to 40 percent, which suggests improvements in targeting establishments and industries with likely child labor violations. 

Fourth, WHD civil money penalty assessments per investigation have increased 

from $4,558 assessed per case in fiscal year 2003 to $5,303 assessed per case in fiscal year 2007. The agency has not hesitated to levy fines against employers found 

in violation of the child labor laws—proportionate to the severity of the violations. 

Although we have been successful in collecting civil money penalties, as established 

in the examples below, the more significant and long-term results have been demonstrated in our ability to secure future corporate-wide compliance and cooperative 

public awareness campaigns by many of the investigated companies. Recent investigations include the following examples: 

10

• In August 2008, American Multi-Cinema, Inc., (AMC Theatres), headquartered in Kansas City, Missouri, paid $141,570 in child labor civil money penalties to resolve violations found in AMC theaters in several states. As part of the resolution, 

AMC Theaters produced a child labor public service announcement (PSA) on hazards associated with compactors and balers. The PSA is being shown in theatres nationwide as part of the company’s First Look pre-feature entertainment program, 

and the expected audience is 8 million theater-goers. • In January 2008, the Department obtained a permanent injunction in U.S. district court against Paragon Contractors Corp., a Hildale, Utah, contractor, for repeated violations of federal youth employment laws. The most recent investigation 

uncovered a 16-year-old working in roofing operations in violation of HO No. 16. The 

assessed civil money penalty of $5,280 was paid by the company. • In December 2007, Connecticut-based CVS Pharmacy Inc. agreed to pay $226,598 in child labor civil money penalties after a 2007 investigation of CVS 

stores in New England and the Mid-Atlantic states found 78 minors illegally loading, unloading, or operating cardboard compactors and seven minors employed in 

violation of the FLSA time standards. CVS Pharmacy Inc. also agreed to ensure 

compliance with the FLSA at its more than 6,000 stores nationwide. • In July 2007, Pretzel King LLC, doing business as an Auntie Anne’s franchisee 

in San Bernardino, Downey, Arcadia, Glendale, Northridge and Bakersfield, California, paid $51,500 in civil monetary penalties for allowing eleven 14- and 15-yearolds to work beyond the hours permitted by law and nine youths to be involved in 

prohibited baking activities. The stores also allowed 60 minors to operate freight 

elevators, dough mixers, and trash compactors, which are prohibited hazardous occupations for anyone under 18 years of age. • In 2007, Jim Barnes Enterprises Inc., a McDonald’s franchisee, paid $86,500 in 

penalties after WHD determined that the firm allowed minors to perform hazardous 

duties, e.g., operating a trash compactor and frying, at a Mobile, Alabama, restaurant. In addition, a Piggly Wiggly franchisee, SCVS Inc., paid $30,000 in penalties after an investigation found 20 minors operating paper balers at two stores. 

These violations were uncovered as part of the WHD’s Gulf Coast District Office 

local child labor initiative to increase compliance in grocery stores and restaurants. • In the summer of 2007, Caesars Utah LLC, doing business as Little Caesars Pizza in Sandy, Utah, paid a $110,800 civil monetary penalty for allowing minors 

to operate dough mixers and bake, among other activities in violation of the child 

labor provisions. The company also agreed to educate the public at large by creating 

a statewide public service campaign called Stop, Look and Listen. • In April 2006, Target Corporation paid $92,400 in civil money penalties for exposing young workers to hazardous machinery in violation of the FLSA child labor 

provisions. Twenty-nine minors in seven New York/New Jersey-area stores were 

found to have operated either power-driven hoisting apparatus or power-driven 

scrap paper balers, or in some cases, both. The company provided WHD with an outline of the steps it planned to take to ensure full compliance with all child labor 

regulations in the future. 

WHD believes its continued emphasis on child labor compliance has resulted in 

fewer child labor violations. The total number of investigations in which child labor 

violations were found is lower today than the total number in 2001, and the trend 

appears to be continuing. The number of minors found illegally employed last fiscal 

year (4,672) is nearly half of the number found illegally employed in fiscal year 2001 

(8,818). The average number of minors found illegally employed per investigation 

has also declined from 4.2 in fiscal year 2001 to 3.7 in fiscal year 2007. More importantly, the number of minors found employed in violation of a hazardous occupations order in fiscal year 2007 (1,000) was a reduction of more than half the number 

found working in a hazardous situation in fiscal year 2001 (2,040). While these statistics can be attributed in part to the overall drop in the number of teens in the 

workplace, these declining trends should also be taken as an encouraging sign that 

fewer young workers are employed in violation of the law. 

Children who work in agriculture are among the most vulnerable of the country’s 

workers. The nature of agricultural employment, i.e., its short duration, the remote 

locations, and mobility of the work, pose particular enforcement challenges. Agricultural work is difficult and dangerous. For youth, the hazards are significant. The 

fatality rate for young workers in agriculture is nearly six times the rate in other 

industries. Nearly 60 percent of the youth fatalities in agriculture during 1998—

2002 occurred to youths who worked on the family farms. The deaths of young family farm workers accounted for nearly a quarter of all of the young worker deaths 

that occurred in all industries during the same period. 

The standards for youth employment in agriculture have historically differed from 

nonagricultural employment. Under the FLSA, the child of a farmer can do any job, 

11

at any age, at any time, on a farm owned or operated by the parent of that child. 

The minimum age for employment is lower than for nonagricultural work. There is 

no minimum age for employment on small farms that the Act exempts from minimum wage requirements. The agricultural HOs prohibit only those youth under the 

age of 16, who are not working on his or her own family farm, from performing 

those tasks that the Secretary has found to be particularly hazardous for youth, as 

opposed to nonagricultural HOs, which apply to youth under the age of 18. Because 

youth are permitted to work in agriculture at a younger age, WHD is committed 

to promoting their safe employment in the industry. WHD investigators who conduct investigations in the agricultural industry are instructed to examine compliance with the provisions of all applicable statutes providing protections for agricultural workers, particularly wages, housing, and transportation, field worker safety 

and child labor provisions. WHD investigated four occupational fatalities that occurred in fiscal years 2007 and 2008 involving teens under the age of 16 working 

in agriculture. Of those four cases, WHD found that only one involved a violation 

of the FLSA child labor provisions. The employer was assessed $11,962 in civil 

money penalties—the maximum allowable penalty at the time. In the remaining 

three instances, there was no employment relationship. 

Even in situations in which young workers are not subject to the FLSA child labor 

provisions, WHD has looked to methods other than enforcement to help young farm 

workers on family farms enjoy safe and positive work experiences. As I will discuss 

later, WHD has developed compliance assistance materials emphasizing occupational safety and health, disseminated public service announcements, and collaborated with other entities to educate parents and teens of ‘‘age-appropriate’’ task 

standards that parents can use to measure the capabilities of their children in performing agricultural work. 

Compliance Assistance And Public Awareness Campaigns Affect Compliance 

Compliance assistance activities, which include providing clear and easy-to-access 

information on how to comply with federal employment laws, are key strategies in 

promoting voluntary compliance and should not be discounted. Parents, educators, 

employers, and young workers who are aware of the federal and state child labor 

requirements can make more informed decisions on when and where young people 

should work. Compliance assistance and educational activities are communicated in 

many ways, whether through speeches and presentations given to school groups or 

by PSAs. WHD uses every available means to provide compliance information to the 

public. WHD staff speak regularly to employer, employee, community, and advocacy 

groups. Local offices distribute self-audit materials and compliance guides to help 

employers evaluate their employment practices against the child labor laws. WHD 

investigators and managers work directly with school and work-permit officials to 

educate issuing authorities on how to screen potential violations before the work actually begins. With over 7 million covered worksites in the U.S., voluntary compliance with the child labor laws must be encouraged and supported. 

In May 2002, the Department launched the YouthRules! public awareness campaign, which quickly became the centerpiece of WHD’s child labor compliance and 

public awareness efforts. The YouthRules! initiative is designed to increase public 

awareness of both federal and state rules concerning young workers; since its implementation, the initiative has provided an easily recognizable vehicle by which the 

public can obtain compliance materials. The web page, www.youthrules.dol.gov, provides a gateway to child labor compliance information on the internet. The site gets 

approximately 500,000 views a year in part because some 75 partners, associations, 

and governmental entities have linked or agreed to link their web site to the 

YouthRules! site. Most recently, Major League Baseball established an internet link 

from its web site to the agency’s YouthRules! page. 

As part of this public awareness effort, WHD published and distributed a 

YouthRules! bookmarks and a YouthRules! Employer Pocket Guide in both English 

and Spanish. Similar publications were developed to educate employers and the 

public about the rules for youth employment in agriculture. Each year, WHD augments these printed and on-line YouthRules! materials with new fact sheets, guides, 

and other aides for compliance. WHD developed and posted self-assessment tools for 

restaurants, grocery stores, and other non-agricultural industries to help employers 

assess their compliance with the child labor laws. WHD designed posters with bold 

attention-getting colors and graphics to attract young readers. Agency field personnel developed a child labor compliance PowerPoint presentation geared towards 

a teenaged audience. The YouthRules! web site contains stickers that employers 

may place on dangerous equipment to warn teens and others that young workers 

are not permitted to operate certain equipment, such as forklifts and paper balers. 

12

Wage and Hour regularly updates this website to inform the public of new developments, such as the publication of new regulations. 

The Department also developed and disseminated a YouthRules! PSA in fiscal 

year 2004. That first year, over 6,000 radio stations received a taped PSA, and 

10,000 newspapers received a YouthRules! news article, including ethnic media and 

newspapers. That year, the radio PSA played over 340 times on 197 radio stations 

with an audience of 27 million listeners in 39 states. The print article generated 

252 newspaper articles in 20 states with a readership of approximately 15 million. 

In fiscal years 2005 and 2006, WHD’s summer public awareness campaign focused 

on youth employed in construction, because of increasing numbers of young workers—primarily Hispanic—employed in that industry. As part of the campaign, WHD 

launched a new electronic seminar, ‘‘Youth Working in Construction,’’ which is 

available on CD-ROM and on the YouthRules! web site. The seminar discusses the 

requirements for youth working in construction and concentrates on identifying the 

prohibited occupations in construction. A radio PSA and print article were issued 

to highlight the new seminar. 

WHD’s first YouthRules! rally was held in 2003. The event, at a Philadelphia 

mall, was highly successful, so WHD expanded the concept in 2004 to include additional rallies in Houston and New Jersey. The rallies are now annual events in 

Houston and San Antonio. Participation in the events numbers in the thousands. 

In the last fiscal year, WHD updated the child labor PSAs and distributed them 

to more than 1,900 radio stations, including all 600 Spanish radio stations in the 

U.S. and Puerto Rico. The new PSAs focused on youth in agriculture—the industry 

with the highest youth fatality rate. WHD continued public dissemination of the 

PSAs as part of this year’s annual YouthRules! campaign. 

These diverse public awareness and compliance assistance activities continue a 

longstanding WHD tradition of promoting positive and safe work experiences by 

educating parents, teens, employers, educators, and the public at large about the 

federal and state rules concerning young workers. The goal, as stated earlier, is to 

increase compliance and prevent violations from occurring in the first instance and 

through those efforts, safeguard the lives and futures of young workers. 

Partnerships Promote Child Labor Compliance 

Strategic partnerships provide opportunities and avenues to encourage compliance 

in communities and among employers. Business associations, unions, state governments, federal agencies, community groups, academia, and others have collaborated 

with WHD to promote public awareness and undertake compliance assistance activities. The added support of our partners enhances the scope and effect of both enforcement and compliance assistance. WHD’s national partnership activities include 

(but are certainly not limited to) collaboration with the following organizations. 

Federal Network for Young Worker Safety and Health (FedNet) 

The Department is a founding member of FedNet, a partnership of 14 federal 

agencies that share ideas, resources, and opportunities to keep young workers safe. 

This program strives to: 

• Increase awareness of young worker occupational safety and health among key 

community players and young workers as they enter the workforce; 

• Foster education, training, and outreach to promote young worker safety and 

health; 

• Enhance federal initiatives that create relationships with small businesses, 

trade associations, and other organizations that employ young workers; and 

• Promote resources that enhance employer compliance and knowledge of federal 

and state regulations related to young workers. 

FedNet accomplishments include safe summer job kick-offs, brochures, and safety 

tips. The collaboration available through FedNet enhances opportunities for WHD 

to disseminate materials and information. 

National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) 

WHD has a longstanding partnership with NIOSH in the areas of improving 

workplace safety for young workers and in the collection and interpretation of injury 

and fatality data, especially as it related to rulemaking efforts. In 1998, WHD provided funding to NIOSH to conduct a comprehensive review of scientific literature 

and available data in order to assess current workplace hazards and the adequacy 

of the current child labor HOs. The report, entitled(NIOSH report), was issued in 

July 2002. The NIOSH report, which makes 35 recommendations concerning the existing non-agricultural HOs and recommends the creation of 17 new HOs, was the 

impetus for the Department’s April 2007 Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM). 

13

National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) Recommendations to the U.S. Department of Labor for Changes to Hazardous Orders 

In addition, WHD and OSHA have, for many years, been active members of the 

NIOSH-sponsored Federal Interagency Work Group on Preventing Childhood Agricultural Injury. This group, whose membership includes representatives of the U.S. 

Department of Agriculture (USDA), works to reduce young farm-worker deaths and 

injuries. 

Finally, WHD works with NIOSH and OSHA in a ‘‘rapid response’’ young worker 

fatality notification system that keeps all three agencies advised of youth workplace 

deaths. 

Young Workers Health and Safety Network (YWN) 

WHD has also worked for many years with the YWN, a subcommittee of the Occupational Health and Safety Section of the American Public Health Association, to 

promote compliance with the child labor provisions and to reduce occupational injuries to and workplace deaths of minors. The YWN—which describes itself as an informal network of public health professionals, advocates, and government agency 

staff—includes individuals from academia, public health, labor law enforcement, 

health and safety consultation and enforcement, and labor organizations. 

Interstate Labor Standards Association (ILSA) 

WHD has an active collaborative relationship with ILSA, an organization of state 

labor department officials. As part of this ongoing coordination, WHD officials at the 

national, regional, and local organizations levels communicate with State labor departments on various child labor activities. 

U. S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) 

Given the higher fatality rates among young workers in the agricultural industry, 

WHD works with USDA on many issues. WHD’s most recent collaboration with 

USDA involves the reinvention and streamlining of the tractor certification program. Under the child labor agricultural HOs, 14- and 15-year-olds may operate certain otherwise prohibited farm equipment after being properly trained and certified 

in the safe operation of the equipment. In most cases, agricultural extension service 

agents or agricultural vocational school instructors perform the training, testing, 

and certification based on requirements established by regulation. These requirements have become outdated, many of the training materials are no longer in print, 

and because of funding reallocations, not all states now provide the training or certification. The interagency agricultural HO Steering Committee has overseen the 

identification of the required skill sets, the development of a modern curriculum 

with multiple methods of delivery, the engineering of an electronic system that will 

register teachers, administer examinations, issue certificates, and monitor the operation of the entire process. WHD continues to work with USDA to ensure the completion of this important project. 

National Children’s Center for Rural and Agricultural Health and Safety 

(NCCRAHS) 

NCCRAHS, based in Marshfield, Wisconsin, strives to enhance the health and 

safety of all children exposed to hazards associated with agricultural work and rural 

environments. NCCRAHS receives funding from NIOSH. WHD staff have served on 

the NCCRAHS steering committee and have helped develop and disseminate the 

North American Guidelines for Children’s Agricultural Tasks (NAGCAT). NAGCAT 

is a collection of guidelines designed to assist parents and others in assigning ageappropriate tasks for children ages 7 to 16 that live or work on farms and ranches 

across North America. The guidelines are based on an understanding of childhood 

growth and development, agricultural practices, principles of childhood injury, and 

agricultural and occupational safety. Voluntary use of the guidelines can help parents and others make informed decisions about appropriate tasks for youth. 

Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) 

WHD works with EEOC to ensure that young workers experience a workplace 

free from discrimination and sexual harassment. WHD and EEOC jointly provide 

compliance assistance to employers of workers with disabilities—many of whom are 

under the age of 18. 

Regulatory And Legislative Initiatives Have Strengthened Child Labor Laws 

Because of changes in the workplace, the introduction of new processes and technologies, the emergence of new types of businesses in which young workers may find 

employment opportunities, the existence of differing federal and state standards, 

and divergent views on how best to balance scholastic requirements and work expeVerDate 0ct 09 2002 08:35 Dec 02, 2008 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00017 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 G:\DOCS\110TH\WP\110-111\44562.TXT HBUD1 PsN: DICK
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riences, the Department has for many years been conducting an ongoing review of 

the criteria for permissible child labor employment. Some of the most significant accomplishments towards protecting working young men and women in this country 

are reflected in the recent revisions to the child labor regulations. 

On December 16, 2004, the Department published a final rule that amended the 

child labor regulations to implement statutory amendments to two existing HOs: the 

Compactors and Balers Safety Standards Modernization Act, affecting paper balers 

and compactors (HO No. 12); and the Teen Drive for Employment Act, affecting 

teenagers whose jobs may include driving on public roads (HO 2). The regulations 

also updated the types of cooking activities allowed for 14- and 15-year-olds; revised 

the ‘‘roofing’’ HO to ban all work on or about roofs by youths under age 18; updated 

the definition of ‘‘explosives’’ in HO 1; and reduced paperwork in processing age certificates. 

As previously noted, the NIOSH report made recommendations concerning the existing non-agricultural HOs and recommended the creation of 17 new HOs. Upon 

receiving the NIOSH report, WHD conducted a detailed review and met with various stakeholders to evaluate and prioritize each recommendation for possible regulatory action consistent with the established national policy of balancing the benefits 

of employment opportunities for youth with the necessary and appropriate safety 

protections. The 2004 final rule addressed six of the NIOSH recommendations. 

In April 2007, the Department published an NPRM and an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPRM) as part of its continuing efforts to update the youth 

employment regulations for the 21st Century. The current proposals would represent the most significant revisions to the child labor regulations in 30 years. The 

proposals would strengthen youth employment regulations to protect against workplace hazards, expand youth workplace opportunities that have been judged safe 

and permissible, update regulations to better reflect the modern workplace, and address many of the remaining recommendations from the NIOSH report. WHD is in 

the process of drafting a final rule based on the comments it received in response 

to the NPRM, and anticipates transmitting that rule to the Office of Management 

and Budget shortly. WHD continues to review the comments received in response 

to the ANPRM, and the remaining NIOSH recommendations, for potential future 

rulemaking. 

For the last several years, the President’s budget has included a legislative proposal to increase the amount of civil money penalties that could be assessed for 

child labor violations that cause the serious injury or death of a young worker. On 

May 21 of this year, President Bush signed into law the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008 (GINA). Among other things, GINA amends the FLSA 

by increasing the civil money penalties that may be imposed for child labor violations resulting in death or serious injury. The legislation raised the maximum penalty to $50,000 for each violation resulting in the death of or serious injury to working youth. In cases where the employer’s violation is repeated or willful, the maximum penalty was raised to $100,000. This new authority provides WHD with an 

important tool in securing compliance with the child labor provisions. 

Improvements In Child Labor Compliance—A Continuing Priority For WHD 

As we have demonstrated, ensuring that young workers in this country have safe 

and appropriate early work experiences has been and continues to be a high priority 

for this agency. It is an integral part of every investigation, and WHD personnel 

nationwide are committed to this agency goal. WHD has used and continues to use 

every tool available—enforcement, compliance assistance, public awareness, partnership, regulation, and legislation—to promote compliance with the Nation’s child 

labor laws. We believe that we have demonstrated success in these efforts, but as 

in every program, we look for opportunities to improve. Last year, the Department 

began working with an independent evaluator to assess our strategies and their effectiveness in increasing compliance with the FLSA child labor provisions. That 

study is ongoing, and we look forward to any recommended opportunities for improvements that may come. In examining our activities and accomplishments, however, we can cite several measures of success. 

WHD has conducted two national, statistically valid, investigation-based compliance surveys of youth employed in the grocery store and restaurant industries. 

These are two industries that employ a high percentage of young workers. The first 

baseline survey was conducted in 2000 to gauge the level of child labor compliance 

in full-service restaurants, quick-service restaurants, and grocery stores. A second 

investigation-based survey was conducted in 2004 to determine if the levels of compliance had changed. These two surveys were full on-site investigations that not 

only included interviews of the young workers, but also included interviews with 

their co-workers and employers. The investigation-based surveys allowed WHD inVerDate 0ct 09 2002 08:35 Dec 02, 2008 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00018 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 G:\DOCS\110TH\WP\110-111\44562.TXT HBUD1 PsN: DICK
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vestigators to establish coverage under the FLSA, review payroll records, and make 

conclusive determinations on whether the teens were employed in violation of applicable federal law. 

The 2004 investigation-based survey showed continued high levels of child labor 

compliance in the full-service restaurant and grocery store industries, similar to the 

levels found in 2000. The 2004 survey also demonstrated improvements in child 

labor compliance in quick-service restaurants in comparison to the 2000 survey results. WHD found significant reductions in the percentage of employers with repeat 

violations in all three industries. The 2004 survey investigations found that 91 percent of quick-service restaurants were in compliance with the FLSA child labor provisions and that 99 percent of youth employed in this industry were employed in 

compliance. The survey also found 73 percent of full-service restaurants were in 

compliance and 88 percent of youth workers were employed in compliance. Finally, 

80 percent of grocery stores were in compliance and 95 percent of youth were employed in compliance in this industry. Ninety-six (96) percent of full- and quick-service restaurants and 88 percent of grocery stores were in compliance with the child 

labor HO provisions. The high percentage of youth employed in compliance and the 

increase in compliance among prior violators can be attributed to the compliance activities of the agency during the intervening year between the surveys. Those efforts 

continue today. 

The 2004 survey results are not the only indicators of improved compliance. In 

FY 2007, WHD completed an investigation-based compliance survey, i.e., the Youth 

Employment Survey (YES), to determine child labor compliance in four large national retail chains, Sears, Roebuck and Company (Sears); K-Mart; Wal-Mart Stores, 

Inc. (Wal-Mart); and Target Corporation (Target). All four companies had a history 

of child labor violations. Following the prior investigations, Sears and Wal-Mart had 

entered into settlement agreements with WHD to promote future child labor compliance. Of the 67 establishments investigated, WHD found 82 percent (55 of 67) in full 

compliance with the child labor provisions. All establishments, but one, were in compliance with the child labor hours standards. Eight-four (84) percent of the establishments were in compliance with the child labor HOs. In total, 40 child labor violations were found involving 36 minors; one child labor hours violation and 39 HO 

violations. Of the 39 HO violations cited, 38 involved violations of HO No. 12 

(balers). One HO No. 7 (forklift) violation was found. The findings in this initiative 

contributed, in part, to WHD’s decision to place an emphasis on increasing compliance with HO No. 12 as part of its fiscal year 2008 performance plan. 

Sears was fully in compliance, with no child labor violations found. One Wal-Mart 

establishment was found in violation with a single HO No. 12 violation. Three Target establishments accounted for 14 violations involving 11 minors. K-Mart has the 

highest rate of non-compliance, with 7 stores having 24 violations involving 23 minors. These large corporate enterprises, that employ minors nationwide, have far 

fewer child labor violations and are far more aware of their obligations as a result 

of WHD’s continued presence. 

While these measures of compliance are encouraging, the declines in workplace 

injuries and fatalities are the most significant indicators of improved working conditions for young workers in this country. According to NIOSH-provided statistics, 38 

youth under the age of 18 died from work-related injuries in 2007—a significant 

drop from the average of 61 youth aged 17 and under who were killed on the job 

during the years 1998 to 2002. Equally encouraging is the corresponding decline in 

youth fatality rates from a high of more than 3.5 per 100,000 FTE in 1999 to approximately 2 per 100,000 FTE in 2006. Injuries to young workers have also declined in recent years, although not as sharply as fatalities. In 1999, NIOSH estimated that over 70,000 14-to 17-year-olds were injured on the job seriously enough 

to warrant a trip to a hospital emergency room. By 2006, the estimate had dropped 

to 52,600. 

The agency believes these injury and fatality results demonstrate significant 

progress in addressing child labor violations. The actions and activities of many parties have contributed to these declining statistics, but clearly too many minors continue to be injured while working, and even one death of a working teen is one too 

many. The challenge of protecting the welfare of young workers is a shared responsibility. It rests with federal and state officials, parents, educators, communitybased and advocacy organizations, employers, and the young workers themselves. 

WHD remains committed to this challenge and will continue to promote legal employment opportunities for young men and women that are safe, positive, and do 

not distract from or interfere with their education. 

Thank you again for this opportunity to discuss this important issue. This concludes my prepared statement. I would be glad to answer any questions. 

16

Chairwoman WOOLSEY. Ms. Greenberg. 

STATEMENT OF SALLY GREENBERG, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, 

NATIONAL CONSUMERS LEAGUE, AND CO–CHAIR, CHILD 

LABOR COALITION 

Ms. GREENBERG. Thank you, Madam Chair, for inviting me to 

testify here today. 

My name is Sally Greenberg, and I am executive director of the 

National Consumers League. We very much appreciate the subcommittee holding this hearing and asking this very important 

question, ‘‘Child Labor Enforcement: Are We Adequately Protecting 

Our Children?’’

The National Consumers League believes that the answer to the 

question that the subcommittee is posing is, no, and that much 

more can and must be done to protect our young people from hazards and dangers they confront from the workplace. Every 10 days 

in America, a young person is killed at work. Every day, more than 

100 youth workers under the age of 19 are seriously injured or become ill from their jobs. 

My testimony focuses today on the Department of Labor’s enforcement of the Federal child labor laws. I plan to make recommendations about reforms that I would like to see at DOL to 

strengthen protections for youth workers. I will also make recommendations for legislative reforms that we believe Congress 

should consider to help protect young people from hazardous work 

conditions. 

The National Consumers League is America’s oldest consumer 

group, and our mission is to protect economic justice for consumers 

and workers. We are also co-chair of the Child Labor Coalition, or 

the CLC, which was established in 1989 and is a group of more 

than 30 organizations representing consumers, labor unions, educators, human rights and labor groups, child advocacy, religious 

and women’s groups. The CLC’s mission is simply to protect working youth here and abroad. 

Let me start by saying that NCL very much supports the notion 

that young people can learn and grow by working, as long as they 

are placed in jobs that are appropriate and safe. 

Much of my testimony is going to be based on findings of two reports on DOL’s child labor enforcement that were released by the 

CLC and published by the National Consumers League, one in 

June 2005 and the other, September 2006. 

What these reports make clear is that enforcement of the child 

labor laws is no longer a high priority for DOL. Why do we say 

this? First, what many believe is the definitive document in upgrading and updating Federal child labor laws and enforcement, 

this is the NIOSH, or National Institute for Occupational Safety 

and Health, report from 2002. It was issued now over six years ago. 

NIOSH recommended that 38 hazardous occupation orders, or 

HOs, and HOs prohibit children from working in jobs that are particularly dangerous; they recommended in the NIOSH report that 

38 of those HOs be revised. It took DOL five years to respond. And 

when they did, they proposed revising only five existing nonagricultural hazardous orders of the total of 38 that were recVerDate 0ct 09 2002 08:35 Dec 02, 2008 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00020 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 G:\DOCS\110TH\WP\110-111\44562.TXT HBUD1 PsN: DICK
17

ommended. They recommended no changes whatsoever in HOs for 

agriculture, the most dangerous work environment for children. 

Six years of inaction while children are maimed and injured on 

the job, we believe, is six years too many. DOL’s refusal to protect 

working children by appropriately revising those hazardous orders 

is inexcusable, in our view. 

Secondly, the number of child labor investigations by DOL has 

declined drastically. For example, there was a 48 percent decline 

from 2004 to 2006. There were 2,606 child labor investigations in 

2004, but only 1,344 in 2006. If we look back more than two years, 

the story is even worse. The number of child labor investigations 

conducted in 2006, 1,344. It was the lowest in the last 10 years. 

The second issue we have is that the time spent investigating 

child labor has declined, from 58,000 hours in 2004 to 48,000 hours 

and change in 2006. If we look back more than two years, the story 

is even worse. From 2001, when Wage and Hour spent 73,000-plus 

hours doing child investigations, to 2006, the time devoted to child 

labor investigations plummeted by 35 percent. 

There are an estimated 3.2 million working children in the 

United States. In other words, what our figures tell us is that there 

are only 28 DOL child labor investigators looking out for the children of this country, which number well over 3 million. 

Third, the penalties that DOL imposes, we believe, are far too 

low to provide sufficient deterrent to companies hiring underage 

workers. We are pleased to see that the GINA bill did increase penalties to $50,000 for each violation. We don’t know whether the Department of Labor has imposed penalties with GINA in mind, but 

we believe the penalties at this point have been historically way too 

low. 

Fourth, DOL has almost no child labor enforcement in agriculture, and I believe my colleagues are going to address those 

issues, so I am going to quickly move to a couple of recommendations. 

And I do want to mention that we believe that DOL needs to 

focus on a couple of industries, including agriculture and 

meatpacking. We are particularly concerned about, Congresswoman, you mentioned the Pottsville, Iowa, case with 

Agriprocessors. We went out there to take a look around and talk 

to some of the workers, and Reed Mackey, who is here with me 

today, actually met with and interviewed a young man who had 

worked at the plant when he was 16, and he unrolled his sleeve 

and he showed him a stab wound that he had gotten while working 

on the job in the Agriprocessors plant. And the young worker said 

he was routinely cheated out of wages each week. He said he believed the plant supervisors knew that he was too young to work 

in the plant but looked the other way. 

We believe that there are probably a lot more of these kinds of 

violations going on, and we would like the Department of Labor to 

take a look at that. 

I will make further recommendations during the Q & A. 

[The statement of Ms. Greenberg follows:]

18

Prepared Statement of Sally Greenberg, Executive Director, National 

Comsumers League 

Thank you for inviting me to testify today. My name is Sally Greenberg, and I 

serve as Executive Director of the National Consumers League. We very much appreciate the Subcommittee on Workforce Protections holding a hearing that asks, 

‘‘Child Labor Enforcement: Are We Adequately Protecting our Children?’’ The National Consumers League believes that that answer to the question this Subcommittee hearing poses is ‘‘No,’’ and that much more can and must be done to better protect our young people from hazards and dangers they confront in the workplace.1

Every 10 days in America, a young person is killed at work. Every day, more than 

100 young workers under the age of 19 are seriously injured or become ill from their 

jobs. 

My testimony today focuses on the U.S. Department of Labor, or DOL’s poor enforcement of the federal child labor laws and I will make recommendations about 

reforms I would like to see at DOL to strengthen protections for working children. 

I will also make recommendations for legislative reforms that we believe Congress 

should consider to help to protect our young people from hazardous work conditions. 

The National Consumers League, or ‘‘NCL,’’ is a private, non-profit advocacy 

group representing consumers on marketplace and workplace issues. Our mission is 

to protect and promote social and economic justice for consumers and workers in the 

United States and abroad. We are the nation’s oldest consumer organization. The 

NCL is the cochair, along with the American Federation of Teachers, of the Child 

Labor Coalition, or ‘‘CLC.’’ The CLC, established in 1989, is a group of more than 

30 organizations, representing consumers, labor unions, educators, human rights 

and labor rights groups, child advocacy groups, and religious and women’s groups. 

The CLC’s mission is to protect working youth and to promote legislation, programs, 

and initiatives to end child labor exploitation in the United States and abroad. 

Let me start by saying that the NCL very much supports the notion young people 

can learn and grow by working, as long as they are placed in a jobs that are appropriate and safe. We wish to focus, however, on workplace settings and jobs that are 

risky or dangerous for young people and what can be done to correct the loopholes 

in the law that expose youngsters to these workplace hazards. 

Much of my testimony is based on the findings of two reports on DOL’s child labor 

enforcement released by the Child Labor Coalition and published by the National 

Consumers League, one in June 2005 and the other in September 2006, as well as 

more recent data on the same topic. I have provided copies of the two reports to 

the Subcommittee, and I ask that they be included in the record. 

What these reports make clear is that enforcement of the child labor law is no 

longer a high priority for DOL. 

Here is a quick overview that shows why this is so. 

• First, the number of child labor investigations by DOL has declined drastically. 

For example, there was a 48 percent decline from 2004 to 2006—2,606 child labor 

investigations in 2004, but only 1,344 in 2006.2 If we look back more than two 

years, the story is even worse. The number of child labor investigations conducted 

in 2006—1,344—was the lowest in the last ten years for which we have data, and 

may be the lowest in many decades. 

• Second, the time spent investigating child labor also declined: 58,220 hours in 

2004, but only 48,005 hours in 2006. If we look back more than two years, the story 

is even worse. For example, from 2001, when the Wage-Hour division spent 73,736 

hours doing child labor investigations, to 2006, the time devoted to child labor investigations plummeted by 35 percent. The 48,005 hours spent by DOL in 2006 investigating child labor violations may sound like a lot of time, but based on our calculations, this is roughly the equivalent of 28 full-time employees doing child labor investigations exclusively.3 There are an estimated 3.2 million working children in the 

United States, according to the federal government.4 In other words, each of these 

28 DOL child labor investigators is in effect responsible for assuring a safe and 

healthy work environment for about 115,000 youth workers. 

• Third, the penalties that DOL imposes are too low to provide sufficient deterrent to companies hiring underage workers. While the law imposes a maximum penalty of $11,000 for each violation,5 the average penalty in 2004 was only $718, less 

than 7 percent of the maximum penalty permitted. Two years later, in 2006, the 

average penalty was only $939, less than 9 percent of the maximum penalty. Here’s 

a concrete example of low child labor penalties. In 2006 DOL found 29 children in 

six Target Corporation retail stores in New York’s Hudson River Valley who had 

been working in jobs prohibited for children under age 18 because the work is so 

hazardous—operating power-driver scrap paper balers and operating power-driven 

19

hoisting equipment, like forklifts.6 DOL imposed a penalty of $92,400, or an average 

of $3,166 per child, not a lot for a multibillion dollar corporation. Another example 

dates from 2005. Wal-Mart committed child labor violations affecting 85 children in 

24 stores, many involving youth who did jobs that DOL has determined to be particularly dangerous, such as operating chain saws, cardboard balers, and forklifts.7 

DOL imposed $135,540 in penalties, or an average of $1,595 per child. Given that 

Wal-Mart had $285 billion in annual sales, the $135,540 total penalty is a negligible 

amount—the equivalent of fining someone with an average salary a tiny fraction of 

a penny. The law says that the size of any child labor penalty that DOL imposes 

must take account of ‘‘the size of the business of the person charged and the gravity 

of the violation,’’8 but it is hard to see how DOL has done that in its investigations, 

given the very low amount of the average penalty imposed. • Fourth, DOL has almost no child labor enforcement in agriculture. Hundreds 

of thousands of children work in agriculture, yet, in 2006, just 28 of DOL’s 1,344 

child labor investigations—2 percent—were in agriculture. In 2005 the number of 

child labor investigations in agriculture was even lower—just 25. These numbers 

contrast sharply with earlier years. In 1999, for example, DOL conducted more than 

five times as many investigations in agriculture—142. What is particularly troubling about this poor enforcement record is that the risks of injury, illness, and 

death are greater for children working in agriculture than in any other jobs. For 

example, children age 15 to 17 working in agriculture have over four times the risk 

of fatal injury of children working in other industries.9

Children under age 15 working on farms account for about three-fourths of all 

work-related deaths for that age group.10 As for nonfatal injuries, hospital emergency room and workers’ compensation data have suggested that youth injuries in 

agriculture tend to be more severe than injuries in other employments.11 What can 

DOL do to assure greater protections to working children? There are several key 

steps DOL should take. • First, DOL needs to devote more time and effort to investigating potential child 

labor violations. The equivalent of 28 full-time child labor investigators for the entire United States is simply indefensible. The child labor provisions of the FLSA are 

unique in that only DOL can enforce them, whereas the FLSA’s minimum wage and 

overtime pay provisions can be enforced not only by DOL, but also by aggrieved employees represented by lawyers in court. In other words, if DOL places less emphasis on enforcing the minimum wage and overtime pay provisions, employees have 

another route to address the problem—a private right of action. In 2006, for example, DOL filed only 3 percent—143 of 4,207—FLSA lawsuits in federal court. But 

if DOL does not enforce the FLSA’s child labor provisions, then no one else can. • Second, DOL needs to impose much higher penalties than in the past. Average penalties of less than $1,000 do not provide sufficient deterrent effect. There is no 

deterrent effect when a large company faces a nominal penalty after permitting underage youth to perform work forbidden under DOL regulations. DOL could easily 

change its regulations, or even just revise its internal procedures for calculating 

penalties, to achieve this result. Moreover, DOL should take employers who commit 

repeat child labor violations to court to get an injunction barring future violations, 

as the FLSA authorizes DOL to do. Any employer that violates such an injunction 

can be held in contempt of court and be required to pay DOL’s costs of investigating 

and prosecuting to prove to the court that the employer has violated the injunction. 

• Third, DOL needs to update and strengthen its regulations that list jobs that 

are so hazardous that no child under age 18 (or in agriculture, under age 16) can 

do them. The government’s premier job safety agency—the National Institute for 

Occupational Safety and Health, or ‘‘NIOSH’’—issued a lengthy report over six years 

ago recommending that more than half of these existing regulations be revised and 

that 17 new regulations be added, but DOL has acted on a paltry number of these 

recommendations, and adopted no changes whatsoever for agriculture, the most 

dangerous work environment for children. Six years of inaction, while children are 

maimed and injured on the job, are six years too many. DOL’s refusal to protect 

working children by appropriately revising the hazardous orders is inexcusable. 

• Fourth, DOL needs to conduct targeted investigations of two industries in which 

child laborers may be most vulnerable to death or injury: agriculture and 

meatpacking. It has been nearly a decade since the Department of Labor’s targeted 

Salad Bowl investigation found dozens of children, including many under the age 

of 10, helping harvest the nation’s fruits and vegetables. And in the area of slaughterhouses, the recent investigation by the State of Iowa of the Agriprocessors plant 

in Postville, Iowa found dozens of minors working illegally in what is often considered to be one of the worst and most dangerous jobs in America. In August, NCL 

spoke to an Agriprocessors child laborer who had stabbed himself in the arm while 

on the cutting line and had been bandaged up and told to go back to work. The 

20

young worker said he was routinely cheated out of hours of wages each week. He 

also said that he believed his plant supervisors knew he was too young to work in 

the plant but looked the other way. Given that meat processing plants tend to attract an impoverished, mostly immigrant work force, the possibility that child laborers may be employed in slaughterhouse around the nation should be investigated 

by U.S. DOL with vigor. 

• Fifth, DOL needs to publicize its child labor enforcement activities much more 

aggressively. The most that DOL does typically is to issue an innocuous press release, and in many instances no publicity at all is given to child labor penalty cases. 

This approach needs to be changed drastically to make both employers and employees much more aware of the child labor laws, and the penalties that can result for 

violating those laws. 

• Sixth, DOL needs to revive the Child Labor Task Force that coordinated child 

labor enforcement efforts between state and federal inspectors. Increased coordination and communication between state and federal inspectors should increase the 

efficacy of enforcement efforts. 

What can this Committee and Congress do to strengthen the child labor law? We 

have several recommendations: 

• First, Congress must increase funding for DOL Wage and Hour inspectors. One 

of the primary reasons for the lack of child labor enforcement: Wage and Hour is 

grossly understaffed. Less than 750 investigators are available to go out into the 

field and investigate labor violations. That translates to one investigator for every 

10,000 businesses. Kim Bobo, the executive director of Interfaith Worker Justice testified in Congress earlier this summer, that if the ratio of investigators to businesses that existed in 1941 held today, we would have 34,000 investigators—not less 

than 1,000. As a first step, NCL believes the number of inspectors should be doubled 

and Congress should mandate that child labor inspections become a greater priority 

of enforcement efforts. Congress should require DOL to report on its enhanced child 

labor enforcement efforts not less than 18 months after funding for the additional 

inspectors is provided. 

• Second, Congress should eliminate many of the special exclusions in agriculture 

that permit children as young as young as 12 years old, and in some cases even 

younger, to work in the fields. It is unconscionable to allow 12 year olds to toil in 

over 100 degree heat and be exposed to toxic chemicals and pesticides; this gaping 

loophole in the law should be changed. By doing so, Congress would ensure that 

children working in agriculture would be subject to the same protections as children 

working in all other jobs. We are not talking here about children who work on their 

own parent’s farms (who are not subject to the child labor law at all), but children 

who work for hire on farms, such as migrant and seasonal farmworkers. Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard’s ‘‘Childrens Act for Responsible Employment,’’ also known as the 

CARE Act, would close these shameful loopholes, leveling the playing field for hundreds of thousands of farmworker youth who are dropping out of high school in high 

numbers. 

• Third, because of the great hazards to children working in agriculture, Congress 

should strengthen the protections for children working on farms. 

Under existing law, the Secretary of Labor has the authority to declare which jobs 

are particularly hazardous for children, and the law provides a minimum age of 18 

for such jobs—except in agriculture, where the minimum age is 16. For example, 

a young worker must be 18 to drive a forklift at a Wal-Mart warehouse, but that 

young worker could drive a forklift at a fruit and vegetable packing house at age 

16—even though the dangers are very similar. 

• Congress should amend the law to raise the minimum age for doing particularly 

hazardous work in agriculture to 18, especially in view of the high incidence of 

deaths and injuries to children working in agriculture (as noted above). The CARE 

Act would remedy this problem as well. Fourth, Congress should impose minimum 

penalties for child labor violations—say at $500—to make employers more likely to 

comply with the child labor requirements. 

Thank you again, Madam Chair, for calling this hearing on whether young workers are being properly protected in America’s workplace. The National Consumers 

League remains ready to work with you and your staff to see that children in this 

country are kept safe and are protected against the many dangers and hazards they 

may face in the workplace. 

ENDNOTES

1 [EDITOR’S NOTE: Not provided.] 2The data we have are based on the federal fiscal year, not the calendar year. Also, our data 

go only through 2006, because information on DOL’s child labor enforcement is not on the DOL 

21

Web site; the data are available through a Freedom of Information Act request only—we have 

filed a FOIA request but have yet to receive the information. 3 A full-time DOL employee with a 40-hour workweek for 52 weeks is paid for 2,080 hours 

per year, but with time off for vacations, holidays, and sick leave for medical appointments and 

illnesses, actual working hours in a year are probably closer to 1,700 hours. Thus, the 48,005 

child labor investigative hours in 2006 would require the equivalent of about 28 full-time employees. 4The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), relying on reports by 

DOL’s Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Current Population Survey, estimates that 2.78 million 16- and 17-year-old children were employed in 2000, as well as over 450,000 15-year-olds, 

for a total of 3,230,000 youth workers. National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health 

(NIOSH) Recommendations to the U.S. Department of Labor for Changes to Hazardous Orders 

(May 2002), p. 3 (‘‘NIOSH Report’’) (available at www.cdc.gov/niosh/docs/NIOSHRecsDOLHaz/

DOL-recomm.pdf). The NIOSH Report has no estimate for the number of youth workers under 

age 15. However, many children under this age do in fact work, as evidenced by DOL’s Bureau 

of Labor Statistics estimate that 134 children under age 15 were killed on the job during the 

period 1992-1998 (see report on the Youth Work Force, revised November 2000, Chapter 6, p. 

60 (Table 6.1), available at www.bls.gov/opub/rylf/pdf. 5This $11,000 maximum penalty was increased by FLSA child labor amendments included in 

the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act, or ‘‘GINA’’ (which took effect on May 21, 2008), 

with regard to particularly serious child labor violations. Any child labor violation that causes 

death or serious injury now has a maximum penalty of $50,000, which can be doubled where 

the violation is a repeated or willful violation. We don’t know whether DOL has begun to impose 

these higher penalties, though they took effect over four months ago. 6The information about the Target Corporation child labor investigation comes from the Daily 

Labor Report of April 19, 2006, published by the Bureau of National Affairs in Washington, D.C. 7The information about the Wal-Mart child labor investigation is based largely on articles in 

The New York Times on February 12 and 21, 2005. 8FLSA section 16(e), 29 U.S.C. 216(e). 

9 National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH Recommendations to the U.S. 

Department of Labor for Changes in Hazardous Orders (U.S. Department of Health and Human 

services, Public health Service, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, May 2002), p.12, 

available at http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/docs/NIOSHRecsDOLHaz/default.html. 10 Ibid. 11 Id. at p. 7. 

[Additional submissions by Ms. Greenberg follow:] 

[‘‘Protecting Working Children in the United States,’’ June 2005, 

may be accessed at the following Internet address:]

http://www.stopchildlabor.org/pressroom/clc%20report.pdf 

[‘‘The Government’s Striking Decline in Child Labor Enforcement 

Activities,’’ September 2006, may be accessed at the following 

Internet address:]

http://www.stopchildlabor.org/pressroom/CLC%20report%20Sept%202006.pdf 

Chairwoman WOOLSEY. Thank you. We will ask you for those 

recommendations. 

Ms. Flores. 

STATEMENT OF NORMA FLORES, FORMER CHILD WORKER 

Ms. FLORES. Hi. Thank you for the opportunity to be able to 

share my story. 

My name is Norma Flores, and I am just one of the estimated 

hundreds of thousands of farm worker children working hard to 

feed Americans every day. My four sisters and I began to work in 

the farm fields since the age of 12 during our summers and any 

other school breaks we had, but we weren’t strangers to farm work 

at that age. Full-time work now meant 70 hours, including weekends, for weeks at a time with no days off. 

22

Growing up in a family of many generations of farm workers, we 

thought life was supposed to this hard for everyone. Even though 

we saw both of our parents work hard year round and spend every 

penny carefully, we grew up poor. This taught us to value all the 

possessions differently. We knew if we wanted a nice pair of sneakers or ticket to see a new movie, those would be things that would 

have to be earned with a lot of hard hours of difficult manual labor. 

But this was life to us. 

We weren’t informed of what rights we had or educated on what 

resources were available to help us. In the six years that I worked 

in the fields, I never saw an inspector out in the any of the fields 

that I was working in. Had I seen an inspector out there, I would 

have pointed out the lack of clean bathrooms, sometimes half a 

mile away, and the lack of places to wash our hands after handling 

plants covered in pesticides. I would have pointed out the missing 

drinking water and the containers with day-old water that we had 

to drink from at times. I would have pointed out the underage children allowed to work out there during regular school hours. 

Working in the cornfields of Indiana or in the asparagus fields 

of Michigan, it felt like we were at the mercy of contractors, with 

no one to look out for us and no one to turn to for questions or concerns. One of the most terrifying moments in my life was when an 

airplane accidently sprayed pesticide over the field we were working in. We ran out frantically across the street and immediately 

called our contractor. He simply apologized and asked us to go to 

another field to continue our workday. Who were we supposed to 

contact in case we got sick from the pesticides? How would we 

know? 

Farm labor is difficult and dangerous work. We are exposed to 

many chemicals that can damage our health, and migrant farm 

workers don’t have benefits like health insurance to help us with 

expensive medical treatments. 

We are exposed to long hours and hot summer months with 

backbreaking labor. We work with sharp tools and heavy machinery that can cause a lot of damage if not used properly. Yet, as children, we are trusted to have the ability and maturity to handle all 

of these dangers carefully. 

I have seen too many times accidents in which children working 

beside me have gotten deeply cut and infected with sharp tools we 

work with or sick from the chemicals we work around. 

Children at age 12 would not be allowed to work making copies 

in air-conditioned office or cleaning floors at a local store, yet 

today, in America, children can legally work in harsh conditions 

out in the farm field for wages sometimes below minimum wage. 

Like all other Americans across the country, the migrant community is also concerned about today’s economy. We see in the news 

how gas prices and the cost of living are on the rise. Yet what we 

don’t see rising are our wages. Since Cesar Chavez, no major improvements in the life of migrant farm workers have been made. 

They continue to receive the same pay as decades ago. 

Growers claim that wages must be kept low in order for food 

prices to stay affordable, but at what price? Is it worth it to exploit 

children and hurt their futures so you won’t have to pay cents for 

23

your groceries? Even this isn’t saving Americans from the rising 

food price inflation. 

By giving fair wages, migrant families will no longer need their 

children to work to supplement their incomes, and these farm 

worker children can focus on their studies instead of worrying 

about pending family bills. 

I was blessed to have parents that put my education as a top priority and migrant youth programs that helped give the educational 

support I needed to get through my education. After overcoming 

many educational hardships, included interrupted school years and 

different State school systems, I was able to graduate from one of 

the Nation’s leading high schools and complete college in 31⁄2 years. 

Even though my family continues to work in fields of Iowa and 

Texas, I am proudly working in an international public relations 

firm in downtown Chicago. 

Other farm worker children aren’t so fortunate. I believe at least 

two-thirds of migrant farm worker children drop out of high school 

before graduation from the pressures of migration, changing 

schools, and exhaustion. This dooms most of them to a life of poverty. 

Farm worker children continue to be an ignored injustice today 

in the United States, the world’s greatest country. The information 

is out there, but many choose to look the other way. Just Google 

migrant farm worker children and you will get over 87,000 results. 

Exploitation of children, regardless if it is done legally or illegally, 

needs to stop today. It is more than doing what is right; it is also 

about changing the lives of these children and giving them the opportunity to make a few for themselves. 

[The statement of Ms. Flores follows:]

Prepared Statement of Norma Flores, Former Child Worker 

My name is Norma Flores and I am just one of estimated hundreds of thousands 

of farmworker children working hard to feed Americans every day. My four sisters 

and I began to work in the farm fields since the age of 12 during our summers and 

any other school breaks we had, but we weren’t strangers to farm work at that age. 

Full-time work weeks now meant 70 hours—including weekends—for weeks at a 

time with no days off. Growing up in a family of many generations of farm workers, 

we thought life was supposed to be this hard for everyone. Even though we saw both 

of our parents work hard year-round and spend every penny carefully, we grew up 

poor. This taught us to value all of our possessions differently. We knew if we wanted a nice pair of sneakers or a ticket to see a new movie, those would be things 

that would have to be earned with a lot of hard hours of difficult manual labor. 

But this was life to us. We weren’t informed of what rights we had or educated 

on what resources were available to help us. In the six years that I worked in the 

fields, I never saw an inspector in any of the fields I was working in. Had I seen 

an inspector out there, I would have pointed out the lack of clean bathrooms sometimes half a mile away and the lack of places to wash our hands after handling 

plants covered in pesticides. I would have pointed out the missing drinking water 

and the containers with day-old water we had to drink from at times. I would have 

pointed out the under-age children allowed to work during regular school hours. 

Working in the corn fields of Indiana or in the asparagus fields of Michigan, it felt 

like we were at the mercy of the contractors with no one to look out for us and no 

one to turn to for questions or concerns. One of the most terrifying moments of my 

life was when an airplane accidently sprayed pesticides over the field my family and 

I were working in. We ran out frantically across the street and immediately called 

our contractor. He simply apologized and asked us to go to another field to continue 

our work day. Who were we supposed to contact in case we got sick from the pesticides? How would we know? 

Farm labor is difficult and dangerous work. We are exposed to many chemicals 

that can damage our health and migrant farmworkers don’t have benefits like 

24

health insurance to help us with expensive medical treatments. We are exposed to 

long hours in hot summer months with back-breaking labor. We work with sharp 

tools and heavy machinery that can cause a lot of damage if not used properly. Yet 

as children, we are trusted to have the ability and maturity to handle all of these 

dangers carefully. I have seen too many times accidents in which children working 

beside me have gotten deeply cut and infected with the sharp tools we work with 

or sick from the chemicals we work around. Children at age 12 would not have been 

allowed to work making copies in an air-conditioned office or cleaning floors at a 

local store, yet today, in America, children can legally work in harsh conditions out 

in the farm fields for wages sometimes below minimum wage. 

Like all other Americans across the country, the migrant community is also concerned about today’s economy. We see in the news how gas prices and the cost of 

living are on the rise. Yet what we don’t see rising are our wages. Since Cesar Chavez, no major improvements in the lives of migrant farmworkers have been made. 

They continue to receive the same pay as decades ago. Growers claim that wages 

must be kept low in order for food prices to stay affordable, but at what price? Is 

it worth it to exploit children and hurt their futures so you won’t have to pay cents 

more for your groceries? Even this isn’t saving Americans from the rising food price 

inflation. By giving fair wages, migrant families will no longer need their children 

to work to supplement their incomes and these farmworker children can focus on 

their studies instead of worrying about the pending family bills. 

I was blessed to have parents that put my education as a top priority and migrant 

youth programs that helped give the educational support I needed to get through 

my education. After overcoming many educational hardships including interrupted 

school years and different state school systems, I was able to graduate from one of 

the nation’s leading high schools and complete college in three and a half years. 

Even though my family continues to work in the fields of Iowa and Texas, I proudly 

work in an international public relations firm in downtown Chicago. 

Other farmworker children aren’t so fortunate. I believe that at least two-thirds 

of migrant farmworker children drop out before high school graduation from the 

pressures of migration, changing schools, and exhaustion. This dooms most of them 

to a life of poverty. 

Farmworker children continue to be an ignored injustice today in the United 

States, the world’s greatest country. The information is out there, but many choose 

to look the other way. Just Google migrant farmworker children and you’ll get over 

87,000 results. Exploitation of children, regardless if it’s done legally or illegally, 

needs to stop today. It’s more than doing what is right. It’s also about changing the 

lives of these children and giving them the opportunity to make a future for themselves. 

Chairwoman WOOLSEY. Thank you. 

Mr. Strauss. 

STATEMENT OF DAVID A. STRAUSS, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, 

ASSOCIATION OF FARMWORKER OPPORTUNITY PROGRAMS 

Mr. STRAUSS. Representative Woolsey and members of the subcommittee, thank you for inviting me to testify this morning on the 

conditions endured by children who work for wages in the farms, 

fields, and orchards of America. 

I also want to comment on the lack of enforcement of child labor 

laws in agriculture and recommend changes to the law that will 

gave the same protections to children working in agriculture as 

other children enjoy. 

My organization, the Association of Farmworker Opportunity 

Programs, is the national federation of organizations that conduct 

job training programs for eligible farmworkers throughout the 

United States. In the mid-1990s, our members noticed that in 

many places young children were preparing and harvesting crops. 

As they began looking into this, they realized that the Fair Labor 

Standards Act actually permits children as young as 12 and, in 

rare instances, as young as 10, to work in agriculture. 

25

I am not talking about family farms, where sons and daughters 

of farmers learn the business firsthand at a young age. I am talking about farms that employ large numbers of workers that aren’t 

related to the owners. 

There are about 2.5 million people who earn their living, at least 

in part, by performing farm work in this country. Among them, 

tens of thousands migrate among various States each year, following the crops and seeking work wherever they can find it. 

Often, families travel from Texas or Florida to the upper Midwest, 

the Southeast, and the Northeast. In California, there are many 

workers that migrate long distances and often stay within that 

State. 

They are typically paid miserably low wages, receive no job-related benefits and have no job security. The average farmworker 

family earns less than $15,000 per year from all sources, well 

below the Federal poverty level. 

In these situations, they sometimes require their children, like 

Norma, to work to help to bring in more income. While there are 

no reliable statistics on children that work in the fields, our research indicates that there are about 400,000 such young people 

below the age of 18. 

The FLSA requires that they not work during school hours and 

when school is in session. That is virtually the only restriction in 

Federal law, along with the prohibition against hazardous employment for children 15 and younger. That means, as Norma said, 

that a 12-year-old kid can work 12 or more hours a day during the 

summer, on weekends, or during the school year, as long as those 

hours are outside of school time. 

I have spoken with teenage children of migrant families who 

worked after school until midnight during a heavy harvest. That 

same child, if he worked in my office, could only work, at most, 

three hours during a school day. After school is out, and no more 

than 40 hours a week in the summer. And my offices are air-conditioned and comfortable; the fields are not. 

One of my staff recently completed a two-week visit to North 

Carolina’s blueberry fields and found dozens of children, some as 

young as six, working in 105-degree heat all day long for several 

weeks at a time. California, though, for example, has heat illness 

prevention standards to protect child workers, but the Secretary of 

Labor at the Federal level has not issued a hazardous occupation 

for excessive heat. 

The toll on the children is real. Sometimes their families take 

them out of school before the end of the semester and return after 

the new school year begins. While in many places there are federally funded migrant education programs available, those programs 

aren’t always congruent with those in the home State school, so 

children lose the credits they thought they were earning. They 

start the year behind and have to work doubly hard to catch up, 

even though they may be working in fields again after school. 

The results are predictable. Most migrant children, perhaps more 

than 67 percent, drop out of school well before high school graduation. Without a diploma and without good jobs, they often end up 

continuing the cycle of poverty their parents hoped they could 

break. It is a tragic waste that we cannot and should not allow to 

26

continue. Most of these children want to succeed. They know the 

meaning and value of hard work but are cut off from accessing the 

American Dream as soon as they drop out. 

While we believe the law is not sufficiently protective of child agricultural workers, my staff has observed violation of current law 

over and over. For example, the staff member I mentioned earlier 

visited 12 farms and on those 12 farms saw 11 instances of the law 

being broken, where kids were under 12 years old, working. Where 

were the Wage and Hour people there? 

This needs to stop. The Federal Government and the States need 

to make a renewed commitment to protecting our youngest workers. In addition, Congress should equalize the protections of these 

children with the rest of America’s workforce. We support the 

CARE bill. 

Finally, we must dramatically increase the Federal commitment 

to the development of farmworker children. Legal protections alone 

won’t assure their progress, so we have to invest in those actions 

we know will keep them in school and allow them to become as 

successful as Norma has. 

The reality is that, under our very noses, this country has a farm 

labor sector that resembles similar sectors in third-world countries. 

It is a disgrace that the people who prepare and harvest our food 

often barely earn enough to purchase the food that their families 

need to survive. The least we can do is protect their children and 

give them a chance at the American Dream. 

[The statement of Mr. Strauss follows:]

Prepared Statement of David A. Strauss, Executive Director, Association of 

Farmworker Opportunity Programs 

Representative Woolsey and members of the subcommittee, thank you for inviting 

me to testify this morning on the conditions endured by children who work for 

wages in the farms, fields and orchards of America. I also want to comment on the 

lack of enforcement of child labor laws in the agriculture industry and recommend 

changes to the law that will give the same protections to children working in agricultures as other children enjoy. The Association of Farmworker Opportunity Programs is the national federation of nonprofit and public agencies that conduct job 

training programs for eligible migrant and seasonal farmworkers throughout the 

United States. In the mid-1990s, our members noticed that in many places young 

children were preparing and harvesting crops, often but not always alongside their 

parents or other family members. As they began looking into this, they realized that 

the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) actually permits children as young as 12 and 

in rare instances as young as 10 to work in agriculture. I’m not talking about family 

farms, where sons and daughters of farmers learn the business firsthand at a young 

age. I’m talking about working farms that employ large numbers of workers who 

aren’t related to the owners. There are about 2.5 million people who earn their living, at least in part, by performing farmwork in this country. Among them, tens of 

thousands migrate among various states each year, following the crops and seeking 

work wherever they can find it. Often, families are traveling from Texas or Florida 

to the upper Midwest, Southeast and Northeast. In California, there are many 

workers that migrate long distances often within that state. They are typically paid 

miserably low wages, receive no job-related benefits, and have no job security. The 

average farmworker family earns less than $15,000 per year from all sources, well 

below the federal poverty level. In this situation, they sometimes require their children to work to help bring in more income. While there are no reliable statistics 

on children that work in the fields, our research indicates that there are about 

400,000 such young people below the age of 18. The FLSA requires that they not 

work during school hours when school is in session. That is virtually the only restriction in federal law, along with a prohibition against hazardous employment for 

children 15 and younger That means that a 12 year old kid can work 12 or more 

hours a day during the summer, on weekends, or during the school year as long as 

those hours are outside of school time. I have spoken with teenage children of miVerDate 0ct 09 2002 08:35 Dec 02, 2008 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00030 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 G:\DOCS\110TH\WP\110-111\44562.TXT HBUD1 PsN: DICK
27

grant families who worked after school until midnight during a heavy harvest. That 

same child, if he worked in my office, could only work at most three hours during 

a school day after school is out, and no more than 40 hours a week in the summer. 

And my offices are air conditioned and comfortable. The fields are not. One of my 

staff completed a two week visit to North Carolina’s blueberry fields this past June 

and found dozens of kids, some as young as 6, working in 105 degree heat all day 

long for several weeks at a time. California, for example, has heat illness prevention 

standards to protect child workers, but the Federal Secretary of Labor has not 

issued a Hazardous Occupation Order for excessive heat. 

The toll on the children is real. Sometimes their families take them out of school 

before the end of the semester, and return after the new school year begins. While 

in many places there are federally funded migrant education programs available, 

those programs aren’t always congruent with those in the home state school, so children lose the credits they thought they were earning. They start the year behind, 

and have to work doubly hard to catch up, even while they may be working in fields 

again after school. Their parents typically do not have much formal education and 

may speak English very poorly, so they aren’t in the same environment of learning 

as most of their peers, nor can their parents afford tutors or other special aids. The 

results are predictable: most migrant children, perhaps more than 67%, drop out of 

school well before high school graduation. Without a diploma, without good job 

skills, they often end up continuing the cycle of poverty their parents hoped they 

could break. It is a tragic waste that we cannot allow to continue. Most of these 

children want to succeed, know the meaning and value of hard work, but are cut 

off from accessing the American Dream as soon as they drop out. 

While in my opinion, the law is not sufficiently protective of child agricultural 

workers, my staff has observed violation after violation of FLSA provisions. For example, one staff member saw children below the age of twelve working for pay with 

no sign of any inspector. The law was broken in 11 of the 12 farms she visited; 

where were the wage and hour people? This needs to stop. The federal government 

and the states need to make a renewed commitment to protecting our youngest 

workers. 

In addition, Congress should equalize the protections of these children with the 

rest of America’s workforce. Amend the FLSA to protect children working in agriculture just the same as we protect children working in nearly every other industry. 

Representative Lucille Roybal-Allard introduced a bill (HR 2674) in June 2007 that 

would do just that. Finally, we must dramatically increase the federal commitment 

to the development of farmworker children. Legal protections alone won’t assure 

their progress, so we have to invest in those actions we know will keep them in 

school and allow them to become as successful as Norma has. The reality is that 

under our very noses, this country has a farm labor sector that resembles similar 

sectors in third world countries. It is a disgrace that the people who prepare and 

harvest our food often barely earn enough to purchase the food that their families 

need to survive. The least we can do is protect their children and give them a 

chance at the American Dream. Thank you for your time and attention and I’ll be 

glad to answer any questions you might have. 

[Additional submission of Mr. Strauss follows:] 

[‘‘Children in the Fields,’’ May 2007, may be accessed at the following Internet address:]

http://www.afop.org/CIF%20Report.pdf 

Chairwoman WOOLSEY. All right. Thank you. 

Now, you have heard the bells ringing. We have five minutes to 

get down to the floor to vote. So I am going to take my first round 

of questions. I am going to ask Ms. Greenberg to finish her testimony. Then I will ask my questions on the second round. 

When we come back, Mr. Kline will be the ranking member, and 

he will ask the next question, and then the rest of the committee 

will ask their questions. 

Ms. Greenberg, go ahead. We have to get out of here when we 

have one minute left. So you have about 31⁄2 minutes for me. 

28

Ms. GREENBERG. I am overwhelmed with gratitude that no Member of Congress has ever done that for me. I greatly appreciate it. 

We have a lot to say on this. We have recommendations for Congress, and that is increasing the funding for the DOL Wage and 

Hour inspectors. One of the primary reasons for lack of child labor 

enforcement is Wage and Hour is grossly understaffed, as you 

pointed out, Congresswoman. 

The representative from DOL talked a lot about the education 

work and sort of the marketing and going to cities and towns to 

talk about Wage and Hour laws, but there is nothing that can replace strong enforcement. We just have way too few investigators 

going out there. The agency has become a paper tiger, as a result. 

Employers know that, and so they will engage in violations of the 

law because they know the chances that they are going to get 

caught are very slim. 

Secondly, Congress should eliminate many of the special exclusions in agriculture. We certainly join Norma Flores and David 

Strauss in their very passionate and I think powerful statements 

on that. It is unconscionable for 12-year-olds to toil in 100-degree 

heat. So we would support your legislation certainly, and the CARE 

Act. 

Congress should amend the law to raise the minimum age for 

doing particularly hazardous work to 18 and close all of those loopholes. 

We also believe there should be a minimum penalty for child labor violation, say $500, to make employers more likely to comply 

with child labor requirements. As I said, I think the Department’s 

Wage and Hour right now is a paper tiger. It really needs to be 

strengthened. Employers need to know that they mean business 

when they set these laws. 

So that concludes my testimony. I appreciate the time. 

Chairwoman WOOLSEY. All right. It will probably be 20 minutes. 

So relax. Thank you for waiting for us. 

[Recess.] 

Chairwoman WOOLSEY. If everybody can get in their seat, Mr. 

Kline. 

Mr. KLINE. Thank you, Madam Chair. And to our witnesses, 

thanks very much for being here today. Thanks for your patience. 

I am sure some of you have been here before and those of you who 

haven’t know how this works. When we get called to vote, that 

trumps sort of everything we are doing on Capitol Hill, so I appreciate your patience. 

Mr. Passantino, let me start with you, if I could. Could you describe, give us a little more amplification on Wage and Hour’s compliance assistance activities? Does Wage and Hour, for example, 

educate growers through their associations on the rules with respect to the employment of child workers? Is that part of what you 

do? 

Mr. PASSANTINO. Yes. We have an active compliance assistance 

program. As I mentioned during my testimony, I guess the centerpiece for our youth employment compliance assistance is what is 

called the Youth Rules program. Through Youth Rules and through 

other outreach, including agricultural associations and parent 

groups, we speak to students where we are trying to educate everyVerDate 0ct 09 2002 08:35 Dec 02, 2008 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00032 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 G:\DOCS\110TH\WP\110-111\44562.TXT HBUD1 PsN: DICK
29

one about their rights and responsibilities under the law so that 

they are aware, in the case of a teen, whether they are working in 

compliance, and to make employers aware of their obligations 

under the youth employment provisions. 

Mr. KLINE. Could you give me some idea of the size of the effort? 

You have two people involved in this education thing, or 20, or how 

does that work? Give me a sense of the scope here. 

Mr. PASSANTINO. I think it is fair to say that virtually everyone 

in the organization does some measure of it. It is primarily a manager function to provide compliance assistance, but our investigators provide compliance assistance as well. So there is not one specific person responsible for providing compliance assistance. 

Mr. KLINE. I guess I am not sure about the size of the office. How 

many people are we talking about that would be engaged in this, 

since it is essentially a manager’s function, you said? 

Mr. PASSANTINO. There are about, I think, 200 managers, 730 or 

so investigators; so somewhere between 200 and a thousand. 

Mr. KLINE. Thank you. And speaking of investigators, does the 

Wage and Hour Division have a staff of investigators dedicated 

solely to investigations of child labor violations, or is there a crossover here? How does that work? 

Mr. PASSANTINO. All of our investigators are trained to enforce 

all of the laws enforced by the Wage and Hour Division. That includes the Fair Labor Standards Act, which includes the child labor 

provisions, the Family Medical Leave Act, the Davis-Bacon Act, the 

Service Contract Act. All of our investigators are cross-trained in 

each of those statutes and enforcement of all of those statutes. 

Mr. KLINE. Okay. Thank you. I have some familiarity with the 

farming sector. I have got an awful lot of farms in my district. My 

wife and I have a farm in southeast Minnesota, and I know it is 

very complicated in the farming business sometimes, trying to figure out who is in charge. I know that we have heard that there 

is a lack of inspections in the agricultural industry. We have heard 

some of that here today. 

I also know, though, that there are sometimes duplicative inspections that occur in the industry and it would appear—and this is 

my experience—that there are a number of government agencies 

which share oversight of the workplace conditions in the agriculture industry, including perhaps the State Labor Office, OSHA, 

EPA, in addition to the Wage and Hour Division. 

Would it be possible for the agencies which have jurisdiction in 

this industry, particularly in the areas of health and safety, to have 

some formal agreement to come together and determine who would 

conduct the inspections and share information? Has there been 

some effort to sort of corral that morass of agencies? 

Mr. PASSANTINO. Sure. And we work with State agencies and we 

work with OSHA. When OSHA learns of, say, a child labor fatality, 

they will make a referral to us so that we can conduct our investigation. As far as——

Mr. KLINE. Excuse me, if I can interrupt. Do you then conduct 

an investigation and OSHA is out of it, or how does that work? 

Mr. PASSANTINO. I believe that there are still going to be joint 

investigations or parallel investigations, and I suppose we can exVerDate 0ct 09 2002 08:35 Dec 02, 2008 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00033 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 G:\DOCS\110TH\WP\110-111\44562.TXT HBUD1 PsN: DICK
30

plore opportunities for coordinating with various agencies. But 

right now it is more of a notification-type process. 

Mr. KLINE. It just seems to me that if there is a shortage of investigators, if you will, that it might be good to get some synergy 

out of this and not some duplication. 

Madam Chair, I see that my time is about to expire so I will 

yield back. Thank you very much. 

Chairwoman WOOLSEY. Thank you very much, Mr. Kline. 

Mr. Strauss, you have said it, and we understand that the Wage 

and Hour Division’s investigations are generally started as a result 

of a complaint from someone. In your experience, are children apt 

to complain? Do they know how to complain? And what should be 

changed to make that more available to them. 

Mr. STRAUSS. My experience is, no, they would not complain. 

Frankly, neither would most adult farm workers complain about 

conditions. As Norma said, they don’t know what their rights are, 

and if they did, they wouldn’t know who to contact. How to cure 

that is a tough one. 

That is why we think really more targeted and better enforcement is needed. I think it is unrealistic to think that people who 

are working in the conditions they are working in on farms are 

going to say; tonight I think I will be calling a Wage and Hour inspector. They may not have any phones or they may have traveled 

to a place where information is not available. 

For example, when we had our staffers out in the blueberry 

fields of North Carolina, we didn’t wake up—we weren’t born 

knowing that that was a problem area. We found out about it. We 

believe that they can find out about it even more easily than we 

can, and can target those areas of agriculture at the right times of 

the year that are likely to have kids working. We would be glad 

to help the Department of Labor figure that out, but that would 

really make a difference. When the word goes out that they are on 

the case, you will see many, many fewer children under the age of 

12 working on these farms. 

Chairwoman WOOLSEY. So that takes me right to you, Mr. 

Passantino. You said that there are public service ads running and 

telling kids and farm workers where to go and how to complain. If 

there is not enough enforcement officers, what good would that do 

in the first place? They go, and then what happens? 

Mr. PASSANTINO. First, I guess I would like to clarify that we understand that there are not as many complaints in child labor and 

in agriculture, and that is why we dedicate so much of our directed 

enforcement resources into those two program areas for youth employment and for agriculture. 

I will also say, again, that with respect to youth employment in 

low-wage industries, when we do a low-wage targeted initiative in 

a particular area, part of that investigation is a determination of 

whether that employer is in compliance with the youth employment 

provisions in addition to minimum wage, overtime, those sorts of 

things. 

With respect to our staffing levels, the President’s fiscal year 

2009 budget request requested an additional 75 FTEs. We obviously have not gotten that request. 

31

So, yes, we acknowledge that we need additional staff to conduct 

investigations, but I don’t think it is an accurate picture to just 

look at investigations that are coded in our system as primarily 

child labor. We look at child labor——

Chairwoman WOOLSEY. You told us that when a lot of the complaints are child labor they don’t come in as child labor, right? 

Mr. PASSANTINO. I’m sorry? 

Chairwoman WOOLSEY. You said in your testimony that a lot of 

complaints are child labor that didn’t start out child labor. 

Mr. PASSANTINO. We don’t get many complaints at all in child 

labor, but a lot of our cases——

Chairwoman WOOLSEY [continuing]. Turn out to be child labor. 

Mr. PASSANTINO. I think it is around 50 percent. A little bit less 

than 50 percent of the violations that we find of child labor laws 

take place in cases that did not originally begin as a child labor 

case. 

Chairwoman WOOLSEY. So let’s take that and go to Ms. Flores, 

who absolutely would have benefited had there been some representation from the Federal Government at the properties you 

were working. 

Did you have any idea how to complain, or if you could, or would 

you have? 

Ms. FLORES. No. There wasn’t any information. When I started 

working, we worked mostly in the States of Indiana and Michigan. 

We were—there was no break room. There was no common area for 

us to work. We were—when we worked out in the field, that is 

where we ate our lunch. It was just lunchtime and everybody just 

sat around the bus, sat around, trying to find some sort of shade 

and just ate out there. 

So there was no actual public area for us to be able to post signs 

to be able to read any information. There was nowhere that said 

call this number for any questions, any concerns, any problems. 

It wasn’t until we actually went to Iowa, which were the last couple of years where I worked at that, I actually saw some sort of 

area that had some sort of number. But other than that, there was 

nowhere to be able to see—nobody was out there to educate us to 

let us know these are your rights, these are the things. We just 

went out there and worked, which is why I say we were basically 

at the mercy of the contractors, whatever information they gave to 

us, whatever they told us. 

It is not like when you go to school that you get trained in your 

job and you get informed and you know everything that is going 

on. You just grow up in working in the fields, and that is just the 

way of life. So there was nowhere to go. And besides, a lot of growers share a lot of the same workers. So if you are a trouble worker, 

another grower isn’t going to want to hire you if you are raising 

questions and raising concerns. That ends up putting your whole 

life, your whole family’s life in jeopardy because if you don’t have 

any work and nobody wants to hire you, then what else can you 

do? 

Chairwoman WOOLSEY. Right. 

Mr. Kline, do you have any other questions? Then I am going to 

keep going for just a little bit. 

32

Ms. Greenberg, there is some sense that through DOL, when 

they have defended their low penalty rate for child labor infractions, that actually the company’s bad publicity, the bad publicity 

of a company or a grower, would be worse than the penalty. Do you 

see that as any truth to that? Does that work? 

Ms. GREENBERG. Well, no company, I suppose, likes bad publicity. But if you asked the average American consumer which companies had gotten into trouble for child labor violations, I think you 

would get a blank stare back. 

So there is no real publicity given—that is one of the things we 

say in our testimony. There is no publicity given to—or effort to 

publicize that a company has engaged in these kinds of activities. 

We have companies that are involved in multiple violations of 

the child labor law. So I don’t think that is a very effective deterrent. It could be if there were more publicity, but I just don’t see 

it happening. 

Chairwoman WOOLSEY. All right. We aren’t going to have any 

other members here. We have a very important meeting going on 

with our Democratic Caucus at this moment, and Mr. Wilson had 

another appointment. 

And Mr. Kline, would you like to make a closing statement? 

Mr. KLINE. Thank you, Madam Chair. Again, I would just like 

to thank the witnesses and apologize, I suppose, on behalf of the 

institution—that is sort of the way we work here—and we have a 

couple of gigantic issues in front of us this week. So there is a great 

deal pulling us off to various huddles of two or three or more as 

we try to work through how we are going to deal with this. 

So thank you again for your testimony and for your answers and 

for your wonderful patience in helping us work through this. Thank 

you. 

Chairwoman WOOLSEY. Thank you, Mr. Kline. 

Ms. Flores, you laid it out perfectly. I mean, you painted the picture. Thank you so much and also thank you for getting through 

it and getting past the blockades. And you are going to make a difference in a lot of lives because of who you are. Thank you. 

And Mr. Passantino, your heart is in the right place and I really—I sound like President Bush; I am connecting with your heart. 

I don’t mean it that way. You mean well, let me put it that way. 

But we need to do much, much more. 

But thank you and thank you all for your testifying today. What 

you have told us is very informative, and we must have a renewed 

commitment to the child labor laws and this subcommittee will be 

taking up child labor laws at the very beginning of the next Congress, I can assure you of that. 

With over 3 million children employed in the United States each 

year, they must be protected. And I believe that whatever we do 

to enhance the DOL and child labor laws, that we bring the farm 

worker kids right in with it, that we don’t have two separate kinds 

of children. How ridiculous. So we will do better. We will work together and maybe you will all come back and help us put together 

the strengthening of DOL laws. 

So thank you very much. You have been very, very helpful. 

So as previously ordered, members will have 14 days to submit 

additional materials for the hearing record. Any member who wishVerDate 0ct 09 2002 08:35 Dec 02, 2008 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00036 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 G:\DOCS\110TH\WP\110-111\44562.TXT HBUD1 PsN: DICK
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1 Child Labor Coalition, Protecting Working Children in the United States: Is the Government’s Indifference to the Safety and Health of Working Children Violating an International 

Treaty?(June 2005), p 9. 2 Child Labor Coalition, Advocacy Group Releases New Information from States Showing Ongoing Child Labor Enforcement Woes (February 15, 2006). 3 According to testimony by Sally Greenberg, Executive Director, National Consumers League, 

at the House Workforce Protections Subcommittee hearing on September 23, 2008, the Wage 

and Hour Division (WHD) spent 73,736 hours doing child labor investigations in 2001 and 

48,005 hours doing so in 2006. 4 According to the prepared statement of Alexander Passantino, Acting Administrator of the 

Wage and Hour Division of the Department of Labor, at the House Workforce Protections Subcommittee hearing on September 23, 2008. According to Human Rights Watch, The Hidden 

Problem of Child Farmworkers in America: Facts and Figures (2000), while about eight percent 

of employed youth work in agriculture, about forty percent of workplace deaths and nearly half 

of workplace injuries suffered by minors occur in our nation’s fields, farms and orchards. 

es to submit follow-up questions in writing to the witnesses should 

coordinate with Majority staff within 14 days. 

Without objection, the hearing is adjourned. 

[The statement of Ms. Roybal-Allard follows:]

Prepared Statement of Hon. Lucille Roybal-Allard, a Representative in 

Congress From the State of California 

Madam Chair, thank you for holding this hearing on the U.S. government’s enforcement of child labor laws. The enforcement of our existing child labor statutes 

is insufficient at a time when our nation’s youth remain very much at risk of suffering serious and even fatal injuries on the job. Though accurate data is scarce, 

estimates indicate that sixty to seventy children die annually in the workplace1 and 

another 230,000 are injured.2 Yet, the Department’s Wage and Hour Division had 

thirty-five percent fewer employee hours dedicated to child labor investigations in 

2006 than it did in 2001.3

The need to better protect working children is particularly evident in the agricultural sector. In fact, children working in agriculture are six times more likely to die 

on the job than youth working in non-agricultural occupations.4 Agricultural work 

is more dangerous for youth in part because the law affords weaker protections for 

children working in this field compared to protections provided to children working 

in other industries. 

Under the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), children working outside of agriculture are not allowed to perform tasks deemed by the Secretary of Labor to be 

particularly hazardous. However, that same statute allows youth aged sixteen- and 

seventeen-years-old to perform hazardous tasks in agriculture. 

This dangerous double-standard may have made more sense seventy years ago, 

when twenty-five percent of Americans lived on farms and when many of those children working in the fields were doing so on their families’ lands. In 2008, however, 

only roughly two percent of Americans live on farms, and farm laborers are often 

migrant workers unrelated to the farm’s owners. Working in farms and orchards 

sprayed with carcinogenic pesticides and groomed by dangerous machinery, child 

farmworkers are exposed to serious risk of injury, illness or death. 

The FLSA not only fails to ensure the safety of children when they are working 

in agriculture, it also fails to guarantee that these children have the same educational opportunities as children working in other industries. Other than prohibiting children from working during school hours, current federal law allows farmworker youth to work unlimited hours before and after school, and on weekends 

when school is in session. By contrast, on school days, fourteen- and fifteen-yearold children working in non-agricultural jobs are prohibited from working more than 

three hours a day or past 7:00 in the evening. Similarly, these children are prohibited from working a total of more than eighteen hours a week when school is in session. 

The result of this double-standard in federal child labor law is that non-agriculture child workers have time to complete homework and get sufficient rest, while 

child farmworkers do not, therefore often arriving to class exhausted and unprepared. This unfair and irresponsible federal approach to agricultural child labor has 

contributed to a fifty percent dropout rate among those youth who regularly perform 

farm work. 

I have introduced the Children’s Act for Responsible Employment, or ‘‘CARE Act’’, 

to bring labor standards for youth farmworkers in line with the standards that govern the employment of youth in industrial, office and all other settings. This legislaVerDate 0ct 09 2002 08:35 Dec 02, 2008 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00037 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 G:\DOCS\110TH\WP\110-111\44562.TXT HBUD1 PsN: DICK
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tion is created to protect children laboring in America’s fields and orchards from 

needless threats to their health and educational achievement. 

Specifically, the CARE Act raises the standard age for agricultural work to sixteen, matching the standard set for all other industries. As in all other industries, 

under the bill the Secretary of Labor would issue regulations specifying the conditions under which fourteen- and fifteen-year-olds can work in agriculture so that 

their employment does not interfere with the child’s schooling or health and wellbeing. 

The CARE Act also protects our children by strengthening safeguards against pesticide exposure and requiring increased reporting of pesticide use and violations. 

The bill guards against employers turning a blind eye to children working in their 

fields by setting a minimum fine and increasing the maximum penalties for child 

labor violations. And because there is currently little information on the challenges 

that child agricultural laborers face, the CARE Act will require a greater level of 

data collection from employers on injuries, illness and deaths of these young workers. 

Madam Chair, we must do everything in our power here at home to protect the 

rights, safety and educational future of all our children. It is tragic that children 

who work in agriculture, one of this country’s most dangerous occupations, are less 

protected under U.S. law and have fewer educational opportunities than juveniles 

working in other safer occupations. 

This hearing represents a crucial first step to educating the public about the need 

for increased enforcement of our existing child labor laws and the unacceptable double-standard in our child labor laws. Thank you for your efforts to protect America’s 

youth. 

[Whereupon, at 12:25 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]

Æ