To the editor: After studying this text, my first thought was that it boggles the thoughts that California’s $61-billion agricultural business might fail on so many ranges to guard essentially the most susceptible amongst its workforce, youngsters (“California’s youngster farmworkers: Exhausted, underpaid and toiling in poisonous fields,” Nov. 20). Then it occurred to me: Possibly that’s exactly the driving drive behind the business’s wealth and revenue within the first place.
The article factors out the systemic failures of varied oversight businesses which have allowed the business to show a blind eye to laws like work permits, warmth sickness coaching, entry to shade and funky water and publicity to pesticides. These violations impose harmful circumstances, not solely on the adults within the subject but additionally their youngsters. It’s heartbreaking to listen to from these youngsters who share their goals of a greater life, aspiring to have careers in medication or the army, for instance.
I’m wondering if a coverage to carry state businesses extra accountable for imposing labor violations might have a two-fold profit the place social justice is anxious. Making a concerted effort to recoup uncollected fines would incentivize business leaders to guard the well being and welfare of their workforce whereas additionally offering sources to fund youngster laborers’ possibilities at a greater future.
This may very well be efficient for a number of causes. First, it will pay for itself. Second, it will create incentive for the agricultural business to be accountable for the well being and security of its employees. And third, it might go towards making a grant, maybe by way of the UC system, to permit youngster subject employees an opportunity to succeed in their skilled goals.
Carolyn Franco, Saint Michaels, Md.
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To the editor: We weren’t shocked by the exposé about youngster farmworkers. My group has been devoted to eradicating exploitative youngster labor since its founding in 1899. We recurrently host summer season interns — former youngster farmworkers — who describe the excruciating warmth, 10-hour days, pesticide publicity, poverty wages and lack of contemporary water and bogs.
California can deal with this drawback by elevating the minimal age for farmwork from 12 to 14. Federal laws to perform this — the Youngsters’s Act for Accountable Employment — was reintroduced Nov. 20 by California Rep. Raul Ruiz.
California isn’t residing as much as its fame for treating farmworkers pretty with correct considerations about their youth and vulnerability. It was wealthy to learn these surprising tales juxtaposed subsequent to a quote from the California Farm Bureau denying the plain: the ubiquity and tragedy of youngsters who decide our fruit and veggies.
Sally Greenberg, Washington, D.C.
This author is chair of the Baby Labor Coalition and CEO of the Nationwide Shoppers League.
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To the editor: Having labored as a United Farm Staff organizer within the Sixties and at present with the Nationwide Day Labor Organizing Community, I clearly see there may be little or no state enforcement of labor legal guidelines in California. Individuals need low cost labor and they’ll at all times get it. However my recommendation is: Don’t mourn, don’t whine, manage!
Mark Day, Carlsbad
