To the editor: After studying this text, my first thought was that it boggles the thoughts that California’s $61-billion agricultural business may fail on so many ranges to guard probably the most susceptible amongst its workforce, youngsters (“California’s little one farmworkers: Exhausted, underpaid and toiling in poisonous fields,” Nov. 20). Then it occurred to me: Possibly that’s exactly the driving power 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 discipline but in addition their youngsters. It’s heartbreaking to listen to from these youngsters who share their desires of a greater life, aspiring to have careers in medication or the navy, for instance.
I ponder if a coverage to carry state businesses extra accountable for imposing labor violations may have a two-fold profit the place social justice is worried. 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 assets to fund little one 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 staff. And third, it may go towards making a grant, maybe by means of the UC system, to permit little one discipline staff an opportunity to succeed in their skilled desires.
Carolyn Franco, Saint Michaels, Md.
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To the editor: We weren’t shocked by the exposé about little one farmworkers. My group has been devoted to eradicating exploitative little one labor since its founding in 1899. We usually host summer time interns — former little one farmworkers — who describe the excruciating warmth, 10-hour days, pesticide publicity, poverty wages and lack of contemporary water and bathrooms.
California can deal with this downside by elevating the minimal age for farmwork from 12 to 14. Federal laws to perform this — the Kids’s Act for Accountable Employment — was reintroduced Nov. 20 by California Rep. Raul Ruiz.
California just isn’t dwelling as much as its status for treating farmworkers pretty with correct issues 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 apparent: the ubiquity and tragedy of youngsters who choose our fruit and veggies.
Sally Greenberg, Washington, D.C.
This author is chair of the Youngster Labor Coalition and CEO of the Nationwide Shoppers League.
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To the editor: Having labored as a United Farm Employees organizer within the Sixties and presently with the Nationwide Day Labor Organizing Community, I clearly see there may be little or no state enforcement of labor legal guidelines in California. Folks need low-cost labor and they’re going to at all times get it. However my recommendation is: Don’t mourn, don’t whine, set up!
Mark Day, Carlsbad
