PROPOSED CHANGES TO CHILD AGRICULTURAL LABOR REGULATIONSClaire Layman,

Public Policy Education Specialist

Stan Moore,

Dairy Educator

Chat Pod

Where have you received your information about these proposed regulations?

Regulations v. statue• Statues governing child labor found under the Fair Labor

Standards Act• FLSA prohibits employment of youth (<18) in hazardous

occupations, but makes exceptions for youth (16-17 year olds) in Ag hazardous occupations.

• Further allowances made for 14-15 year-olds in agriculture under Code of Federal Regulations, administered by the Department of Labor

• Proposed regulations must be open for public comment for a specific time

Why?• Safety regulations for young hired farm workers have

been in place since the 1970’s.

• DOL says want to bring safety standards for ag youth workers up to the same standards as non-ag youth workers.

Why?

During the 1990s, about 4% of all working youth were employed in agriculture (including forestry and fishing), but they experienced over 40% of the youth occupational fatalities.

(Source: Government Accounting Office Report 98-193, Child Labor in Agriculture, August 1998, pp. 22-23).

Why?• Fatalities among young people working in agriculture are

most likely to occur among the very youngest workers. • About three-fourths of occupational fatalities in self-

employed jobs were in agriculture and more than half the deaths in agriculture occurred in family businesses.

(Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics Report on the Youth Labor Force [2000], p. 58.)

Who?• “Young hired farm workers”– age 14 and 15• 16 and 17 year olds and up allowed to work without hours

or time restrictions, with few exceptions• Estimated 56,000 youth to whom these regulations would

apply

Who?• Does not include youth covered under the parental

exemption provision of the FLSA• DOL says the intent all along has been to exempt only the

youth who are directly supervised by a parent. • “Person standing in parent” also could use parental

exemption.

Who?• “Hired” = in an “employment relationship”• Current regulations say “employ” means to suffer or

permit to work.• Proposed regs point to a definition of “employment

relationship” in a DOL document excludes volunteer work or work done that is mostly educational and for the benefit of the participant

Parental Exemption, con’t• “Parent or person standing in place of a parent” must

directly supervise youth. • “Person standing in place of a parent” must be

responsible for the youth’s “rearing, safety, health, and well-being.”

• Corporation, school, institution or nonprofit cannot count as a parent figure. Must be a human being.

For example

14-year-old staying with grandparents for the summer. They pay her to work on their farm.

Meet the parental exemption standard?

For example• Example: youth raising sheep on 4-H leader’s farm, who

sells the animal at fair for a profit• Would this youth fall under the proposed regulations?

(can respond in chat pod)

For example

16-year-old works on a farm jointly owned by his parents and his aunt and uncle. The youth does not live on the farm. His uncle operates the farm and supervises the youth.

Would he be subject to these regulations?

Two, Non-Ag Regulations:Farm-Product Wholesale Trade Industry

1. Prohibit youth under 18 from working in the “farm product raw-material wholesale trade industry”: commercial silos, feedlots, and grain elevators and bins, feed lots, feed yards, stockyards, livestock exchanges and livestock auctions.

• Would not include office work, or sorting, weighing, packaging and shipping fruits and vegetables.

Two-way communication

2. Would prohibit use of two-way communication devices when operating or assisting operation of machinery. • Includes talking, listening, or participating in an electronic

conversation, using or accessing the Internet, sending or receiving text messages, email, chats, instant messages, playing video games or entering data into a GPS. Does not include listening to music or other info on one-way, non-interactive device, such as Ipod, as long as device is being operated hands-free without earbuds.

What: Proposed Ag Regs for 14-15 year old hired farm workers

Operation of Ag TractorsStudent Learner Exemption: 14 and 15 year old Young Hired Farm Workers

  Current Proposed

Operating a tractor  

Takes a tractor safety course through 4-H (10 hours) and passes a written and demonstration test on tractor operation, ORHas taken at least 15 hours (one quarter) of vo-ag instruction and passes a written and demonstration test on tractor operation.

Exemption under 4-H program not allowed. Student learner would have to be currently enrolled in a vo-ag program and have completed 90 hours of instruction that would cover tractor safety and operation.

Connecting or disconnecting a tractor implement

Permitted under the student learner exemption

Permitted under the proposed student learner exemption and if tractor met safety standards

Riding on a tractor as a passenger or helper

Permitted under the student learner exemption

Not permitted, even with student learner exemption

Safety Standards for tractors

• Would apply only to those tractors driven by young hired farm workers who fall under student learner exemption

• Ag tractor would have to be equipped with roll-over protection and seatbelts, and met OSHA standards.

Non-Ag tractors, power-driven machinery

• Young hired farm workers would not be permitted to operate or assist in operating any power machinery, including battery-powered or animal-powered machinery.

• Power machinery would include almost everything, excluding office machines and lawn and garden tractors.

• Operating would include anything that involved contact with the machinery.

• Consistent with prohibition found in non-ag regulations.

Power Machinery: student learnerStudent Learner Exemption: 14 and 15 year old Young Hired Farm Workers

  Current Proposed

Operating power machinery

Student learner may operate or assist to operate any of the following machines: corn picker, cotton picker, grain combine, hay mower, forage harvester, hay baler, potato digger, or mobile pea viner; Feed grinder, crop dryer, forage blower, auger conveyor, or the unloading mechanism of a nongravity-type self-unloading wagon or trailer; or power post-hole digger, power post driver, or nonwalking type rotary tiller, trencher, earthmoving equipment; fork lift; Potato combine; or Power-driven circular, band, or chain saw. 

Student learner could operate harvesting and threshing machinery, balers, grain combines, reapers, plowing and planting machinery, mowing and swathing, post hole diggers, power post drivers, non-walking rotary tillers if she had taken classroom instruction on that machine.

Prohibited Power Equipment, no student learner exemptionautomobiles, buses, or trucks, including serving as an outside helper on such motor vehicles; all terrain vehicles, scooters, and motorcycles; trenching or earthmoving equipment, including back hoes and bulldozers; loaders, including skid steer loaders, front end loaders, and Bobcats; milking equipment; potato combines; hoisting equipment, including cranes, derricks, highlift trucks, fork lifts, hoists, and manlifts; woodworking machines; feed grinders; circular, reciprocating, band, and chainsaws; wood chippers and abrasive cutting discs; metal forming, punching, and shearing machines; welding equipment; augers; auger conveyors; conveyors; irrigation equipment; rotary tillers, walking type; crop dryers; and the unloading mechanism of a nongravity-type self-unloading wagon or trailer.

YHFW as passengers

Current regulations do not speak to this.

The proposal would permit minors under 16 to ride as passengers in automobiles, trucks, and buses, on public roads and private property, provided all of the following are met:

1. each minor would have to have his or her own seat in the passenger compartment

2. each seat would have to be equipped with a seat belt, the employer would have to instruct the minors that such belts or other restraining device must be used while riding, and the minor would have to actually use the seat belt.

3. each driver must hold a state driver’s license.

Human-powered equipment• YHFW prohibited from operating or assisting hoisting

equipment (such as manlifts and boatswain-chair devices used in grain storage elevators) and conveyers.

• Would also prohibit YHFM from serving as “spotters” when this equipment is being used

Working with or around live animals

Currently

1. Could not be in stall or pen with live, non-castrated animal older than six months.

2. Could not engage in or assist with animal husbandry or activities that inflict pain, such as branding, breeding, dehorning, vaccinating, castrating, or tending to sick animals.

3. Could not herd animals on horseback.

Proposed

YHFW prohibited from being in a yard, pen, or stall with a bull, boar, or stud horse; or with a sow with suckling pigs.

Timber Operations

Currently

• Permits this work if timber is six inches or less in diameter.

Proposed

• Would prevent YHFW from felling, bucking, skidding, loading or unloading timber, or removing dead tree stumps other than manually.

Working at elevations

Currently

• Prohibited from working on a ladder or scaffold at an elevation greater than 20’

• Student learner exemption

Proposed

• Proposal would expand to include prohibition on roofs; farm structures including silos, grain bins, windmills, and towers; and vehicles, machines, and implements.

• Would lower permissible height to 6’

• DOL seeking comment on this.

Construction, Public Utilities, wrecking and demo, communications• New regulation• Would prohibit YHFW from any paid work in the above

occupations• Would not include office work

Work inside a Fruit, Forage, Grain Silos or Bins, and Manure Pits

Current

• YHFW can’t work in these facilities if they are designed to maintain an oxygen-free or toxic atmosphere

• May not work in manure pits

• May not enter a silo within two weeks after silage added

Proposal

• Would expand current regulation to include all work inside these facilities

• DOH asking if this should be expanded to include other confined spaces.

Handling Pesticides• Would prohibit YHFM from doing any work that the EPA

would classify as work performed by a “pesticide handler.” • “pesticide” would be define as it is in the Federal

Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act. • Includes mixing, loading, transferring, applying disposing

of, handling, cleaning, adjusting and assisting with pesticides or implements that may contain pesticide residue, but does not include any person handling pesticide containers that have been emptied and cleaned according to pesticide product labeling.

Employment in Ag under Adverse Conditions

• DOL considering creating a new Ag reg that would limit the exposure of YHFW to extreme temps and/or arduous conditions.

• Seeking comment from stakeholders on how to best protect young workers from heat-related illness and injury.

How to Comment• Electronically (strongly encouraged): www.regulations.gov

. All comments made will be public, including your name.• Snail mail discouraged. • Entire document may be found at www.regulations.gov, as

well as directions for submitting by snail mail.

• Deadline to comment extended until Dec 1, 2011• DOL has 60 days to finalize the regulations

More information• Current regulations: www.youthrules.gov (go to “Additional

Resources” tab, “Agricultural Youth Employment”)

• DOL Wage and Hour Fact Sheet on proposed rules: http://www.dol.gov/whd/CL/whdfsNPRM.htm

• Iowa State University, Center for Ag Law and Taxation: (fact sheet) http://www.calt.iastate.edu/proposedrules.html