"Child Labor in the USA" - Why wont the Pres Obama Admin do anything?

[rhett o rick]

From TheNation.com: http://www.thenation.com/article/177152/child-labor-usa

The Labor Department seemed ready to address this problem during President Obama’s first term, proposing a variety of safety measures for young agricultural laborers—and an outright ban on children working on tobacco farms. But in 2012, after a furious and deceptive lobbying campaign by farm conglomerates, the Labor Department rescinded all of its proposed rules—at the request of the White House—and even vowed not to revisit the issue for the rest of Obama’s second term. Because of this reversal, which stunned public health advocates, at least four young workers have lost their lives, as Strauss documents here.

I wonder what the back-story is.

[KoKo]

1. Couldn't read at "Nation Link" (behind PayWall) so, I did some Searching..

Thanks for posting this because I didn't realize this about the Farm Labor Bill and his actions. But, here's some interesting info I found that might answer why he backed off:

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"Obama, should strengthen rules on child farm labor"
By Cristina Traina, Special to CNN

Editor's note: Cristina L.H. Traina is a Public Voices Op Ed fellow and professor at Northwestern University, where she is a scholar of social ethics.

(CNN) -- President Barack Obama should use the breathing space provided by the fiscal-cliff compromise to address some of the issues that he shelved during his last term. One of the most urgent is child farm labor. Perhaps the least protected, underpaid work force in American labor, children are often the go-to workers for farms looking to cut costs.

It's easy to see why. The Department of Labor permits farms to pay employees under 20 as little as $4.25 per hour. (By comparison, the federal minimum wage is $7.25.) And unlike their counterparts in retail and service, child farm laborers can legally work unlimited hours at any hour of day or night.

The numbers are hard to estimate, but between direct hiring, hiring through labor contractors, and off-the-books work beside parents or for cash, perhaps 400,000 children, some as young as 6, weed and harvest for commercial farms. A Human Rights Watch 2010 study shows that children laboring for hire on farms routinely work more than 10 hours per day.

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Farm parents, their children, and the American Farm Bureau objected strenuously to the proposed new rules. Although children working on their parents' farms would specifically have been exempted from them, it was partly in response to worries about government interference in families and loss of opportunities for children to learn agricultural skills that the Obama administration shelved them.

Whatever you think of family farms, however, many child agricultural workers don't work for their parents or acquaintances. Despite exposure to all the hazards, these children never learn the craft of farming, nor do most of them have the legal right to the minimum wage. And until the economy stabilizes, the savings farms realize by hiring children makes it likely that even more of them will be subject to the dangers of farm work.

We have a responsibility for their safety. As one of the first acts of his new term, Obama should reopen the child agricultural labor proposal he shelved in spring of 2012. Surely, farm labor standards for children can be strengthened without killing off 4-H or Future Farmers of America.

Much More of Good Report on CNN about this:

http://www.cnn.com/2013/01/17/opinion/traina-child-farm-labor/index.html


And,these two articles show the Right Wing (and probably lobbyists) were all over POB saying he was intruding into families and it seems he caved. Maybe he didn't want to deal with the RW carrying on about his intervention in "Family Farms" or maybe the Big Agribusiness donated heavily to his campaign?


Why the Child Labor Farm Rule was a major Obama Administration mistake

http://www.examiner.com/article/why-the-child-labor-farm-rule-was-a-major-obama-administration-mistake
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Labor Dept. withdraws farm child labor rule after Daily Caller report goes viral

http://dailycaller.com/2012/04/26/amid-nationwide-outcry-labor-dept-withdraws-farm-child-labor-rule/