Sec. 5 BUSINESS 1ler Courler-Tlmes-Telegraph SUNDAY, DECEMBER 14, 1997 3 I A Page 1, Section 5 li Continued From "If they are, that's against the law and they're gone they don't supply to Campbell Soup said spokesman Kevin Lowery. i Although the number of children traced to any one company was small, there are uncounted thousands of boys and girls like Angel, Vielesee and Bruce. No one knows just how many because no one, the federal government included, has tried to count them all. To make an estimate, the AP had Rutgers University labor economist Douglas L.
Kruse analyze monthly census surveys and other workplace and population data collected by the federal government. His study estimates that 290,200 children were employed unlawfully last year. Some were older teens working a few too many hours in after-school jobs. But also among them were 59,600 children under age 14 and 13,100 who worked in garment sweatshops, defined as factories with repeated labor violations. Other estimates: Close to 4 percent of all 12- to 17-year-olds working in any given week were employed illegally.
Employers saved $155 million in wages last year by hiring underage children instead of legal ers- Kruse's study could not account for all children who work illegally because available data are limited. For example, census-takers, like labor enforcement agents, have trouble finding the very kids who are among the most easily exploited: children of migrant workers, illegal immigrants and the very young. Even so, U.S. Labor Secretary Alexis Herman called the study more comprehensive than anything her department had produced. She said the APs numbers, and the young faces behind them, highlight a home-grown version of what hours on this October day; yanking chilies from the plants and dropping them with hollow thumps into his mother's bucket.
Follow the chilies, and the trail leads to Texas, to a processor that makes Old El Paso salsa for Pills-bury. The processor also supplies a California plant operated by Canti-sano Foods, which makes salsa for the Newman's Own label. Told of this by the AP, actor Paul Newman, founder of the company, flew to New Mexico last weekend to investigate. Cantisano said that, at Newman's request, it had stopped doing business with the Texas supplier. If his company can't ensure that ingredients are produced without child labor, Newman said, "weH have to eliminate the product." Newman said the situation is ironic, considering that his company gave $9 million to charities this year, much of it to help children.
"Even though we weren't aware of these infractions, I suppose we should have been," he said. In a later interview, he added, "What you found is probably significant." LXI A century ago, more than 2 million children labored in America's factories, fields and mines. The wisdom of the day regarded them as miniature adults, each one a potential Horatio Alger hero who could rise to riches through hard work and perseverance. In the early 1900s, however, public opinion moved toward a dimmer view of child labor: In 1938, Congress declared an end to "oppressive child labor," the most onerous forms of children's work, by enacting the Fair Labor Standards Act. Since its passage, child labor has declined, although it is far from eradicated.
Kruse's study, which began with 1970s figures, shows the number of illegal child workers dropping until recently, but leveling off since 1995. Responsibility extends beyond the child's employer. Under the federal law, the taint of illegal child labor clings to a product from the workplace to the final packager or distributor. Toss a bucket of cucumbers AP Photo MONICA GARCIA KEEPS AN EYE ON HER 4-YEAR-OLD SON, ANGEL OLIVERAS The Two Are Picking Red Chilies In Berino, N.M.; Angel Is Part Of A Hidden Web Of Child Labor like animals," he said. "Its not right that the children work.
But we have to do it." Some employers on whose property the AP saw underage children working denied breaking the law, even when presented with photographs of the activity. Others blamed the kids and their parents. Far from being anomalies, those young faces are windows into a larger, seldom-seen population of child workers, say those most familiar with child labor, including migrant-education workers, union organizers, priests and school teachers. "They are in the dark alleys of the big cities," or "down a dirt road," said Linda F. Golodner, co-chairwoman of the Washington-based Child Labor Coalition.
But the products they produce can make their way to the store down the street. times the 35 that U.S. Labor Department inspectors witnessed nationwide last year, according to the department's computer records. Underage children picked cucumbers in Michigan, green peppers in Tennessee, and apples in upstate New York. Their grape-cutting knives flashed in the sunny vineyards of California, and their head lamps bobbed in the gloomy mushroom sheds of Pennsylvania.
They hoed sorghum in Lubbock, Texas. On a simmering July day near Bowling Green, Ohio, Pasqual Mares looked sadly at his 10-year-old daughter Laura, her back bent over a row of cucumbers. In a full week of harvest work, Mares said, he and his wife and their two working children had earned just $120 far below the normal minimum wage. "Someday, I want my children to be treated like human beings, not AUTO HOME 1938 Law To Protect Working Children Has Simple Goal, Complex Execution LIFE HEALTH AMERICAN NATIONAL picked on an Ohio farm by 10-year-old Laura Mares into a truckload harvested by adults, and the entire load becomes "hot goods." So do any pickles or relish made from it. Even with such strong laws, America's youngest workers remain among us.
Drive past the right farm at the right time of year, walk down the right street, and there they are. In New York City, for example, young teens in work boots wait on a busy Brooklyn boulevard, peddling their labor to construction bosses who cruise by in vans. Despite agriculture's more relaxed labor standards, it was on farms that the AP most often found illegal child labor, including extreme cases: the youngest workers toiling the longest hours for the least pay. Reporters saw 104 children work-, ing illegally in agriculture in the past five months nearly three they may work no more than 3 hours on a school day, 18 hours in a school week, 8 hours on a non-school day, or 40 hours in a non-school week. They must not work later than 7 p.m.
on school nights or 9 p.m. on other nights. Twelve- and 13-year-olds are barred from most jobs, but may work outside school hours on their parents' farms, or on other farms with parental consent. Children under 12 are barred from nearly all employment but may work on their parents farms. They also may work on small farms that are exempt from federal minimum wage rules, as long as they have written parental consent.
Federal child labor law applies only to employers who are engaged in interstate commerce. Employers whose products never leave the state, and whose sales come to less than $500,000 annually, are exempt. ft 0 lj A UUUUVU 597-8302 2737 S. 3iwadwwf Suite ICC the Clinton administration and corporate leaders have addressed largely as a foreign problem. "I don't think that we can lead from a position of integrity and be a world leader if our own domestic house is not in order she said.
Jim Sinegal, president of Costco Wholesale said his company has monitored overseas suppliers for years to avoid products made with child labor. However, the company acknowledged buying cherries from a packing plant in Washington state where Flor Trujillo, 15, and six other child workers under 16 were sickened by carbon monoxide last July. Children under 16 are prohibited by federal law from working in such plants. "We obviously have to take a look a little closer to home," Sinegal said. Look to a bustling street in New York City's borough of Queens, where Koon-yu Chow, 15, was found stitching dresses at a garment factory sewing machine last summer.
Dresses were being made for Betsy's Things, a label sold at Sears, until state labor investigators inspected the place and Betsy's Things took its business elsewhere. 1 Walk into Grayson Sewing in Sherman. There, Vielesee was one of seven children federal investigators found folding and bagging dresses up to 12 hours a day. All seven were under 14; the youngest was 9. J.C.
Penney acknowledged making two purchases of garments from Grayson, a company investigators called a sweatshop. Rise before dawn to join Angel and six other children under 12 in a New Mexico field. "Hurry up, son," Angel's mother called. "It's time to pick." The 4-year-old pushed back an adult-sized baseball cap from his eyes and turned to the work that would occupy him for the next eight DODGE: Carlos Howell, Golden; Willie Harrison; Thomas Worley, Longview. KAWASAKI: Michael Johnson; Cliford France, Hawkins.
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