Policies and Regulations Affecting the Agriculture, Forestry, and Fishing Workforce - Agriculture Forestry and Fishing Research at NIOSH - page 306

• Minors 12 and 13 years old may work outside school hours with written
parental consent or on farms where parents are employed.
• Minors under 12 years old may work outside school hours with written
parental consent on farms not subject to the minimum wage.
• Local minors 10 and 11 years old may work outside school hours under
prescribed conditions to hand-harvest crops with short harvesting seasons for
not more than 8 weeks from June 1 to October 15 on approval by the Secretary
of Labor of an employer's application for a waiver from the child labor provisions
for employment of such children.
As described in a special report on child labor in agriculture prepared by the
General Accounting Office (GAO, now the Government Accountability Office) in
response to a specific request from Congress (GAO, 1998),
a 13-year-old may not, under federal law, be employed to perform clerical
work in an office but may be employed to pick strawberries in a field. A
16-year-old may not operate a power saw or a forklift in a warehouse but
may operate either on a farm. . . . Under current law, a 14-year-old hired
to work in a retail establishment may work only between the hours of 7
a.m. and 7 p.m. (9 p.m. in the summer) and may not work more than 18
hours in a school week or 3 hours in a school day; the same child may work
an unlimited number of hours picking grapes as long as he or she is not
working during school hours.
The GAO report concludes, “children may work in agriculture in circumstances
that would be illegal in other industries.”
Some may be under the mistaken impression that those statutory exemptions
apply only to children of farmers or ranchers. It was undoubtedly the case in 1938
when the FLSA was enacted that the exemptions were intended mostly to benefit
family-operated farms, but small-scale family farms are no longer the major fac-
tor in agricultural production, as was the case 70 years ago. In fact, most children
who work in agriculture today are hired laborers. The GAO report finds that an
estimated 155,000 15- to 17-year-olds worked in agriculture in 1997, and 116,000
of these were hired farm laborers; only 39,000 were self-employed and unpaid
family workers (GAO, 1998).
EXEMPTIONS OF HIRED FARM LABOR FROM
OVERTIME AND MINIMUM-WAGE RULES
Under the FLSA, employers are generally required to compensate workers at no
less than 1.5 times the regular pay rate for any employment in any workweek after