US: Lopez Bill Targets Child Labor on Tobacco Farms

Source from:  Richmond (VA) Times-Dispatch 02/05/2015

The House Commerce and Labor Committee on Tuesday defeated a measure to ban the hiring of children to work with tobacco on Virginia farms.
Del. Alfonso H. Lopez, D-Arlington, introduced the measure, alarmed by a report released by Human Rights Watch last year documenting child labor on U.S. tobacco farms.

"Young children should not be working in direct contact with tobacco. They are especially vulnerable to nicotine poisoning due to their size and stage of development," he said earlier Tuesday during a news conference at the Capitol.

House Bill 1906 would have prohibited the hiring of children younger than 18 to work in direct contact with tobacco plants or dry tobacco leaves. But it would have exempted children who are working under "parental consent" on a family farm, Lopez said.

Norma Flores Lopez, director of the Children in the Fields Campaign at the Association of Farmworker Opportunity Programs, said as many as 500,000 children in the U.S. are hired to labor in fields.

"While a 12-year-old is not allowed to work in an air-conditioned office, this same 12-year-old is able to work 10- to 12-hour days on a tobacco farm, and it is legal today in Virginia," Flores Lopez said.

State law does not prevent children ages 14 to 17 from working on a tobacco farm, and children younger than 14 are allowed to work on such a farm if they have parental consent, regardless of whether the farm is family-owned. Enditem