Archived News Release — Caution: Information may be out of date.

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF LABOR

ESA Press Release: "Salad Bowl" Growers Get the Message about Child Labor [03/25/1999]

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The Labor Department conducted 547 investigations in "salad bowl" commodities lettuce, onions, tomatoes, cucumbers and garlic -- in 1998 and found 69 minors working in the fields. The investigations were part of targeted enforcement to combat child labor in agriculture.

"Our salad bowl initiative tells growers that we are serious about ending child labor in the fields," Secretary of Labor Alexis M. Herman said. "We follow a tough strategy of targeted investigations, court orders and our hot goods' authority to get growers' attention. We will continue to hold agricultural employers responsible."

Last year's salad bowl activities continued a multi-year initiative of targeted enforcement in salad bowl commodities. The crops are labor-intensive, hand-harvested and grown in most of the country. Labor law violations have been common.

The department has "hot goods" authority under the Fair Labor Standards Act to stop the interstate shipment of goods made in violation of the law. "Just the threat of stopping shipments of perishable food products is an effective tool," said John Fraser, acting administrator of the department's Wage and Hour Division. "We found that employers are more responsive to correcting problems and complying with the law."

In court actions taken during the 1998 fiscal year which ended last Sept. 30, the department obtained a consent decree forcing a Louisiana farm to stop employing children to pick strawberries. When the department sought a temporary restraining order against a Texas grower who hired 10 children, ages 6 to 11, to pick onions, the grower paid a $9,600 fine and signed a compliance monitoring agreement to ensure that children would not be employed.

"The compliance monitoring contract is another tool for holding growers responsible for following the law," Fraser said. "We now have more than 30 such agreements with producers, processors and packers who will monitor all of their operations for violations of child labor and other labor laws."

"In all agricultural investigations, we found nearly half of the employers violated at least some part of the Fair Labor Standards Act or the Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Worker Protection Act," Herman said. "At the same time that we are taking a tough stand through the courts and the use of hot goods, we are doing more to encourage voluntary compliance. We've asked several major producers to work with us to clean up this industry."

During 1998, the department conducted more than 2,000 investigations as part in agriculture and assessed fines totaling nearly $1 million.

Archived News Release — Caution: Information may be out of date.