Nearly half of all child labor violations in the agriculture industry since 1995 have occurred in grain, fruit and vegetable farming. A review of Department of Labor data reveals these crop production sectors have consistently topped violations over the past two decades.
Other major sectors of the agriculture industry with violations in the past two decades include baked goods manufacturers, meatpacking companies and contract companies that hire temporary labor for agricultural production.
The North American Industry Classification System, a federally used standard for categorizing industries, sorts all forms of grain, fruit, vegetables, tree, nut, and other harvesting and planting as a single, high-level definition: crop production.
This slice of agricultural jobs includes anything from corn detasseling to watermelon harvesting, accounting for 49% of all child labor violations fined by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration for the last two decades.
Meatpacking companies have accounted for 13% of all agriculture child labor violations. Tyson Foods and Mar-Jac Poultry of Georgia have been investigated by the Department of Labor for alleged child labor violations in recent years, some of which have been tied to fatal incidents.
The Department of Labor, OSHA’s umbrella agency, has increased issuing violations and fines for breaking federal child labor laws in recent years.
The time to close child labor violation cases across agriculture and food manufacturing industries varies widely, with some taking years to resolve.
Investigate Midwest compiled more than two decades of Department of Labor violations data into a searchable database. Incidents are sortable and searchable by company name, state, length of time to close a case, year the labor violations closed, and agriculture sectors.
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