Rural kids, parents angry about Labor Dept. rule banning farm chores

[WestVirginiaRebel]

Daily Caller:

A proposal from the Obama administration to prevent children from doing farm chores has drawn plenty of criticism from rural-district members of Congress. But now it’s attracting barbs from farm kids themselves.

The Department of Labor is poised to put the finishing touches on a rule that would apply child-labor laws to children working on family farms, prohibiting them from performing a list of jobs on their own families’ land.

Under the rules, children under 18 could no longer work “in the storing, marketing and transporting of farm product raw materials.”

“Prohibited places of employment,” a Department press release read, “would include country grain elevators, grain bins, silos, feed lots, stockyards, livestock exchanges and livestock auctions.”

The new regulations, first proposed August 31 by Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, would also revoke the government’s approval of safety training and certification taught by independent groups like 4-H and FFA, replacing them instead with a 90-hour federal government training course.

Rossie Blinson, a 21-year-old college student from Buis Creek, N.C., told The Daily Caller that the federal government’s plan will do far more harm than good.

“The main concern I have is that it would prevent kids from doing 4-H and FFA projects if they’re not at their parents’ house,” said Blinson.

“I started showing sheep when I was four years old. I started with cattle around 8. It’s been very important. I learned a lot of responsibility being a farm kid.”

In Kansas, Cherokee County Farm Bureau president Jeff Clark was out in the field — literally on a tractor — when TheDC reached him. He said if Solis’s regulations are implemented, farming families’ labor losses from their children will only be part of the problem.

“What would be more of a blow,” he said, “is not teaching our kids the values of working on a farm.”

________

 

What's next? Declaring housework to be paid income?

[Rheo]

What's next? Declaring housework to be paid income?

Ok, this one I could get behind and support.

[nickydog]

What's next? Declaring housework to be paid income?

Ok, this one I could get behind and support.

 

Yeah, that one sounded pretty good to me, too. My neighbor told me today that she looked into hiring a cleaning service for twice a month and it was going to cost $150 for 3 hours each time they came -- $25 an hour for two cleaners. I told Mr.n. when he got home tonight that I was worth a lot of money and he laughed nervously.

[WestVirginiaRebel]

Maybe the government can give me back pay for the grass I cut when I was younger...

[pollyannaish]

You guys. Thinking so small.

 

 

I'm holding out until I can get paid for breathing.

[RandyM]

This is just another example of how totally clueless people in DC really are concerning real life.

[pollyannaish]

This is just another example of how totally clueless people in DC really are concerning real life.

 

It really is. I am 47, but I started working at a "real" job when I was 12. I live in a rural community. The best employer in town is a Strawberry farm that hires preteens and early teens. You learn to work hard for your money. It will pretty much devastate them if this sort of thing goes into effect.

 

I was fortunate in that I got a job working in the purchasing department at the local hospital. I was 13 when I started that and was capable enough to do the entire ordering (under supervision of course) by the time I was 14. By 17, I'd gotten a job as a personal assistant for the elderly.

 

What's interesting is that those jobs do not pay well for adults, but what they do not pay in money they pay in experience. And they paid very well for a kid trying to make it through college. I worked 40 hours a week and took a full load. I learned to work hard.

 

Now there have been downsides, but I can tell you that trying to find situations like this for my own children has been incredibly difficult. It's not like they are going to spend their non working time studying. And interestingly I've discovered that the more they work, the better their grades. As parents, we have been beside ourselves. Any work available to kids comes with so much government red tape, that most places don't want to bother with it because it costs them to much. And you have to pay extra for 15 year olds to handle dangerous chemicals....like Windex and bathroom cleaner. Ugh!

 

Fortunately, my children have been able to find work at the schools they attend (as well as the community college in the summer) but they started at 15 instead of 12 and they are not learning the same things I did, despite their hard work.

 

Anyway, this really touches a nerve with me. It's almost like the government is determined to make us all wards of the state forever. Surprise, surprise.

 

/rant of old person.

[SrWoodchuck]

You guys. Thinking so small.

 

 

I'm holding out until I can get paid for breathing.

Minus any penalties for exhaling CO2?

[SrWoodchuck]

I grew up in Billings & Glendive, Montana. My grandfather homesteaded in Columbus, Montana & had a house in town there, on the banks of the Yellowstone River....and a horse/cattle ranch & wheat fields above the small town of Absarokee. It is where my mom & her 3 brothers were raised. I used to ride horses & motorcycles there, during round-up & help during harvest, by driving grain trucks, from the fields, into the Columbus Co-op Silos. This was when I was 8 to 12 years old. My first job in Colorado was removing 100 year old barb wire fence & putting in new 3 strand, and iron posts instead of the rickety wooden posts. I drove a 1949 Ford PU, for the rancher, whose property covered Mt. Vernon....close to where I live now.

 

I see a much more sinister reason for this government intrusion. Progressives see us as "sheeple" incapable of knowing what is good for us, and certainly not capable of governing ourselves. This is a part of a Soros [new major investments in US farmland & government grain storage facilities] & the UN's Agenda 21. Their ideal is to see all Americans in "sustainable" communities, which is why the Obama government has been utilizing the Dept. of the Interior to cancel oil & grazing leases, and restrict recreational areas owned by the US government. The end game is the destruction of family farms, followed by government / corporate ownership & operation. If you think that higher energy costs are terrible.....higher food costs are already here. Sweet E does price changes for a food retailer....they raise prices before lowering them for a sale....and then after the sale, they go back up to the increased price. Packaging has changed to a "new & improved" smaller packaging....for the same price. OJ that was 64 ounces.....is now 59 ounces. Laundry soap? Why are they now liquid or a "pod?" So they can give you less product, for the same price or more. If the government wasn't skewering food costs as part of inflation, there'd be a consumer revolt.

 

Agenda 21 {Insidious & coming, unless we stop Obama, progressives & the UN-we'll have no private property, no firearms, no vehicles & no control over our lives}

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiQmwiRPVLE&feature=player_embedded

[Casino67]

I don't remember who I was listening to last nite, but someone said that this was another payoff to the unions.

 

Without family help, more workers will have to be hired, increasing the pool of workers to be unionized. Can you imagine the Jolly Green Giant going on strike?

 

The slimiest administration in modern times.