Read FLOC President Baldemar Velasquez’s Op-Ed in The Hill on Child Labor

Legislation like HR 1848, which prohibits children from working in tobacco-related agriculture would certainly improve the situation of migrant worker children, however, such legislation fails to address the real issues at hand. As President Velasquez writes in his op-ed, “In the 46 years I’ve been organizing farm workers, the only effective remedy for ending this cycle has been to extend to farmworkers the same basic labor rights enjoyed by other sectors. Given that opportunity, the workers themselves will bargain away the precarious wages and job insecurity that drives poverty, hunger, and child labor.”