Denny Rehberg, GOP Congressman And Senate Hopeful, Blasts Child Labor Regulations

Republican Rep. Denny Rehberg (R-Mont.) running for the Senate

 
WASHINGTON -- In a speech expounding on the rift between rural America and Washington D.C., Rep. Denny Rehberg (R-Mont.) vowed Thursday to use his funding powers to stop the Obama administration from implementing new child-labor rules pertaining to agricultural work, accusing the "urban" Labor Department of meddling in a "rural" industry it doesn't understand.

"This is one of those situations where I think the Department of Labor is overstepping its boundaries, its knowledge base, and frankly I think you're sitting around watching reruns of "Blazing Saddles" and that's your interpretation of what goes on in the West," Rehberg, who holds the Labor Department's purse strings for the House of Representatives, said as he lectured a labor official during a hearing Thursday. "And it's not anymore."

Last year, the Labor Department proposed new rules governing what kinds of potentially dangerous tasks minors can and cannot perform on farms and in grain facilities. Although child and worker advocates said the new rules were long overdue, the proposals created an uproar among farmers and agricultural trade groups, who argued that the rules could hurt family-farming traditions.

Although the original proposals largely exempted family farms, the Labor Department bowed yesterday to the farming industry, further widening the exemptions it had already put forward. But that didn't stop Rehberg and GOP members of the House agriculture subcommittee from piling on the department Thursday, using the hearing as an opportunity to put forth their rural bona fides.

Rehberg, a six-term congressman who's running to unseat Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), said he's a fifth-generation Montana rancher whose great grandfather, born in 1873, started breaking horses at age 11. Rehberg said he has "taken all the glamour" out of his ranching operation. "I don't rope and I don't tie and I don't brand with a hot iron," he went on, adding that he uses modern equipment that he said is virtually incapable of hurting children.

"You can't get hurt," Rehberg fumed. "It's impossible. You could have a five-year-old out there running it."
Rehberg added that he's previously employed a 10-year-old neighbor to herd cashmere goats with what he described as a Kawasaki youth motorcycle. "Now would that be exempt under this rule?" Rehberg demanded of Nancy J. Leppink, a deputy administrator in the Labor Department.

But neither Leppink nor Rehberg seemed entirely sure where motorcycle goat-herding would fall under the new rules.

"I've come to the conclusion in my 11 years in Congress that it isn't necessarily a difference in philosophy between Republicans and Democrats -- there's a difference in philosophy between urban and rural," Rehberg said. "I can assure you, as chairman of the appropriations subcommittee on labor, that you haven't seen the last of this. I will have a rider on my appropriations bill that I write for the House of Representatives that will keep you from implementing this rule."

This isn't the first time Rehberg has used his chairman's perch to take aim at workplace regulations. The budget Rehberg proposed in September would have scuttled several safety protections put forth by the Labor Department, including a rule designed to prevent construction workers from falling from rooftops and another rule meant to reduce repetitive-motion injuries.

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My thoughts:

Having done some farm work as a child on some of my cousins and uncles farms back in the 1960s, I can tell you that as a kid I did a lot of what you might consider dangerous jobs. Driving an old tractor before your feet can reach the brake, unless you stand up, sitting on a small board attached by bailing wire to the plow while you cut potatoes and throw them in the farrow between the blade that cuts the farrow and the other blades that covered them up, driving an old pickup truck before you have a drivers license, and operating other machinery that today would be off limits. But these were very small operations compared to today.

Yes, much of the machinery is much safer than half a century ago. So I think there needs to be better assessment of the risk that kids face while working on a family farm and then see if restrictions or manufacturers should address these risks. Of course no one including the parents and farmers want anyone, including children, to be injured or killed on the farm.

I know some of the large implement equipment a very small child could operate once it get going, because its on autopilot with GPS and computer control of the machine, making turns, keeping it in proper position to not harm the crop, they have satellite TV and radio, soft cushion seats, air conditioned, and a refrigerator for food and beverages.

But there are a lot of machines that anyone can get caught up in and cut off a limb or be injured in some way.

So I agree that rural environment regarding child labor is much different that urban and factory work. The family farm has been exempted from most all child labor laws, so to impose this at this time might be unwise until clear data can support revision.

Another consideration is that with the anti-immigration fever running through the Republican controlled states, farmers and ranchers need their kids to work more on the farm and ranches because there are fewer immigrants available to work for similar wages they pay their kids. For a while when there were plenty of immigrants willing to work for the same wages as the kids, then they would do the work and the kids got to be kids more and not subjected to a lot of dangerous conditions.

As young as 15 I was working for a cousin on weekends and during summer breaks who owned a construction company that cleaned up and repaired damage done to homes and businesses for insurance companies. I was around untreated sewage cleaning out homes that had a sewage backup, water damage with mold growing all over, shingling a roof without a harness, using power saws, drills, climbing ladders, walking along scaffolding and walking around dangerous areas. Fortunately I was never injured. But there were plenty of opportunities that I could have been. I did this until I was old enough (17) to work at a small private airport refueling private airplanes, washing and waxing planes, cleaning and mopping the office and terminal (old wood building more like the size of a small bungalow house), refilling the pop and candy vending machines and doing odd jobs as needed. That was a lot of work and very fun. The biggest risk was walking into a moving propeller of a plane as it was taxing or coming up to the fuel pumps or if I had to hand crank the prop while the pilot starts the plane, because it doesn't have an electric starter. Yeah, there were a lot of them back in the 1960s that didn't have starters.

On the other hand, Newt's and some other Republican's who have talked on this subject are wanting to roll back child labor laws so poor black kids can be janitors at their school or I guess at other schools who don't have enough poor black kids to clean their schools. Some others want to allow them to work in factories again, be used much the same as they were in the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century before the most labor laws and especially child labor laws were passed.

With all the out of work adults, to repeal the child labor laws is absolutely crazy.