Capvin, you keep talking about how innocent this bill is... if that were really so, why do I keep reading the following types of statements in articles from different sources, and why are ag state senators speaking out against it?????
Clark said the regulations are vague and meddlesome.
“It’s so far-reaching,” he exclaimed, “kids would be prohibited from working on anything ‘power take-off’ driven, and anything with a work-height over six feet — which would include the tractor I’m on now.”
The way the regulations are currently written, he added, would prohibit children under 16 from using battery powered screwdrivers, since their motors, like those of a tractor, are defined as “power take-off driven.”
And jobs that could “inflict pain on an animal” would also be off-limits for kids. But “inflicting pain,” Clark explained, is left undefined: If it included something like putting a halter on a steer, 4-H and FFA animal shows would be a thing of the past.
In a letter to The Department of Labor in December, Montana Republican Rep. Denny Rehberg complained that the animal provision would also mean young people couldn’t “see veterinary medicine in practice … including a veterinarian’s own children accompanying him or her to a farm or ranch.”
Boswell told TheDC that the new farming regulations could go into effect as early as August. She claimed farmers could soon find The Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division inspectors on their land, citing them for violations.
“In the last three years that division has grown 30 to 40 percent,” Boswell said. Some Farm Bureau members, she added, have had inspectors on their land checking on conditions for migrant workers, only to be cited for allowing their own children to perform chores that the Labor Department didn’t think were age-appropriate.
It’s something Kansas Republican Senator Jerry Moran believes simply shouldn’t happen.
During a March 14 hearing, Moran blasted Hilda Solis for getting between rural parents and their children.
“The consequences of the things that you put in your regulations lack common sense,” Moran said.
“And in my view, if the federal government can regulate the kind of relationship between parents and their children on their own family’s farm, there is almost nothing off-limits in which we see the federal government intruding in a way of life.”
The Department of Labor did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
http://news.yahoo.com/rural-kids-parents-angry-labor-dept-rule-banning-054605888.html