The summer sun burned, even through the clouds, as the pickers, many of them minors, moved quickly along the long rows of strawberry plants, snapping fruit from the plants and placing it in plastic punnets, eight to a cardboard tray. California’s Salinas Valley, known as the ‘salad bowl of the world’, produces most of the berries and leaf vegetables eaten in the United States.

José, 14, has laboured in the fields every summer and on weekends during the school year since he was 11 to help his mother, who also picks berries, as do his siblings, uncles and cousins – four of them minors. Not long ago, as he ran with a full tray, he had fallen on the uneven ground and twisted his ankle. It hurt for days, he recalled, but he didn’t say anything to his boss for fear of losing his job. ‘You just gotta suck it up, and you gotta work through it,’ he told me when we met on a Sunday, his only day off that week.

José and thousands of other children and teenagers are part of a faceless legion of underage workers in California who put fresh fruit and vegetables on America’s tables. These young workers help power California’s annual $60bn agricultural industry, the most productive in the nation and one of the biggest in the world.

California’s leaders take pride in the state’s stringent workplace safety laws that generally exceed federal regulations, and include labour codes to protect underage workers, landmark outdoor heat safety standards – an area where California has been a pioneer – and pesticide safety regulations.

In California, the minimum age for agricultural labourers is 12, as against 14 in most other sectors. Those under 16 can work up to eight hours a day and 40 hours a week in agriculture during school holidays (rules are stricter during termtime). Young people can only be hired if they can show a permit issued by their school district, which must under state law inform students of their work rights.

Employers are (…)

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