Farmworkers in the United States
[5][6] Potential health and safety issues that may be associated with farm work include vehicle rollovers, falls, musculoskeletal injuries, hazardous equipment, grain bins, pesticides, unsanitary conditions, and respiratory disease.
While some progress has been made, many farm workers continue to struggle for fair pay, proper training, and safe working conditions.
[9] In contrast, agriculture in California’s Mediterranean and moderate climate produces more than half of the nation's fruits, vegetables, and nuts, which require hand-harvesting and a large labor force.
[9] Around the 1930s hard economic times hit the country with the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl era, forcing some farmers off the land.
[14] Migrant farmworkers are considered to be temporary workers who move to an area for work, cultivating a crop during the harvest season.
The states with the highest percentage of both migrant and seasonal farm workers include; California, Florida, Oregon, North Carolina, and Washington.
According to the United States Department of Agriculture, finding and owning land has been a constant struggle for many African American farmers.
[31] These figures can be compared with some of the poverty thresholds for 2014 published by the US Census Bureau: single person under 65: $12,316; two people (householder under 65): $15,835; same, but with one child under 18: $16,317.
This is assumed because most workers do not report any cases less severe than heat exhaustion and typically treat themselves in the event of any degree of heat-related illness.
In 2018, as a 2013 investigation concluded, a federal jury awarded $17.4 million to five migrant women who said they were raped and sexually harassed by three male supervisors at the Florida packing plant where they worked.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is responsible for enforcing civil rights laws in the workplace and is the only federal agency that pursues on-the-job sexual violence and harassment cases.
[47] While it is the job of the EEOC to enforce civil rights for these farmworkers, a big issue with the process is getting the workers to come forward and for there to be enough evidence of the assault.
The Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Worker Protection Act establishes standards regarding wages, housing, transportation, disclosures and record-keeping.
[54] The H-2A program under US Citizenship and Immigration Services allows US employers or agents meeting various requirements to bring in foreign nationals for temporary or seasonal agricultural work.
The UFW, for example, often runs campaigns targeting policy by encouraging citizens to communicate with their government representatives on a variety of issues.
As a recent example, on the heels of the death of a young farm worker, the UFW has been encouraging supporters to contact California's governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, to improve the enforcement of existing regulations regarding working in the heat.
Recently, the Coalition for Immokalee Workers, for example, has applied pressure to several companies through consumer boycotts, including McDonald's and Taco Bell.
The result of these campaigns were that these companies agreed to pay an extra penny per pound to the farmworkers who picked for them, regardless of the fact that they were employed through subcontractors.
While there is intersection between both the labor rights and environmental justice efforts within the larger farmworker movement, there have been splits and differences between the two areas.
[74] In 2021, the Supreme Court of the United States under Cedar Point Nursery v. Hassid struck down the right of organizers to enter farms outside of working hours to unionize workers.
[79] The proposed regulations required water and shade to be present and available for laborers working outside who felt negatively affected by the heat.
The use of pesticides for crop protection in the agriculture industry became increasingly widespread in the 20th century, and growers (employers of farmworkers) have heavily relied on their use post-World War Two.
[84] Exposure to pesticides has been linked to negative health effects, and many farmworkers, both individuals and groups, have spoken out against their use in recent decades.
While other strictly environmental justice groups have achieved success in reaching their goals by lobbying for regulations and public protests, farmworkers have struggled to advance via similar methods on the issue of workplace pesticide exposure.
Since its creation in 1970, The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has been involved in working to regulate the use of pesticides and any potential harmful effects.
[89] The majority of the revised protections of the WPS took effect on 2 January 2017, however three requirements will take effect on 2 January 2018; these requirements are aimed at increasing pesticide safety training and revised information posters on pesticide safety, in addition to compelling handlers to suspend applications if any workers are in an "application exclusion zone.
[79] The bill would allow undocumented farm workers in the US to have the opportunity to legally earn the right to stay in the country permanently by continuing to work in the agriculture industry.
[97] Other recent legislation relating to farmworkers was introduced in 2011 by Representative Howard Berman (CA); the bill was titled the Agricultural Labor Market Reform Act, H.R.
In 2017, a coalition including the United Farm Workers (UFW) has challenged the Environmental Protection Agency's reversal of a previous law to ban the pesticide chlorpyrifos; according to studies conducted by the EPA, exposure to chlorpyrfios, even at very low levels, can damage children's brain development and cause other brain-harming effects.
[99] The coalition has called for Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Scott Pruitt to reinstate the planned ban.
