agricultural workers

Occupational Health News Roundup

kkrisberg — Tue, 16 Aug 2016 18:42:49 +0000

Occupational Health News Roundup

At NPR, John Burnett reports on the conditions facing farmworkers in south Texas 50 years after a landmark strike in which farmworkers walked 400 miles to the capital city of Austin to demand fair working conditions. He writes:

A lot has changed since 1966, when watermelon workers in the South Texas borderlands walked out of the melon fields in a historic strike to protest poor wages and appalling working conditions.

They marched 400 miles to the state capital of Austin; California labor activist and union leader Cesar Chavez joined them.

The farmworkers succeeded in publicizing their cause — but ultimately, the strike failed when replacement workers were brought in.

Still, working conditions have improved in the decades since the failed strike.

What hasn't changed is the work: It's as brutal as ever.

"I've seen that watermelon has no friends," says Justino DeLeon, a 58-year-old retired farmworker. He fell off a melon truck and hurt his arm three years ago. He lives in a battered green mobile home in the town of Pharr. "They're sweet to eat, but hell to harvest."

"You have to be in great condition to toss melons all day," DeLeon continues. "You work hard in the heat and it's easy to get dehydrated."

It's not just that field work is grueling. Workers are vulnerable to getting cheated by growers and crew bosses.

To read the full article, visit NPR. To learn more about the 1966 farmworker strike, visit the Texas State Historical Association.

In other news:

Chicago Tribune: Alexia Elejalde-Ruiz reports that Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner has signed the Illinois Domestic Workers Bill of Rights into law, ensuring that domestic workers are entitled to the same minimum wage and human rights protections as other workers. The bill goes into effect at the start of 2017. Specifically, the legislation means domestic workers will be covered by state minimum wage laws, sexual harassment protections, pay discrimination laws, and the One Day Rest in Seven Act, which requires workers get at least 24 hours of rest in each calendar week and meal periods of 20 minutes for every seven-and-a-half hours of work. Illinois is the seventh state to enact such a bill of rights. Elejalde-Ruiz quoted Wendy Pollack, founder and director of the Women's Law and Policy Project at the Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law, who said: "This is really historic because the exclusion of domestic workers from federal and state employment laws has an unfortunate history in slavery and anti-immigrant sentiment."

Associated Press: Youkyung Lee reports on an AP investigation that found Samsung Electronics, South Korea’s largest company, was allowed to withhold critical information from sick workers about the chemicals they were exposed to at the company’s factories. The article reports that a worker safety group has documented more than 200 cases of serious illnesses among former workers, including leukemia, lupus, lymphoma and multiple sclerosis. To date, 76 workers have died, with most in their 20s and 30s. In profiling victims and their families, Lee writes: “Hwang Sang-Gi, father of Hwang Yu-mi, a former Samsung factory worker who died of leukemia at the age of 22. Hwang launched a movement seeking independent inspections of Samsung factories. (He) said:’(Samsung) once offered me 1 billion won ($864,000), asking me to stay silent. The idea was to deny her illness was an occupational disease and to leave me without any power to fight back.’” Not surprisingly, Samsung had denied withholding such information.

KLTV (ABC): Jeff Awtry reports that OSHA has fined a Tyson chicken processing plant in Texas more than $260,000 after investigating an incident in which a worker lost a finger. Investigators found two repeated violations and 15 serious violations, including failing to use proper guards on moving machinery, having higher-than-allowable carbon dioxide levels, failing to provide workers with protective equipment, and not training workers about the dangers of peracetic acid. Awtry writes: “The investigation revealed the employee's finger became stuck in an unguarded conveyor belt as he worked in the debone area and tried to remove chicken parts jammed in the belt, according to the (Labor Department) press release.”

The Washington Post: Danielle Paquette reports that the U.S. Department of Labor will grant $1.1 million to six states and municipalities that want to launch their own paid family leave programs — the recipients are: Denver; Franklin, Ohio; Madison, Wisconsin; Hawaii; Indiana; and Pennsylvania. The recipients will use the money, which is part of the Paid Leave Analysis Grant Program, to examine the costs of such programs. The article noted that while 58 percent of large U.S. firms offer some paid maternity leave, only 12 percent of all private-sector workers receive paid family leave to care for a baby or sick family member. Only the states of California, Rhode Island and New Jersey guarantee paid family leave for all workers. Paquette writes: “The United States guarantees just 12 weeks of job-protected time off to new parents — none of which is paid. The issue is also fiercely divisive: The Democratic Party platform says all workers should be paid for those 12 weeks leave, while the Republican Party platform makes no mention of a paid leave policy.”

Kim Krisberg is a freelance public health writer living in Austin, Texas, and has been writing about public health for nearly 15 years.

kkrisberg Tue, 08/16/2016 - 14:42

Hazards of the harvest: Children in the fields

egrossman — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 13:12:44 +0000

Hazards of the harvest: Children in the fields

By Elizabeth Grossman

While the rest of the country has been experiencing an epic heat wave, in the Pacific Northwest where I live, thus far the summer has been unusually cool. One consequence of the cool weather is a slow-to-appear local tomato crop, made evident to consumers by some remarkably high prices. A pint of organic cherry tomatoes at my neighborhood market recently jumped more than a dollar within a week to $4.99, prompting me to wonder precisely what goes into the price of tomatoes.

Regional growers, distributors, and retailers all told me that prices are typically determined by a combination of weather, what growers call inputs - what physically goes into producing a crop - real estate and labor costs. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture labor costs make up between 17 and 40 percent of these overall farm expenses. But this also got me thinking more broadly about farm work and its human costs, costs that are far from evident in the glistening piles of yellows, greens, reds, and purples of summer fruits and vegetables. These costs became all too evident two weeks ago, when two children were killed while doing agricultural work.

What many people choosing produce at a local market may not realize is that farm work is considered to be the most hazardous occupation in the U.S. In 2009, fatal accident rates on farms were 28.6 deaths per 100,000 workers. Chemicals and pesticides, heat, cold, dust, electricity, machinery, tools, grain bins, manure pits, and toxic gasses are among the farm work hazards listed by OSHA (Occupational Health and Safety Administration), which notes that whole families may be exposed to these hazards.

Farm work is particularly dangerous for young people. According to OSHA, more than 2 million Americans under the age of 20 are exposed to farm-related safety hazards each year. National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) data show that these hazards result in thousands of injuries per year. While the number of reported injuries to young farm workers has been declining - down from 37, 774 in 1998 - 15,012 children under 16 were injured on farms in 2009. (It's worth noting, however, that during that time, the number of children living on farms also declined.) Most of these injuries involved children living on or visiting farms, but in 2006 (the most recent figures readily available) 3,601 of a total 22,900 such injuries occurred to young people performing farm work. That year in addition to farm family children (largely age 10 to 15) who worked on the farm an additional 307,000 young people were hired to do agricultural work.

The hazards of farm work are underscored by the fatality rate for young people working on farms: 21.6 deaths per 100,000 young workers, compared to 3.6 fatalities for the same number of those working in all other industries, this according to data published in 2010.

Electrocution deaths on an Illinois farm
One such tragedy occurred just two weeks ago. On Monday July 25, two 14-year old girls, Jade Garza and Hannah Kendall, both from Sterling, Illinois, were electrocuted and killed while detasselling corn on a farm about 115 miles west of Chicago. Two other girls, Delanie Knapp, 14, and her 15-year old sister, Bailey, were also injured by electrical shocks and hospitalized. A number of others working at the time are reported also to have received medical treatment. According to a Chicago Tribune report, the girls were among the dozens of teen-agers working that field, all employed by a contractor - reported to be R&J Enterprises of Illinois, hired by the Monsanto corporation. The incident is being investigated by OSHA and local authorities; the farm owners have said a lightning strike to an irrigation system on rain-soaked ground may have caused the shocks. But a wrongful death lawsuit filed August 4th by Hannah Kendall's father questions this explanation.

Before resuming detasseling on July 27, which the company stopped after the accident on the 25th, Monsanto, who commissioned the work of the 72 teens at the Tampico, Illinois farm where the accident occurred, "implemented additional steps to make sure the risk of electrical shock will be minimized," including requiring the grower/landlord to "de-energize irrigation electrical system" before work crews go out in a field. Monsanto, wrote company corporate affairs director, Tom Helscher, has "approximately 150 seed production fields and about 1000 workers are employed to detassel corn at these production sites" in the north central Illinois area where the accident occurred. It's standard practice, wrote Helscher, for Monsanto "to contract with landlords/growers for seed production and to contract with labor providers who employ the detasseling crews."

"Detasseling," Helscher explained, "is an important step in producing hybrid corn seed. It is a task done by hand for 3 to 5 weeks in the summer and has been done for decades." And it's work that's typically been done by young people.

According to Monsanto, the company provides safety training and personal protective equipment for these work crews as well as initial training for contract labor providers and contract laborers. Training is on-going through out the season and Monsanto audits its contractors' safety compliance and performance at least once a week, wrote Helscher. Out in the field, the contractor - who's received training from Monsanto - provides direct supervision. Monsanto also says it provides "the parents of detasselers with information as to the nature of the work and have Registered Nurses at all of our US corn production sites to better insure the workers' health and safety."

According to OSHA, which is now investigating the incident, electrocutions kill 62 agricultural workers each year in the U.S. and cause 3.6 percent of the deaths among farm workers under age 20. The most common cause of such incidents is use of agricultural equipment that come into contact with overhead power lines, and irrigation equipment is well known as a potential component of electrocution hazards.

Six year-old berry picker
Another recent snapshot of children's work on farms comes from Washington state. On August 4, the U.S. Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division announced it has fined three berry farms in southwest Washington - Columbia Fruit LLC of Woodland, WA, George Hoffman Farms, and Berry Good Farm of Ridgefield, WA - a total of $73,050 for violating provisions of the federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), including employing children as young as six years old as farm laborers. According to the Department of Labor, "due to the severity of the child labor violations, the agency invoked the "hot goods" provision of the FLSA, which precludes the farmers from shipping the strawberries that were produced in violation of the child labor laws." Two 11 year-olds, one 10 year-old, three 9 year-olds, one 8 year-old, one 7 year-old and one 6 year-old were found working on these farms, according to the Department of Labor, Wage Hour Division district office in Portland, Oregon.

The employers have now taken these children off the job and signed agreements permanently "enjoining them from violating the FLSA in the future." They will also attend Department of Labor (DOL) training for the next three years. The FLSA allows, with restrictions for hazardous work, farm work by children ages 12 to 16, but according to the DOL, "Youths of any age may work at any time and perform any job on a farm owned or operated by their parents. Otherwise, most individuals under 12 may not be employed in farm activities." But federal law does allow children as young as 10 and 11 to do certain kinds of non-hazardous work, including hand-harvest of seasonal crops outside of school hours.

The investigations that resulted in the Washington state fines were part of a targeted enforcement program that's focusing on regional berry farms, said Department of Labor spokesman Michael Shimizu.

When considering the human costs of farm work, it's important to remember that agricultural workers are not covered by the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) or the National Labor Relations Act (the U.S. federal laws that set wage and workday standards) in exactly the same way as other U.S. workers. While numerous FLSA provisions do apply and some states - among them California, Oregon, and Washington - have set minimum wages and work condition requirements, in many others, farm workers are exempt from minimum wage and hour, overtime, and meal and rest break requirements mandatory for other workers. For example, in Florida, where most of the country's tomatoes are grown, a pilot program resulting from negotiations between the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (an organization representing low wage, mainly Latino, Haitian and Mayan Indian immigrant agricultural workers) and the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange, will for the first time this winter growing season guarantee the national minimum wage of $7.25 per hour to workers in about 90 percent of the state's tomato fields. This program will also for the first time guarantee these workers pay for all the hours they work - not just now much they pick. Not surprisingly, the USDA describes hired farmworkers as "one of the most economically disadvantages groups in the United States.

Five dollars does seem like a lot to pay for a pint of cherry tomatoes, but the real question is: How do we grow, harvest, and market safe and nutritious produce under healthy, safe, and fairly compensated working conditions that is sold at prices all Americans can afford? Child labor should not be part of this equation.

Elizabeth Grossman is the author of Chasing Molecules: Poisonous Products, Human Health, and the Promise of Green Chemistry, High Tech Trash: Digital Devices, Hidden Toxics, and Human Health, and other books. Her work has appeared in a variety of publications including Scientific American, Salon, The Washington Post, The Nation, Mother Jones, Grist, and the Huffington Post. Chasing Molecules was chosen by Booklist as one of the Top 10 Science & Technology Books of 2009 and won a 2010 Gold Nautilus Award for investigative journalism.

egrossman Mon, 08/08/2011 - 09:12