Health-related Inequities Among Hired Farm Workers and the Resurgence of Labor-intensive Agriculture

This paper's goal is to describe the current health status of the farm labor workforce from a national perspective and to suggest future directions for interventions. Ideally, data would be derived from nationally representative cross-sectional studies of hired farm workers that included comprehensive physical examinations by third-party medical professionals. Because such national data does not exist, it was necessary to consider the few available statewide crosssectional studies that included medical examinations and to forge a national perspective from them.For this paper, a hired farm worker is a person who is employed to perform tasks on a farm to directly produce an agricultural commodity intended for sale. Workers engaged in off-farm packing, handling or processing of farm products are not included. Hired livestock farm workers are considered on an equal basis with hired crop farm workers. Among the latter are persons employed to produce ornamental commodities, including flowers, ornamental plants and other nursery farm products, whether in an open field or in a greenhouse.This paper focuses on health outcomes that are associated with occupational, environmental and individual risk factors, or are influenced by regulatory policy. Since there are no nationally representative studies of farm worker health that include comprehensive medical examinations, survey research about farm workers nationally is limited to self-reported health outcomes

Workplace Health-and-Safety Violations in Agriculture: Epidemiology and Implications for Education and Enforcement Policy

Agriculture is one of the most important industries in California, enjoying over $22 billion in farm cash receipts annually. In addition to economic benefits, national and state data show that agriculture is on of the most dangerous industries with respect to occupational illnesses and injuries. Because Latino and Latina workers provide the majority of production in the industry, they are uniquely increased risk for occupational injury and illness.The fragmentation of regulatory activities causes inefficiency and confusion on the part of employers, employees, and regulators. In particular, lack of information sharing between agencies leads to ineffective enforcement and educational efforts. Consequently, a pilot program was begun in 1992 that partnered agencies to improve efficiency through sharing of resources and information. The program, intended to target industries with a history of regulatory problems, was named the Targeted Industries Partnership Program (TIPP). Agriculture and garment manufacturing were chosen as targeted industries because of their importance for California and their history of regulatory problems.The main research objective of this project is to characterize agricultural operations that have received notices of violation of health, safety, and labor regulations during 1993 and 1994 through TIPP and to identify patterns and risk factors for violation. Using a database of California farm operations developed and maintained by the California Institute for Rural Studies (CIRS), we compared operations that received notices of violations through TIPP during 1993 and 1994 with those that did not. This allowed us to develop a profile of operations at high risk for labor-law violations, identity and characterize risk factors, and describe patterns of violation. In addition, TIPP files were matched against the Licensed Farm Labor Contractor file (provided by the CDIR) to identify which TIPP citations were made to licensed farm-labor contractors

Workplace Health-and-Safety Violations in Agriculture: Epidemiology and Implications for Education and Enforcement Policy

Agriculture is one of the most important industries in California, enjoying over $22 billion in farm cash receipts annually. In addition to economic benefits, national and state data show that agriculture is on of the most dangerous industries with respect to occupational illnesses and injuries. Because Latino and Latina workers provide the majority of production in the industry, they are uniquely increased risk for occupational injury and illness.The fragmentation of regulatory activities causes inefficiency and confusion on the part of employers, employees, and regulators. In particular, lack of information sharing between agencies leads to ineffective enforcement and educational efforts. Consequently, a pilot program was begun in 1992 that partnered agencies to improve efficiency through sharing of resources and information. The program, intended to target industries with a history of regulatory problems, was named the Targeted Industries Partnership Program (TIPP). Agriculture and garment manufacturing were chosen as targeted industries because of their importance for California and their history of regulatory problems.The main research objective of this project is to characterize agricultural operations that have received notices of violation of health, safety, and labor regulations during 1993 and 1994 through TIPP and to identify patterns and risk factors for violation. Using a database of California farm operations developed and maintained by the California Institute for Rural Studies (CIRS), we compared operations that received notices of violations through TIPP during 1993 and 1994 with those that did not. This allowed us to develop a profile of operations at high risk for labor-law violations, identity and characterize risk factors, and describe patterns of violation. In addition, TIPP files were matched against the Licensed Farm Labor Contractor file (provided by the CDIR) to identify which TIPP citations were made to licensed farm-labor contractors