The Human Cost of Food: Farmworkers' Lives, Labor, and Advocacy

Chapter 5: Farmworker Exceptionalism under the Law:How the Legal System Contributes to Farmworker Poverty and Powerlessness, by Greg Schell

chapter 5 Farmworker Exceptionalism under the Law How the Legal System Contributes to Farmworker Poverty and Powerlessness Greg Schell Workers Unprotected under the Law Every few years, surveys are published ranking jobs in the United States. Invariably, these surveys identify migrant farm work as the single worst profession. Farm work is unattractive for a number of reasons. The work usually is seasonal, leaving many farmworkers without employment for weeks on end between harvests. The work itself is arduous in nature and oftentimes performed in unpleasant weather conditions. However, farm labor is principally distinguished from other low-skill jobs by the extremely low wages paid and the primitive working and living conditions offered. U.S. society was dramatically altered in the first half of the twentieth century through progressive legislation that revolutionized the industrial workplace. However, major agricultural organizations such as the American Farm Bureau Federation and its state affiliates, as well as groups representing growers of particular commodities, have vigilantly guarded against the extension of these basic labor laws to farmworkers. While they are forced to absorb rising costs for fertilizer, seed, pesticides , and farm equipment and to sell their perishable commodities at a market price subject to wide fluctuations, growers often have been able to control wages and other labor costs. While farmworkers themselves ordinarily have been disorganized and disconnected from the political process, agribusiness interests acting on behalf of large fruit and vegetable producers have always exerted substantial influence in legislative and administrative arenas and have been able to shape most governmental policies that impact farmworkers’ wages and working conditions. In recent years, groups such as the National Council of Agricultural Employers, the Western Growers Association, and the Florida Fruit and Vegetable Association have emerged as effective advocates for the interests of large-scale growers and as antagonists to farmworkers with regard 140 The Human Cost of Food to labor matters. As a result, farmworkers in many respects find themselves trapped in the sort of living and working conditions that characterized much of industrial labor in the late nineteenth century. It has proven extraordinarily difficult to overcome these longstanding laws excluding farmworkers from the same legal rights enjoyed by other workers in the United States. As an alternative strategy, farmworker supporters have concentrated their reform efforts on passage of laws speci fically designed to ameliorate the distressing conditions under which farmworkers live and toil.While these well-intentioned efforts certainly have helped alleviate some aspects of farmworker life, they have done relatively little to address the primary problem farmworkers face in the legal arena—the concept of agricultural exceptionalism that pervades federal and state law. Origins of Agricultural Exceptionalism In the nineteenth-century United States, the living and working conditions faced by farmworkers were not markedly different from those of industrial workers. Both groups found themselves in an ever-expanding labor market filled by a constant stream of immigrants willing to accept backbreaking jobs at low wages. The work was characterized by low wages, child labor, long hours, and enormously hazardous working conditions. Beginning with the reforms of the Progressive Era in the late nineteenth century and culminating in the federal labor legislation of the New Deal period, an extraordinary transformation occurred with regard to industrial labor. First at the state level and later at the federal level, child labor was severely restricted or outlawed altogether in most industries . Hours of work were sharply limited, with the development of the concept of overtime pay as a means to discourage employers from requiring workers to toil for more than forty hours per week. Workers ’ compensation laws were adopted to ensure that workers injured on the job received medical benefits and compensation for their lost wages while convalescing. Occupational safety and health legislation, coupled with a workers’ compensation insurance system that rewarded employers with lower premiums if their employees had fewer accidents, created powerful incentives to curb the most dangerous working conditions . Federal and state minimum wage acts were adopted to correct ‘‘conditions detrimental to the maintenance of the minimum standard 141 Farmworker Exceptionalism under the Law of living necessary for health, efficiency, and general well-being of workers ’’ (Section 2, Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, codified at 29 U.S.C.§202[a]). Finally, and perhaps most important, with the passage of the National Labor Relations Act in the mid-1930s, industrial workers were granted...