America has prided itself on a history of basic worker protections and rights, including minimum wage, overtime, Social Security, unemployment insurance, child labor protections, and the right to organize into a union. These labor reforms, put in place by the 1935 National Labor Relations Act (NRLA), apply to everyone except farmworkers.
Such a pointed exclusion of farmworkers from basic labor protections has been blamed on various influences, including powerful agriculture lobbies that insisted the industry needed to be insulated from harvest strikes and high labor costs in order to ensure food security for the nation. The other theory is that the NRLA’s omission was an entrenched expression of racism against African-Americans working on farms in the South.
Despite the historic campaigns of farmworker rights advocates like César Chávez and ongoing efforts to improve farmworker protections over the decades, the disparity in labor law has never been fully reconciled in the U.S., creating an ugly double standard.
Among the inequities in Oregon: There is no clause that requires employers to pay overtime to farmworkers, even though a typical workday is 10 to 12 hours long; farmworkers are exempted from Oregon laws requiring minimum meal and rest periods; and farmworkers are not automatically granted the universal right to organize, strike, and collectively bargain with employers. On top of all that, unemployment insurance laws are written such that fewer than one-third of all farmworkers receive unemployment benefits, despite the fact that the average farmworker is employed for only 24 weeks of the year.
Oregon law does mandate certain protections for farmworkers — things like workers’ compensation, minimum wage, and workplace safety — but poor enforcement and uneven power dynamics meddle with their efficacy.
In the U.S., inadequate enforcement of safety laws contributes to the 300,000 acute pesticide poisonings that occur among farmworkers each year. Documented incidents show that farmworkers — particularly recent immigrants and those who aren’t proficient English speakers — are vulnerable to underpayment, especially when being paid piece-rate (by the pound or other unit). On-the-job injuries often go unreported, and workers’ compensation benefits go unclaimed, for fear of being fired — or worse — reported to the INS.
