Adopt Policies that Reduce Farmworker Poverty and Promote Decent Wages, Safe Working Conditions and Sanitary Housing.

Most farmworkers do not earn a living wage. Their wages have declined in real terms during the last 20 years. Unemployment and underemployment remains very high. Unsafe worksites and living areas pervade agriculture. Farmworkers and their children suffer from unacceptable exposures to toxic pesticides in the fields and where they live.

There is a critical lack of affordable, decent housing, partly because many farmworkers’ wages are too low to stimulate housing development. These conditions also induce high employee turnover, suppress productivity and impose major costs on society. Yet Government has helped fruit and vegetable growers dramatically increase the value of their products recently, especially through exports.

1. Raise the minimum wage. Many farmworkers’ hourly and piece-rate wages are based on the minimum wage level, which is too low to lift hard-working families out of poverty. Adults’ low wages contribute to child labor and are especially punishing to the majority of farmworkers who cannot find work every week of the year. A living wage for farmworkers would help stabilize the work force, stimulate rural economic growth, with minor impact on the price of food here and in foreign markets.
2. Improve housing opportunities. Provide increased funding for housing development for farmworkers and their family members. Massively increase USDA’s appropriation for section 514/516 housing to leverage 10,000 units per year and strengthen community-based nonprofit groups’ capacity. Strengthen standards for housing provided to farmworkers: require roofs, flush toilets, electricity, hot water, etc. Strengthen the Fair Housing Act: clarify that its provisions against anti-family discrimination apply to U.S. farmworkers at employers who use H-2A guestworkers (rejecting an incorrect court decision).
3. Improve toxic pesticide monitoring and safety: Government should establish programs for reporting and monitoring (a) biological and environmental impact of use of pesticides on farmworker families and communities, (b) long-term effects of pesticides, including cancer, reproductive harm and neurological damage, and (c) incidents, injuries and illnesses potentially related to pesticide use. The law should guarantee farmworkers the "right to know" the specific pesticides used in their workplace and other safety information in language the workers understand. Protections against premature re-entry into sprayed fields should be strengthened. The Government should ban any pesticide known or suspected to cause cancer, birth defects, reproductive harm, neurological damage, or that is in the highest acute toxicity category, and promote transition from toxic pesticides to sustainable pest control methods.  Other safety and health improvements, including ergonomics standards, are also extremely important to reduce injuries and illnesses.
4. Reinvent the Employment Service ("ES"): Some agricultural employers claim that they cannot find U.S. citizens or legal immigrants to apply for jobs. But decent wages, working conditions and modern employment practices would attract qualified workers and reduce employee turnover. The ES is a free job registry or labor exchange that is rarely used as a recruitment method by employers, primarily because they have no economic reason to do so: they find sufficient numbers of workers through informal recruitment networks or labor contractors, avoiding government oversight. Although H-2A employers must use the ES as a condition of securing guestworkers, they often are motivated to make the system fail to "prove" that U.S. workers are not available. To reinvigorate the ES, the Department of Labor could collaborate with state agencies, employers, unions, workers, and others on innovative "pilot programs" in several states. For example, using financial incentives that benefit employers to encourage their participation (e.g., by using public funds to pay workers’ cost of transportation to the place of employment), ES could study whether employers improve their recruitment and labor stability by offering enhanced job terms, such as premium wage rates, health insurance, a promise of a job the following season, or a referral to other seasonal employers.