Neglect Is Washed Up

California has a better record than many states in providing sanitary facilities for farm workers in the fields. Many states, however, are either lax or callous about requiring growers to provide drinking water, toilets and hand-washing facilities for workers who tend their crops.

Last summer Labor Secretary William E. Brock III had a chance to recommend federal standards so that workers in all states would have these basic necessities. He chose to direct the states to pass their own laws by April, 1987, ignoring the argument that if the states could be counted on to provide decent sanitary facilities for their workers, they would have already done so.

It is no great surprise then that Brock finds himself “underwhelmed” by the states’ failure to respond. So far only Maine, Oregon and Texas have submitted plans for review, and five states haven’t responded at all.

Public-health experts who studied the situation for the Labor Department found that more than 500,000 American farm workers suffer high rates of infection because they lack toilet and drinking facilities. The people who pick America’s crops are the only American workers who are not guaranteed these minimal amenities. Soon Brock will be forced to do what he should have done in the first place to right that wrong.