Tough Fight for Farm Workers

California labor law gives workers the right to know what hazardous substances they may encounter in their jobs. Farm workers are exempt from that law, although they are regularly exposed to pesticides as they weed and harvest California’s crops. The state has set some standards for applying pesticides and for allowing workers to re-enter sprayed fields, but the standards are inadequate. It’s time for a tougher law, but the Legislature remains unwilling to pass one.

SB 669, sponsored by Sen. Nicholas C. Petris (D-Oakland), would have repealed the exemption of farm workers from the right-to-know law. It would also have required the California Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board to adopt rules about employers’ duties toward employees who work amid pesticides. It would have done these things had not the Assembly voted Thursday night to kill the bill.

Gov. George Deukmejian has in the past vetoed legislation that would have required the posting of signs around fields so that workers would know what chemicals were in use and when it would be safe to work those fields again. The legislative activity finally prompted the Department of Food and Agriculture to issue posting rules, but many crops are not covered--including citrus fruits, where pesticide use is heavy and the risk is high because of the direct contact needed to pick the crops. People who apply pesticides have more rights and training than do the workers who follow them into the fields.

The rules should not be based, as at present, on the number of workers who have already become ill. Those statistics are notoriously bad. Besides, the intent should be prevention. The rules should be based on the kind of contact that workers have with crops and on tests that show how toxic the pesticides are. The rules are likely to be tougher if they are administered by the occupational-safety board and not by the department that has as its mission the promotion of agriculture.

Last week’s action in Sacramento shows again that it’s going to be tough to get such a bill through the Legislature and signed by the governor. It is essential, however, if California is to give the same protection to the people who pick its crops that it gives to everyone else who works here.