Judge Upholds Fine in Use of Banned Farm Tool : Oxnard: A contractor must pay $7,500 for allowing workers to use short-handled knives, which can cause crippling back injuries.

A $7,500 state fine against an Oxnard contractor cited twice by the state for providing field workers with short-handled tools has been upheld on appeal.

Molina Labor Services Inc. in March provided a crew weeding a celery field with the type of short-handled knives banned for two decades because they cause crippling back injuries, an administrative law judge found last week in upholding the stiff state fine.

Judge Jacqueline S. Drucker found the violation to be serious and willful, since it followed a similar citation against the company last October.

In her decision, Drucker cited the testimony of company President Jose A. Molina Sr.

“We got caught,” Molina testified during a September appeals hearing. He testified that it was the company’s fault that the violations had occurred.

A spokesman for Cal/OSHA, the state worker-safety agency, said the fine is unusually large for a farm violation. It is also rare that a large fine is upheld in full on appeal, said Rick Rice, spokesman for the California Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

The state’s case against Molina was built partly through photos and testimony from California Rural Legal Assistance workers in Oxnard, state officials said.

After a CRLA complaint in October, the state found Molina’s company had allowed laborers to use short-handled knives to weed a parsley field in Somis and declared the incident a serious violation of health and safety law. The fine was $250, which Molina did not appeal.

In March, CRLA community worker Emanuel Benitez again spotted a Molina crew working with short-handled knives at a Hueneme Road farm near Oxnard, according to hearing testimony.

Benitez testified that a crew member told him that workers were instructed by the Molina foreman to use long-handled tools when they were near the edge of the field and could be easily seen by passersby, but to revert to short-handled knives in the middle of the field.

“This shows a callousness, a disregard for the workers,” farm worker lawyer Lee Plisou said. “It suggests that they are not treated as human beings but as machines. And when the machines break down, they just get new ones.”

Molina, testifying under subpoena, said laborers prefer to use the short-handled knives to weed fields because it is easier.

In the March incident, Molina testified, the farm owner wanted his crew to use the short knives. He added that the foreman allowed use of the shorter tools. Molina also testified that he thought short-handled knives were routinely used by other field crews in the county.