Harvest of Shame : Women on Ventura County Farms Face Lower Pay, Hazards, Report Says

After 10 hours a day in the broccoli fields outside Oxnard, Olga Martinez’s back aches from constant stooping and bending.

Martinez left Jalisco, Mexico, last year to join her parents, brothers and sisters in Ventura, all of whom work in agricultural jobs around the county. Martinez found a job as a cutter that paid $4.80 an hour.

“Everything’s a strain on my back,” said Martinez, during a break Monday from hours of chopping broccoli stems. “I’d like benefits, but there aren’t any.”

Her complaints are typical for the thousands of women farm workers who make up the county’s agricultural work force, according to a report released Monday by a consortium of farm and social service officials.

The report, commissioned three years ago by the Committee on Women in Agriculture, is the first of its kind in Ventura County, where the primary industry is farming, said Karen Flock, committee co-chairwoman.

About 17,000 farm workers--many of them women--work in Ventura County fields. The report did not indicate how many workers are women.

The report is based on interviews with 733 Latino men and women, and confirmed what many in the agricultural industry said they knew--that women farm laborers make up an underclass of workers who face numerous barriers in the quest to find higher paying jobs.

“It further substantiates that the conditions for women farm workers are poor to fair,” said Larry Yee, director of the University of California Cooperative Extension office in Ventura and a member of the committee.

The report pointed out the dramatic disparity between men and women’s wages.

Women farm workers earned an average of $6,435 a year, less than two-thirds the average wage of male farm workers who toil at similar agricultural jobs, the report said. Male farm workers earn an average of $10,010 a year.

Women were also paid less for hourly work, earning $5.22 an hour compared to $5.58 an hour for men.

Part of the reason for the low wages women earn is the short work year, the report said. Women are more likely to be hired for seasonal work such as strawberry picking and packing fruit and vegetables.

However, harvesting jobs were the lowest paid of all jobs, and are offered the least amount of months to work each year.

Although 61% of the women would like to work year-round, they were employed an average of only five months of the year, and were given fewer tasks and lower-paying jobs, the report said.

In addition to workplace conditions, the report also said women share a desperate need for child care, health benefits and English-language classes and face sex discrimination on the job. Like Olga Martinez, many complained of the hazards of working in the field.

The top complaint was exposure to pesticides and the strenuous harvesting tasks, the report showed.

Twelve percent of the women interviewed have been injured on the job, and 16% said their work had adversely affected their health, the report said.

In addition to outlining the problems women face, the report also outlined programs aimed at increasing access to child care and job training programs.

Flock said the recommendations were formulated to encourage the involvement of public and private agencies, including the Ventura County Farm Bureau, El Concilio del Condado de Ventura and the Ventura County Agricultural Assn.

The 31-page report will be distributed to more than 100 government and farm officials, Flock said .

Meanwhile, Martinez said she is considering returning to her home in Guadalajara because the work has been so hard in the fields, and the pay is not that good. On a good week, she said, she can make nearly $300.

“It’s just so hard to establish yourself here. It’s real hard,” Martinez said. “I look in the want ads for other work. But there’s nothing.”