Farm Worker Advocates Dig In Against Hand Weeding : Agriculture: Activists, pointing to debilitating effects, push reform bill. Opponents include state Department of Industrial Relations.

Convinced that farm laborers continue to endure crippling working conditions, labor advocates want to outlaw the weeding of row crops by hand, a practice they say flouts a landmark legal victory guarding workers against disabling back injuries.

Spurred by mounting reports of hand weeding in Ventura County, advocates are pushing legislation to close a loophole in a law banning the short-handled hoe, known as el cortito , from California fields.

While the practice technically is legal, advocates say hand weeding violates the spirit of the law, which was enacted to spare farm workers the chronic back problems caused by stooping for hours at a time.

“It’s not a question of pulling a weed now and then, but of agonizing work done six to eight hours a day, several days at a stretch,” Claudia Smith, regional counsel for California Rural Legal Assistance, told a state Senate committee considering the legislation earlier this month.

“There is a loophole that defeats the intent of the 20-year-old ban and needs closing so that farm workers can be spared the truly crippling legacy of el cortito .”

But the state Department of Industrial Relations, the agency responsible for enforcing labor law, came out in opposition to the reform last week, calling the bill an unfunded mandate that would be virtually impossible to enforce.

Instead, state officials want a more comprehensive approach, including an in-depth study detailing the extent of the problem in agriculture and other industries.

In that vein, grower representatives in Ventura County and other parts of the state say that hand weeding is not a major problem and that in some cases it is the only way to weed crops without damaging them.

“I deal with agriculture employers all the time and if there was a significant problem, it would have been brought to my attention,” said Robert P. Roy, general counsel for the Ventura County Agriculture Assn.

“I don’t see this as the big issue CRLA makes it out to be,” Roy added. “There are more pressing issues in society than alleged hand-weeding situations.”

The push to outlaw hand weeding comes on the 20th anniversary of what CRLA considers one of its greatest victories.

Arguing that the stooped position required to use hoes with handles shorter than four feet had crippled generations of farm workers, the advocacy group asked state officials to declare the tools unsafe in the early 1970s.

Farmers said they preferred the short hoe because field hands worked faster and were less likely to damage plants the closer they are to the ground.

But poverty lawyers argued that long-handled hoes worked just as well. And they solicited testimony from physicians who said farm workers were suffering permanent back injuries from prolonged use of short-handled tools.

Nevertheless, state officials refused to ban the hoe, a decision appealed to the state Supreme Court.

In 1975, the court issued a ruling that paved the way for state officials to declare the tool unsafe and outlaw its use.

“I think that decision probably helped more workers than anything else we have done,” said Ralph Lightstone, a CRLA lobbyist in Sacramento. “The use of the short-handled hoe was industrywide when that case started. Today, things have gotten better.”

The victory was significant for reasons other than worker protection. For many field hands, the hated hoe came to symbolize their grievances at a time when union organizing was at its zenith, and laborers were pressing demands for better pay and working conditions.

But the law was not without its setbacks. According to the CRLA, growers and labor contractors tried to get around the ban by ordering crews to use short-handled knives--tools not expressly forbidden by the statute.

In 1978, state officials broadened the order to prohibit the use of all short-handled tools.

Still, state officials say they receive complaints every year about short-handled tool violations. In 1990, for example, an Oxnard contractor was fined $7,500 for providing short-handled implements to fieldworkers.

More recently, CRLA community worker Emanuel Benitez said contractors have been sidestepping the prohibition by ordering crews to pull weeds by hand.

In the past few years, the Oxnard-based community worker said he has found several incidents of hand weeding in Ventura County. Since late April, in fact, he said he has documented three incidents in Oxnard and Camarillo.

“I think it’s about control,” Benitez said. “If you have a crew working all day, as long as they’re stooped over, the foreman can tell who is working and who is not.”

It was the growing number of hand-weeding incidents reported by Benitez that culminated in the bill now winding its way through the Legislature.

Authored by Sen. Hilda Solis (D-El Monte), the bill would prohibit workers from weeding by hand in situations where short-handled tools are banned.

“We pride ourselves in California of being the world leader in agriculture . . . but we are not willing to provide safeguards for the people who make those profits,” Solis said in an interview.

“To me, it’s horrifying,” she said. “And if we turn our backs, we are equally responsible for this.”

Most vexing for Solis has been the response by the Department of Industrial Relations and specifically the Division of Occupational Safety and Health (Cal/OSHA).

In response to a hand-weeding complaint by the CRLA’s Oxnard office in April, 1993, a Cal/OSHA inspector issued an official warning to a farm labor contractor that hand weeding was prohibited.

But just a few months later, Cal/OSHA changed its tune, responding to another CRLA complaint by saying that no citation could be issued because hand weeding was not expressly prohibited by state law.

At the same time, however, a Cal/OSHA medical unit reviewed the practice of hand weeding in Ventura County and stressed the need for clear policy and regulations prohibiting the practice.

“Clearly, action is required to prohibit these activities, detrimental to the health of agricultural workers,” read an internal Cal/OSHA memo.

Cal/OSHA chief John Howard said CRLA-driven complaints and the subsequent legislation have helped focus needed attention on hand weeding.

He said his agency has been studying the issue, trying to decide how to best address concerns without drafting a standard so broad that it would affect other industries and agricultural activities, such as hand harvesting.

Howard believes that the issue would best be handled by the state’s safety and health standards board, a panel that could analyze the problem and determine if there is need for a new regulation.

“It’s not pretty, it takes a while and I can safely say that nobody gets what they totally want,” Howard said. “But clearly, it’s a problem that needs to be looked at.”

Other state officials won’t concede even that much.

“I don’t see this as a widespread problem,” said Jose Millan, who heads a 2-year-old state program aimed at rooting out labor-law violations. “Of all the problems farm workers face, this is not one that I put in the top three.”

The state Senate’s Industrial Relations Committee last week approved the hand-weeding bill and sent it to the Appropriations Committee.

At that hearing, farm worker advocates recounted stories of field hands with arthritic spines so painful they can hardly get out of bed. They told committee members that hand weeding is a needless practice and urged the panel to approve the measure.

They were followed by Roy Gabriel, spokesman for the 70,000-member California Farm Bureau Federation, who said he was not necessarily opposed to what the farm labor advocates were trying to accomplish.

“We don’t object to your concerns that certain employers may be taking away the tool and making the workers weed by hand in order to try to circumvent the law,” he told the committee. “However, we are concerned about the limited and infrequent occasions where there is no effective alternative means to remove a weed other than by hand.”

In response, farm worker advocates say that perhaps an exception could be built into the law to allow for such special circumstances. But they hope that the agriculture industry does not use that narrow issue to prevent the hand-weeding legislation from moving forward.

“Some practices are irrefutably proven to be dangerous, and there are alternatives that are well established,” said Lightstone, the CRLA lobbyist.

“That is the case with the short-handled hoe, that is the case with other short-handled tools, and it is the case with hand weeding,” he added. “Farm workers do essential work . . . producing the food we eat. And what the industry owes them is a system that enables them to do that work in a safe way.”