Chair: Rep. Ed Pastor
Members: Representatives Baca, Gutierrez, Roybal-Allard, Linda Sánchez, Solis
Farm Worker Labor
Child labor
There is currently a disgraceful double standard where children working in agriculture may work longer hours, at a younger age, and in more hazardous conditions than children working in other jobs. The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) allows children as young as 10 years of age to work in agriculture, while children in non-agricultural work generally must be 16 years of age, and are limited to 3 hours of work a day while school is in session.
Children working on our nation's farms are being left behind in education. In fact, 45% of children working in large-scale commercial agriculture never graduate from high school. Long work hours and fatigue impair children's ability to concentrate and stay awake, making it difficult for them to succeed in school. Further, many children simply do not attend school.
Children working on farms are consistently exposed to hazardous pesticides. Despite ample evidence of harmful pesticide exposure, no reliable long-term tests have examined the consequences of cumulative exposure to these pesticides for children. Even worse, EPA’s existing standards for pesticide exposure are based on 154-pound males–children’s smaller size and developmental differences are completely ignored.
Union Organization
Address the issue of organizing, which labor has stressed as one of its most important objectives. Employers routinely interfere with their workers freedom to join a union through tactical methods. Those greatly disadvantaged by this practice are migrant Hispanic workers.
Pay Equity
Today’s working women, many of whom are the primary or sole sources of income for their families, earn between 73 and 75 cents for every dollar earned by men. The gap is even greater for Latina women. The wage gap is not just a woman’s issue, but rather a family issue. The lingering gap in pay translates into less money and significant losses in retirement benefits over a woman’s lifetime. Less than 40% of women in the private sectors have pensions, and those with pensions receive less than 50% of what men receive.
Minimum Wage
Approximately 10 million Americans currently earn the minimum wage. Although Americans now enjoy unprecedented prosperity, full-time workers earning minimum wage still live in poverty. Working Hispanic families are affected by changes in minimum wage because they are more likely than other working families to live below the poverty line.
Hispanics represent 11.75% of the overall U.S. workforce, but they account for 19.2% of those that would benefit from a minimum wage increase. The group earning just above the minimum wage (minimum + $1) also benefits from the increase. Hispanics represent 17.3% of this group. Workers in this category are more likely to be older (84.3% are adults) and to work more hours (64.4% are full time) than those in the directly affected range.
Of Hispanic hourly workers, 21% earn the minimum wage, compared to 14% and 16% of White and African-American hourly workers, respectively. Working women are more likely to earn minimum wage, but despite the equal pay laws, Latinas earn 49 cents for every dollar men earn.
Low and moderate-income families would greatly benefit from raising the minimum age. Approximately three-quarters of the increase benefit would go to households earning less than $38,200 annually. The median income for Hispanic households in 1998 was $28,333, compared to $40,912 for Whites that same year.
Workforce Training
Employers indicate that every year more than one million positions go unfilled due to a shortage of skilled workers. However, according to the Department of Labor, even at record low unemployment six million Americans are unemployed and looking for work, four million have stopped looking but want to work, and another three million are working part-time but want full-time jobs. Therefore, we must address the gap between what employees need and what workers are trained to do. This can be done by training currently untapped sources of labor, such as youth, veterans, dislocated (laid-off) workers, older workers, welfare recipients, persons with disabilities, and ex-offenders, and by upgrading the skills of incumbent workers. We must look at existing training programs, such as vocational education, the Workforce Investment Act, and the Welfare-to-Work program to see how these programs can better address the needs of employers and workers.
Hispanics and Workplace Injuries
The rate of workplace injuries for Latino workers is disproportionately high. Latino workers, who comprise 11% of the U.S. labor force, experienced 14% of the fatal occupational injuries in 2000, up from 11.4% in 1994-99. 849 Latino workers died from workplace injuries in 2001 (58% [494] of whom were immigrant Latinos), an increase of 11.6% from the previous year and 53% since 1992. Latinos accounted for a disproportionate number of workplace fatalities in 2000, 13.8%, compared with their proportion of employment, which was 10.7%.
The high rate of workplace fatalities among Hispanics is attributed to: the high rate of Latinos working in dangerous industries, language barriers, and fears among immigrants who do not want to complain about unsafe work because of their immigration status. Finally, child farm workers, who make up only 8% of working minors, account for 40% of work-related fatalities among minors.
