INSTRUCTIONS
What I look for in a reply to your colleagues’ postings:
- Read the question that your colleague had to answer and then read “colleague’s response”. The writer is “replying” to the “Colleague’s response” in support or challenge.
- Support or challenge, in whole or in part, what your colleague has been saying in the discussion using well-reasoned arguments supported by evidence.
- New insights or interpretations from your own experience.
- Introduce external published sources that deepen the discussion.
- Postings that simply agree with or applaud what others have said in a discussion are welcome because they encourage and support participation, but they are not worth much as an assessment.
- APA format with citations, 100-200 words maximum.
- Reading is attached with one link found in colleague’s references. Writer may use outside sources.
Question for Colleague to Answer:
Make the case for or against extending all worker protection laws to all farm workers, or some but not others. Should organic farms be treated differently from other farms with respect to worker protection? Why or why not?
Colleague’s Response:
When reading through the federal laws in place to protect employees, I was amazed and horrified at how many loopholes and exceptions exist that strip agricultural workers of rights to protect themselves from unfair labor practices. The five major labor laws in the US have holes that allow inexcusable exploitation of agricultural workers in the US food system. Though it may be a simplistic and absolute statement, I do believe that the five labor laws should be extended to all farm workers in the same means as any US employee.
Of the laws reviewed, the inclusion of agriculture workers in the National Labor Relations Act would be most pressing to me in order to allow workers the right to demand better conditions for themselves. The exemption of agriculture workers in the NLRA was passed in Congress in 1935 as the law focused on industrial industries and was thought that it would pose too large of a burden on the farms, most of which were small, family-owned operations at the time (LeRoy, 1999). Today, agriculture is industrial, and the farmers today are forced to work in conditions that encouraged the law in the first place. Without protection from the NLRA, many farmers are left voiceless in the presence of injustices such as low wages and poor working conditions, with fear of deportation if they do speak up (Wilde, 2013).
I do not believe that organic farms should be treated any differently with respect to worker protection because organic or not, agriculture is still one of the most dangerous occupations, and farmers employed on organic farms are just as vulnerable to harmful working conditions, exploitation, and low wages as farmers on conventional farms (Newman, 2009; Mark, 2006). Unfortunately, many consumers associate the organic label with fair labor standards, which is not generally the case (Mark, 2006).
To show just how disconnected the consumer is with the hands that grow their food, a consumer study conducted by researcher Phil Howard at UC-Santa Cruz found that workers’ rights ranked fifth on a list of food-related issues that interested respondents, behind the treatment of animals (Mark, 2006). Consumers care more about how the animals are treated than they do the farm workers that grow and harvest the food they eat every day. A sobering finding, I believe.
Agricultural workers lack a voice for themselves, the public is blind to the treatment of the workers thus do not speak up, and largest farm operators and owners are more concerned with finding loopholes and exceptions to save money than their employee’s wellbeing. If we have no laws to represent and protect these workers, then who will?
LeRoy, M. H., (1999). Should agricultural laborers continue to be excluded from the National Labor Relations Act? Emory Law Journal, 48(3). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=992923.
Mark, J., (2006). Workers on organic farms are treated as poorly as their conventional counterparts. Retrieved from https://grist.org/article/mark/.
Newman, S., (2009). The ugly truth behind organic food. Retrieved from https://www.alternet.org/story/140001/the_ugly_truth_behind_organic_food.
Wilde, P., (2013). Food and agricultural trade. In Food Policy in the United States: An Introduction, (57-76). New York, NY: Routledge. (See attached document)
