Stay Safe.......Y
Posted on 09/23/2004 11:20:28 PM PDT by NationSoConceived
SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- California became the first state Thursday to ban weeding by hand on most farms, saying the work is too backbreaking for laborers.
Under a rule approved by the California Occupational Safety and Health Division, farmworkers, in most cases, will not have to stoop to pull weeds, but will instead be given long-handled tools that will allow them to work without bending over. The rule takes effect within two weeks.
The regulation aims to prevent the "real and substantial risk of back injury" caused by stooping to weed or thin plants by hand, Cal-OSHA said. The workplace-safety agency had no estimate of how many California field hands hurt their backs.
Agriculture is one of California's top industries, supporting over 1 million jobs and contributing nearly $28 billion to the state's economy. There is little data on the prevalence of hand-weeding on California farms. But crops such as lettuce, carrots, celery and strawberries are considered so delicate that they are weeded by hand.
"The same kind of crops we have here are grown in other nations, other states. The crops aren't unique to California," said Mike Webb of the Western Growers Association, which represents farms. Yet, he said, "we're going to be the only place on the face of the Earth that has a regulation or law that outlaws hand-weeding."
Growers and farmworkers have been battling over the practice of hand-weeding for years.
In 1975, California banned a short-handle hoe that required workers to stoop low for hours at a time as they pulled weeds. At United Farm Worker Union leader Cesar Chavez's funeral, his grandchildren placed the 12-inch tool on an altar as a symbol of the labor activist's effort to improve the lives of farmworkers.
While the ban ended the use of the tool, it did not prohibit workers from weeding by hand. In 1993, Cal-OSHA found that prolonged hand-weeding caused the same debilitating back injuries associated with use of the short hoe.
The new rule says farms cannot require workers to weed by hand for extended periods of time unless they can show that long-handled tools are not effective.
If the workers must hand-weed, they must be given longer breaks, and there are restrictions on how much time they must spend toiling at the task.
Len Welsh, acting chief of Cal-OSHA, said the regulation will be a challenge to enforce. With most OSHA rules, "there's a particular tool that's not allowed or a substance you can't expose workers to," Welsh said. "Here, you're talking about a work practice, something completely behavioral."
The Western Growers Association opposed previous attempts to enact legislation covering hand-weeding because they were outright bans, Webb said. He said the Cal-OSHA rule is more reasonable, he said.
"We've talked to a number of our growers," he said. "They've agreed it's something they can live with."
Organic farmers who rely on hand-weeding are exempt from the rule.
"Because they don't use pesticides, organic growers have more of a weed problem than non-organic growers," Webb said. "Without an exemption, it would have jeopardized the organic industry."
Mike Meuter, an attorney with the California Rural Legal Assistance, which represents farmworkers and pushed for the new rule, said it will not be too burdensome on growers.
"California's farmworkers deserve these protections," he said. "It's been too long."
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Read the regulation at Cal/OSHA's Web site: http://www.dir.ca.gov/oshsb/handweeding0.htm
I heard they banned hand washing also...to save water of course.
NOW DO YOU SEE WHAT I'VE BEEN TELLING EVERYONE?
This came right on the heels of the latest Liberal campaign to raise the minimum wage, too.
The Californian government appears to have one goal in mind: to produce the laziest, dumbest, most criminal- and Aztlan-friendly citizens (not to mention illegal aliens) in the entire United States.
If it wasn't so tragic, this state would be a joke.
Is it safe to say that California is insane??
Yep. This clinches it. CA is populated exclusively by the mentally-challenged.
California went insane long ago. What you're seeing now is the inmates running the asylum.
California is notoriously anti-business. And this little PR stunt by the Liberals is going to have a still-greater impact than anyone imagines.
You see, with the banning of hand-weeding, growers are going to need to start using machinery or start producing lower crop yields. Considering the plethora of "environmental impact" laws on the books, most growers will either get it up the tailpipe with fees or penalties, or they'll take it up the tailpipe with smaller yields. Either way, prices will go up, quality will go down, and the businesses and consumers will suffer for it. Eventually, consumers inside and outside of California will use products from elsewhere.
Meanwhile, California will continue its slow decline into Third World Nation status.
A few years ago, California was the 5th largest economy in the world. Thanks to the Liberals, it's now the 6th largest economy. Unless the Republicans around here can grow a pair and start doing something to rescue this state, I predict that California will be the 10th largest economy by the end of this decade and the 25th largest by 2020.
That's what happens when the tax payer has to pay for every illegal alien that slips through the border!
Wait a minute? These workers had a union? They paid union dues?
Why didn't the union work with the employers to help pay for the new tools?
*sigh*
Actually, that's just a small part of the tip of the iceberg. The first warning sign is when emergency medical centers all across Southern California start to close down because they can't keep losing money.
Y'see, all the illegals don't have legal jobs, so they don't get insurance and thus go to the ER every time they have a sniffle. The ERs start going bankrupt and start shutting down...one-by-one. All the while, the Liberals squeal that illegal aliens put more into our economy they take out (a claim that is total bullsh*t considering that the U.S. operates at a $10 BILLION net loss every year thanks to illegals).
Stay Safe.......Y
Who is the bigger fool? The fool leading the pack, or the fools that follow them?
CA is a cesspool, and has been for a long time. Anyone that lives there must agree with the insanity foisted on them by their elected leadership. Anyone with an ounce of sense departed from that leftist utopia a long time ago.
AMEN brother
Funny...I was specifically thinking about healthcare. My wife worked in a dialysis unit when I lived there about 10 years ago and 3/4 of the patients were illegals. And WE were paying for them.
I noticed the same thing when I had to go to the emergency room with shortness of breath (turned out to be pneumonia with pleurisy). The place was a din of Spanish chatter. I would have bet a week's pay that less than 1/3rd of the people in the waiting room were U.S. citizens.
Okay, so what is left? Trained goats? Can somebody train goats or sheep to eat only weeds? Or perhaps somebody can train Californians that the weeds are actually a new vegetable, part of your healthy lifestyle!
Fine. Find all the farmworkers who are battling over this practice. Eliminate the illegals from their midst. Pay the remaining ones three times what they were making (since 3 out of 4 of 'em are probably illegals), and tell 'em if they work hard enough, we'll pay them even more. If we as a nation decided to shut up and pay $1.95 for a bag of carrots instead of $0.75; we would save untold billions in healthcare and social services spending. Also, those workers who will end up taking over the jobs of the illegals, if properly paid, will want to keep a good thing going, and will actively support keeping the illegals out.
So if you buy organic food in a store, you are supporting a practice that injures the backs of the workers who grew the food for you. How mean-spirited.
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