farm workers

"(P)ublic health experts say hundreds of children under 16...continue to work in America’s tobacco fields" through an exclusion in labor law that allows youth as young as 12 years old to work unlimited hours as farm workers, says the New York Times in a story about youth labor on tobacco farms. The story says field workers risk green tobacco sickness - nicotine poisoning - from dew or rain water dripping from the leaves of tobacco plants. Vomiting, dizziness and irregular heartbeats are among the symptoms.

Legislators in New York state are hopeful of victory in the near term to require farmers to pay overtime wages to agricultural laborers, said the New York Times.

Leaders of a House Agriculture subcommittee criticized the Labor Department during a hearing as high-handed and unfair in its use of its authority to prevent shipment of farm products when it believes growers under-paid their workers. The so-called hot goods power has been an issue in Oregon fruit farms since 2012. Growers say they were coerced into signing consent agreements or see their crops wither in the warehouse.

Drought will cost California farmers $1.5 billion out of a statewide total of $2.2 billion this year according to a report by UC-Davis, said Business Insider. Losses will include 17,000 part-time and seasonal jobs. Because of sparse precipitation, growers are getting one-third of their usual water deliveries and are offsetting the reduction by pumping much more water from wells.

Supporters and opponents of immigration reform cranked up the pressure on House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, says Roll Call, "with less than two weeks to go before a closely watched primary race and the clock steadily ticking down on the 113th Congress."

Three years after winning a pay increase of 1 cent per lb, tomato workers in Florida are in dramatically improved conditions, says the New York Times in a story the describes better accounting of pay and better treatment in the fields.

"California's worsening drought reached a new, ominous milestone this week just as the typical dry season begins for much of the state," says The Weather Channel.

The MacArthur Foundation awarded one of its $625,000 "genius grants" to Greg Asbed, one of three co-founders of the Coalition for Immokalee Workers (CIW). It said Asbed "is a human rights strategist developing a new model — worker-driven social responsibility — for improving conditions for low-wage workers within the 21st Century labor market."