We examined the characteristics of agricultural employment operations that have received notices of violation under the TIPP program and compared them to operations that have not received notices of violation. Although most previous studies have focused on the affected worker, this classic approach has important limitations. In particular, Latino/Hispanic farm workers are difficult to study because of their high mobility, distrust of governmental authority, concern over immigration and citizenship status, and language differences.” Therefore, we feel it is appropriate to conduct an epidemiological analysis focusing on agricultural establishments rather than on individual employees. In an era of increasing focus on governmental efficiency, the information will be useful in informing agencies with jurisdiction for occupational health and safety in agriculture about epidemiological aspects of their efforts and potentially improving targeting of educational and enforcement activities. Although they were not part of the original specific aims for this project, we examined data from all cases associated with fines for serious violations reported by Cal-OSHA to the IMIS database during 1993-1995 and evaluated TIPP data in the context of labor expense as an index of labor demand. From the standpoint of improving compliance with licensing and registration requirements, the TIPP program has been highly successful. In 1995, about 96% of farm labor contractors licensed by the State of California are also registered with the U.S. Department of Labor, as compared with just 72% in 1990, before the TIPP program began.It is likely that this is the result of the program’s educational efforts,hydroponic channel coupled with the reahstic risk of fines for noncompliance. In addition, there is joint liability for farm operators who contract with unlicensed farm-labor contractors.
This may encourage operators to contract only with licensed farm-labor contractors and encourage farm-labor contractors to obtain a license. More than 2,CCO citations have been issued and millions of dollars of fines for serious violations have been assessed since the program’s inception . In addition, about $1.5 million in back wages owed to employees has been recovered. Cal-OSHA assessed 839 fines for serious violations to a total of 722 agricultural employers during the period 1993-1995. For purposes of this analysis only those agricultural employers who are directly engaged in tasks resulting in the production of a farm commodity for sale are considered . Figure 2 summarizes these fines according to specific OSHA standards. About 78% of these fines were for violations of OSHA Standard 3457 . The next highest frequency of fines amounted to just 10% of the total, for violations of OSHA Standard 3441 . The number of fines for violations of other OSHA standards were, in each case, half or less of this frequency, corresponding to 5% or less of the total, We have used databases developed by CIRS to assign each employer fined for serious OSHA violations to one of the following three categories: farm operator, licensed farm-labor contractor, other labor contractor. The results are shown in Figure 3. The largest single group of employers who were fined were found to be farm operators. Of the 722 employers fined during 1993-1995, 275 were farm operators , 230 were licensed labor contractors , and 217 were other labor contractors , including unlicensed farm-labor contractors. Taken together, the licensed and “other” farm labor contractors account for the majority of employers who were fined . Assignment to one of the three categories was accomplished in the following manner. To qualify for the first category, the employer must be a “farmer,” i.e., placing capital at risk for the purpose of producing an agricultural commodity for sale.
These were identified using the California Farm Operators Database described earlier in this report. Matching against this database was accomplished using name, county, address, and other information as obtained from the Cal-OSHA IMIS database. Licensed farm-labor contractors were identified by comparison of individual Cal-OSHA records with the files of license holders. As described previously, electronic files of all such licensed contractors were obtained by CIRS from CDIR. Records of businesses fined for serious violations of OSHA standards were assigned to the category “Other labor contractors” if they could not be identified through matches with the two databases described above but were providing labor services on farms. Many of these employers are unlicensed farm-labor contractors. Using standard business reference sources, such as the records of Dun & Bradstreet Credit Services, we independently verified that a substantial number of employers in this category were non-farm agricultural businesses. In the period 1993-1995 an average of 1,055 farm-labor contractors were licensed to operate in California. From the previous findings concerning the number of licensed farm-labor contractors among those employers who were fined, there were an average of 77 per year . Hence, these data suggest one of every fourteen licensed farm-labor contractors in California was fined annually for serious OSHA violations. To determine the relative frequency at which farm operators are fined, recall that a cumulative total of 275 farm operators were fined in three years . While the number of farm operators who are employers is not accurately known, the Census of Agriculture reports that 38,347 California farms were reportedly incurring a hired-labor expense associated with directly employing workers. If this figure represents the number of farm-operator employers during the period 1993-1995, then we estimate that, each year, about one in 400 farm operators was fined for serious OSHA standard violations. These data suggest that farm-labor contractors licensed to operate in California were about 30 times more likely than farm operators to be fined for serious OSHA violations.
It is not possible to comment on the third category, “Other labor contractors,” because the number of unlicensed labor contractors is not accurately known. The geographic distribution of violators by agricultural region was also examined. We follow the definitions used by the California Department of Employment Development, which assigns each county to one of six Agricultural Regions . As shown in Table B below, the greatest number of violators, accounting for half of the total, were located in the San Joaquin Valley. The next largest number of employers, about one-fifth of the total, were South Coast employers. Central Coast employers ranked third, with one-eighth of the state total, followed by Desert with about one-ninth. TIPP reports for 1993-1994 were examined with respect to Standard Industrial Classification codes, farm sales, and geographic location. Figure 4 shows the distribution of cited farm operators by SIC code and the corresponding distribution of farm labor expense. Farm labor expense is a surrogate for hours of labor demand,hydroponic dutch buckets a measure of occupational hazard exposure. The most important finding is that a clear majority of farm-operator TIPP citations were issued to fruit and nut farmers . Next in frequency were vegetable farms . In both cases the proportion of citations exceeded the corresponding shares of hired labor expense. In all other SIC code categories, the frequency of TIPP citations was less than the corresponding share of hired labor expense. Figure 5 shows a more detailed analysis of fruit and nut farm operator TIPP citations . Berry farms accounted for a very large share of all farm operator TIPP citations , and a disproportionately large share as compared with the berry-farm share of hired labor expense. Berry farms appear to have a disproportionately high frequency of labor- and safety-law violations, at least four times larger than their share of hired-labor expense. Grape farms were next in frequency, and their share of TIPP citations corresponded closely to their respective share of hired farm-labor expense. Farm operators cited under the TIPP program were also analyzed with respect to imputed farm size, assigned by estimating revenues from crop marketings based on county agricultural commissioners’ reports. Each farm’s planted acreage was valued according to the three-year average crop-specific revenues per acre within the county where the crop field is located. Figure 6 shows the estimated revenue distribution of farm operators cited by the TIPP program and the corresponding shares of hired-labor expense. Clearly, a majority of TIPP citations were issued to large farms . However, the large-farm share of TIPP citations was somewhat smaller than its share of hired-labor expense. At the other extreme, small farms accounted for about 15% of TIPP citations. However, the small farm share of TIPP citations was nearly four times larger than its share of hired-labor expense.
Comparison of the relative frequency of TIPP citations with labor expense reveals that smaller farms have a disproportionately high share of TTPP citations relative to labor expense. It is not clear whether small farms are subjected to higher enforcement activity or whether larger farms are able to allocate a larger share of their resources for compliance than can smaller farms. Figure 7 shows the regional distribution of farm-operator TIPP citations and corresponding shares of hu-ed-labor expense. In this case, each county was assigned to one of six EDD crop regions, and farm operators were classified according to the county in which their farm is located, The frequency of TIPP citations issued to farmers was highest in the South Coast region of the state, followed by the San Joaquin Valley. However, this is the reverse of their respective shares of hired-labor expense. It is not known whether the TIPP effort is allocated in proportion to labor demand or whether the relative frequency of farm-operator TIPP violations is greater in the South Coast as compared with the San Joaquin Valley. We present the findings of a study of notices of violation for identified by the Targeted Industries Partnership Program during 1993 and 1994. The major findings of this study are that farms represented the largest share of reports, over 40%.Health and-safety violations comprised a minority of violations, just over 10%. The most common health and-safety violation involved washing facilities. When farms with a TIPP report were compared to those without, larger farms and those operating in more than one county were at higher risk. Fruit and nut-producing operations, especially berry producers, were at increased risk for TIPP citation relative to labor expense. Based on Cal-OSHA data, farm-labor contractors appear to be at increased risk for TIPP citation compared to farm operators. This project represents the first attempt to examine data from the TIPP program from an epidemiological perspective. We were successful in characterizing and summarizing the TTPP violations within the constraints of the data available. However, we had only limited success in developing a profile of high-risk operations in comparison with operations that had not received notices of violation. The limitations are imposed by the character of the databases, which contained only limited information on variables of major epidemiological interest, such as operator characteristics and farm characteristics. We note that the TIPP records are separate from those maintained by Cal-OSHA in the IMIS system. As such, die distribution of violations noted may be different. For example, Cal-OSHA records indicate that the most commonly cited violation in agriculture for 1993 and 1994 was failure to establish and maintain a written Illness and Injury Prevention Plan. Because Cal-OSHA renders citations outside the auspices of the TIPP program, distributions of violations may differ, We were able to examine and compare reported acreage and crop. The finding of larger acreage among cited farms compared with noncited farms may rest on several factors. First, larger farms may be more likely to have violations, either because of an inherently more hazardous environment, or because the large farms simply encompass more workers and hazardous conditions because of their size. However, if larger farms are simply more likely than smaller farms to be inspected, this finding may represent the results of selection bias. Although large farms were at greater risk than small farms for notices of violation, when TIPP citations were examined with respect to labor expense, smaller farms had an increase in citations relative to larger farms. Although at first glance these findings may appear to conflict, in fact they do not. Although, on average, large farms were more likely than small farms to receive TTPP notices of violation, small farms use much less labor than do large farms; hence, the number of citations to small farms relative to the number of workers they hire is greater. Thus, from the farm owner’s or manager’s standpoint, larger farms are at greater risk for TTPP notices of violation. From the individual worker’s standpoint, however, persons working on small farms are at greater risk for working in an operation with citable conditions.