Stephen R. Sutter
Teams of investigators again visited Fresno area fields and sheds in the second summer of the Targeted Industries Partnership Program (TIPP). Their basic aim was to ensure that employers competed on a level field, and that workers were paid at least legal minimums and worked under safe and healthful conditions. Although no action can be expected to fully achieve these objectives, agency officials as well as employers I have spoken with say that things have changed.
The TIPP is a multi-agency, labor law enforcement and education program currently dedicated to work in the agricultural and garment industries. (See "Labor Law Enforcement Targets Agriculture" in Labor Management Decisions, Fall 1992.) Bilingual officers from the U.S. Department of Labor, the California Department of Industrial Relations (Division of Labor Standards Enforcement and Division of Occupational Safety and Health), and the Department of Housing and Community Development "swept through" agricultural counties throughout the state this year. They involve other agencies on a case by case basis.
Inspectors in the program have referred apparent pesticide rule violations to county agricultural commissioners. The California Highway Patrol has participated by writing citations for violation of farm worker transportation standards. The U.S. Internal Revenue Service is a TIPP "cooperator," and it also has its own Fresno-based "Agricultural Design Team" focusing on education of farm labor contractors and strategies to collect an estimated $200 million in unpaid agricultural employment taxes. The Immigration and Naturalization Service is not included in TIPP.
Officers have traveled to farms of all sizes. While most growers, packers, and labor contractors who are audited are specifically selected for attention, some are chosen at random. The official report of TIPP's first year shows that inspectors assessed penalties totaling $2,401,524 based on 1,353 inspections in California agriculture. In the garment industry, $4,092,453 was assessed after 753 inspections. Cited violations that growers have told me about involved child labor, documentation of safety programs, posters about workers' compensation or other required information, expired first aid cards, overtime premium pay for field workers and packers, field sanitation, and unlicensed day hauling and labor contracting activity.
This year's TIPP push in Fresno ran from late August through mid-September, coinciding with a perceived local shortage of workers. Labor contractors I spoke with at the time said that pay levels and reduced availability of legal workers accounted for much of the deficit. Expanded demand for labor, however, may also have contributed. Employment of San Joaquin Valley grape production workers in September 1994 was up 7 percent over a year ago, according to a recent estimate from the Employment Development Department. Conjecture among some growers is that a shortage of workers is more likely in coming years, partly because of difficulties in finding seasonal housing.
Agricultural employers were better prepared in this second year. Seminars sponsored by various industry and educational organizations seemed to help lower the sum of penalties assessed around Fresno more significantly than other regions. After the sweep in their community last year, Southeast Asian farmers attended meetings to learn more about record-keeping, workers' compensation, and wage-hour rules.
Enforcement stirrings may have spawned profitable consulting. In one seminar, a Cal/OSHA officer commended a one-page fill-in-the-blank safety program description from Cooperative Extension, evidently favoring it over some of the $400 to $600 ring-binder systems he had seen locally. I saw such a binder on a farm visit following a TIPP inspection. The entrepreneur who produced it had copied my tractor artwork on the binder cover.
For a free bilingual TIPP checklist and list of other available publications, call me at 209/456-7560.
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