Ellen M. Brokaw
President, Brokaw Nursery, Inc., Saticoy, and Co-Chair, Committee on Women
in Agriculture, Ventura County
Luisa and Ana were two of the women interviewed in 1990 by the Ventura County Committee on Women in Agriculture in an effort to better understand the work experience of female farm workers, the opportunities and barriers they face.
Ana has worked in a Ventura County packing house for 32 years - all her working life. She works all year, earning more than $16,000 annually, and likes her job. She says she would never want to work outside in the fields. Her husband worked for 20 years in agriculture but now has a nonagricultural job that he likes. Both speak fluent English, and they own their own home.
Luisa has been picking strawberries almost every year since
she came to California in 1972, only missing occasional seasons for the
births of her six children. She has advanced to inspecting boxes and earned
about $5,800 in 1990 for six months of work. Luisa identifies many problems
she has encountered over the years, including an injury to her knee, lack
of maternity leave, inadequate child care during work hours, and health
problems in her family. She finds bending over to be increasingly difficult
and worries about pesticides. She would like to work in a hospital but
thinks that it is an impossible dream because of her inability to speak
English, the cost of getting trained, and the needs of her children. She
says that, despite the physical stress, field work would be okay for her
if she could have year-round employment, health insurance, child care, and
vacation and sick pay. Her husband also works in agriculture and does not
seek a change, although he says that pesticides are a health risk and that
"farm work imprisons one." Luisa expresses concern about an influx
of "outsiders" who are taking jobs and lowering wages.
The Ventura County Committee on Women in Agriculture is an informal, diverse group of women and men who became interested in the problems of women farm workers when the Ventura County Commission on Women held a meeting in 1986 to publicize the discrimination claims of some female packing house workers. In the ensuing years, the Committee organized two forums, bringing together women to discuss health, immigration, education, and other employment-related topics. But the Committee felt handicapped by insufficient knowledge about the experience of women working in Ventura County fields and packing houses. We knew, for instance, that large numbers of women were employed in strawberry harvesting for a few months each year, but not whether they wanted to find year-round work or were content with their patterns of income from seasonal earnings and unemployment benefits. The need to learn more about these workers led to this survey.
The committee conducted a survey of 256 households in predominantly Hispanic neighborhoods during spring and summer 1990. The households were randomly selected from Ventura County 1980 census tracts data. All adults present in each household, a total of 733 persons, were interviewed. The 433 adults who had worked in agriculture at any time since January 1988 were asked for detailed work histories. Although the study focuses on women, both men and women were interviewed to develop a picture of the entire agricultural workforce.
What We Found
In many respects, the picture revealed by our survey data is gloomy: 82 percent of agricultural workers, male and female, want to obtain nonagricultural work, and 93 percent of the women identifying themselves as strawberry harvesters want to leave agriculture. Only 6 percent of those interviewed want their children to work in agriculture. However, 64 percent of those who want to find nonagricultural work identify serious, if not insurmountable, barriers to changing jobs, with their lack of English fluency at the head of the list.
An image emerges of an established workforce that feels trapped in jobs that do not offer opportunities for adequate annual income or advancement. A majority of both men and women voiced this frustration, but women are employed in fewer crops and tasks than men and in lower paid, shorter term jobs. The average work year of women interviewed is 4.9 months, and women are two and one-half times more likely to be unemployed than men.
Detailed employment information collected in the survey is summarized in the full report in a number of ways, such as by crop, task, respondent sex, and type of employer (farm labor contractor, grower or packing house). Opinions were also solicited on a variety of topics, such as good and bad aspects of agricultural work and benefits most desired. The most important benefit for the women interviewed is paid sick leave, currently received by only 11 percent as compared with 24 percent of male respondents. Health insurance for self, received by 35 percent of the women and 49 percent of the men, is ranked as the third most important benefit by both. Health insurance for dependents is second in importance to women and fifth to men; 19 percent of women and 33 percent of men receive that benefit. Other benefits among the top six for both men and women are paid vacation, paid holidays, and a bonus/incentive program.
The most likable aspect of agricultural work is being outside in the "free air," cited by 20 percent of the male and 12 percent of the female workers. Half of the women believe they can do the same work as men if they receive training; 90 percent believe they can be crew leaders, and two-thirds of the men agree. Both men and women respondents cite lack of English, poor health, and injuries as having been problems for them in agricultural work. Women also mention lack of child care, discrimination due to sex or ethnicity, and family responsibilities as problems. Most commonly mentioned as problems confronting agriculture are chemicals, insufficient pay, and poor working conditions.
The Committee now knows the answer to one of the questions that launched the project: Do female seasonal workers want year-round work? Sixty-one percent, most of whom are employed in harvesting and packing houses, say they do. These women have fewer alternative sources of income than those who prefer to work seasonally. Of those who would like to work year-round, 64 percent receive unemployment benefits, and 45 percent are supported by income from other family members. Among women who prefer seasonal work, 83 percent receive unemployment checks, and 62 percent have income from others in the family.
Recommendations for Action
Now comes the hardest part, and the real point of the project: taking action to improve the work experience of Ventura County female farm workers. Recommendations in the report are grouped under nine categories: a longer work year, access to higher skilled and higher paid jobs in agriculture, access to jobs outside agriculture, opportunity to learn English, improvement of health benefits, access to child care, access to social services, response to workplace health and safety fears, and compliance with labor laws. Within each category, the Committee has formulated specific ideas for implementation by a variety of groups in Ventura County, such as employer and employee organizations, job training agencies, medical and legal service organizations, state and local government agencies, and educational institutions. The Committee believes that change will be successfully implemented only by the joint effort and resources of private and public entities.
A few days after presenting the full report and distributing copies to board members of the Ventura County Agricultural Association and Ventura County Farm Bureau, we released copies to the press. Initial response of the employer community, represented by the directors of these two main Ventura County agricultural employer organizations, has ranged from lack of interest to outrage. The latter can be understood as a reaction to the local newspaper stories about the report, which most people saw before reading the report itself. A Los Angeles Times story, "The Female Farmworker Blues," was picked up by an Orange County paper under the headline "Harvest of Shame."
This reaction is initially discouraging but is overshadowed by two features of Ventura County agriculture - the great variety of crops grown, in which work (combined) extends throughout the year and can thus provide more lengthy employment, and the large number of progressive, far-sighted employers. One of the Committee's next jobs is to tell the stories of local farmers who now employ women in nontraditional jobs and under conditions conducive to high performance. The most important challenge is to seek out and implement ways in which producers of different commodities with complementary seasons can cooperate to "share" workers, providing more year-round employment.
Obviously, the current labor market, in which there is an abundance of labor, in combination with problems threatening the profitability of all agricultural operations, does not motivate employers to spend money on more benefits or training. Thus, while the problems are clear, the solutions are elusive. Committee members hope that our survey findings will provide the basis for improved choices and conditions for a large and valuable segment of the Ventura County agricultural workforce.
Initial funding for the project was provided by the University of California Agricultural Personnel Management Program and matched by local contributions. Suzanne Vaupel, agricultural economist, worked closely with Committee members during the project, performing data analysis and writing the report. Copies of the report, A Study of Agricultural Workers in Ventura County, California (31 pages of text, 36 tables), can be obtained for $5.00 from The Committee on Women in Agriculture, P.O. Box 4818, Saticoy, CA 93007.
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