Working the Land

Working the Land
Author: Nicola Verdon
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 292
Release: 2017-09-22
Genre: History
ISBN: 1137316748

This book offers a new history of the farmworker in England from 1850 to the present day. It focuses on the paid worker, considering how the experiences of farm work – the work performed, wages earned and conditions of hiring – were shaped by gender, age and region. Combining data extracted from statistical sources with personal and autobiographical accounts, it places the individual farmworker back into a broader collective history. Beginning in the mid-Victorian era, when farmworkers were the most numerically significant occupational group in England, it considers the impact of economic, technological and social change on the scale and nature of farm work over the next hundred and fifty years, whilst also highlighting the continuation of some practices, including the use of casual and migrant workers to perform low-paid, seasonal work. Written in a lively and accessible manner, this book will appeal to those with an interest in rural history, gender history and modern British history.

Harvest Wobblies

Harvest Wobblies
Author: Greg Hall
Publisher:
Total Pages: 296
Release: 2001
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN:

Increased Mechanization and the expansion of new markets transformed the face of American farming in the early decades of the twentieth century, especially in the American West. These changes demanded a new kind of agricultural worker--gone was the local farmhand, replaced by a cheap and temporary labor force of migrant and seasonal workers. Greg Hall's fascinating book analyzes how "harvest Wobblies," members of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), organized these men, women, and sometimes children who had become so essential and yet so exploited on the farms of the West. Although harvest Wobblies worked in nearly all the western states, their stongholds were the Great Plains, California, and the Pacific Northwest, regions where harmers developed monocrop agriculture and where seasonal labor was indispensable come harvest time. Like their IWW brethren in logging camps and mines, the harvest Wobblies combined an effort to improve the lives of workers with harger revolutionary goals. Harvest Wobblies personified most of the indelible features of IWW membership: they were the militant casual laborers of the American West, riding the rails, living in hobo jungles, preaching revolution, and facing repression with innovative strategies, impassioned speech, humor, and song. Through trial and error, Wobbly organizers eventually implemented the idea of an industrial union in agriculture and helped the IWW to establish itself as a powerful force to be reckoned with by employers in the West. In tracing the rise and the eventual fall of the harvest Wobblies, Greg Hall examines the diverse and changing nature of the agricultural work force. He offers a social and cultural history of a union uniquely suited to organizing tens of thousands of migrant and seasonal workers. Harvest Wobblies will appeal to a broad audience of readers interested in labor history, the American West, U.S. agricultural history, and the history of the IWW.

Gordo

Gordo
Author: Jaime Cortez
Publisher: Grove Press
Total Pages: 145
Release: 2021-08-10
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0802158099

This debut story collection “masterfully navigates adverse conditions of migrant life while . . . managing to find joy and amusement, love and triumph” (San Francisco Chronicle). Gordo brings readers inside a migrant workers camp near Watsonville, California in the 1970s. At the heart of these interrelated stories is a young, probably gay, boy named Gordo, who must find a way to contend with the notions of manhood imposed on him by his father. As he comes of age, Gordo learns about sex, watches his father’s drunken fights, and discovers even his own documented Mexican-American parents are wary of illegal migrants. We also meet Fat Cookie, high schooler and resident artist who runs away from home one day with her mother’s boyfriend, Manny. And then there are Los Tigres, the twins who show up every season and whose drunken brawl ends with one of them rushed to the emergency room in an upholstered chair tied to the back of a pick-up truck. These scenes from Steinbeck Country are full of humor, family drama, and a sweet frankness about serious questions: Who belongs to America and how are they treated? How does one learn decency when grown adults must fear for their lives and livelihoods? Gordo “announces a vibrant new voice on the literary scene, at once wise and authentic and supremely gifted” (Booklist, starred review). Finalist for the 2022 Lambda Literary Award for Gay Fiction Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction

Agriculture, Forestry, and Fishing Research at NIOSH

Agriculture, Forestry, and Fishing Research at NIOSH
Author: Institute of Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
Total Pages: 354
Release: 2008-06-10
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 0309177693

The agriculture, forestry, and fishing sectors are the cornerstone of industries that produce food, fiber, and biofuel. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) conducts research in order to improve worker safety and health in these sectors. This National Research Council book reviews the NIOSH Agriculture, Forestry, and Fishing Program to evaluate the 1) relevance of its work to improvements in occupational safety and health and 2) the impact of research in reducing workplace illnesses and injuries. The assessment reveals that the program has made meaningful contributions to improving worker safety and health in these fields. To enhance the relevance and impact of its work and fulfill its mission, the NIOSH Agriculture, Forestry, and Fishing Program should provide national leadership, coordination of research, and activities to transfer findings, technologies, and information into practice. The program will also benefit from establishing strategic goals and implementing a comprehensive surveillance system in order to better identify and track worker populations at risk.

Hired Farm Workers

Hired Farm Workers
Author: United States. Employment Standards Administration
Publisher:
Total Pages: 142
Release: 1971
Genre: Agricultural wages
ISBN:

Chasing the Harvest

Chasing the Harvest
Author: Gabriel Thompson
Publisher: Verso Books
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2017-05-16
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1786632209

Lives from an invisible community—the migrant farmworkers of the United States The Grapes of Wrath brought national attention to the condition of California’s migrant farmworkers in the 1930s. Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers’ grape and lettuce boycotts captured the imagination of the United States in the 1960s and ’70s. Yet today, the stories of the more than 800,000 men, women, and children working in California’s fields—one third of the nation’s agricultural work force—are rarely heard, despite the persistence of wage theft, dangerous working conditions, and uncertain futures. This book of oral histories makes the reality of farm work visible in accounts of hardship, bravery, solidarity, and creativity in California’s fields, as real people struggle to win new opportunities for future generations. Among the narrators: Maricruz, a single mother fired from a packing plant after filing a sexual assault complaint against her supervisor. Roberto, a vineyard laborer in the scorching Coachella Valley who became an advocate for more humane working conditions after his teenage son almost died of heatstroke. Oscar, an elementary school teacher in Salinas who wants to free his students from a life in the fields, the fate that once awaited him as a child.

FAO framework on ending child labour in agriculture

FAO framework on ending child labour in agriculture
Author: FAO
Publisher: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
Total Pages: 148
Release: 2020-06-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9251328463

The purpose of the FAO’s framework is to guide the Organization and its personnel in the integration of measures addressing child labour within FAO’s typical work, programmes and initiatives at global, regional and country levels. It aims to enhance compliance with organization’s operational standards, and strengthen coherence and synergies across the Organization and with partners. The FAO framework is primarily targeted at FAO as an organization, including all personnel in all geographic locations. But the framework is also relevant for FAO’s governing bodies and Member States, and provides guidance and a basis for collaboration with development partners. The framework is also to be used as a key guidance to assess and monitor compliance with FAO’s environmental and social standards addressing prevention and reduction of child labour in FAO’s programming.

Health of Workers in Agriculture

Health of Workers in Agriculture
Author: Mostafa A. El-Batawi
Publisher: World Health Organization
Total Pages: 108
Release: 2004
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN:

Agriculture ranks among the most hazardous industries. Many new techniques and processes that are being used in agricultural production can give rise to health problems that are not readily recognized either by health professionals or the workers themselves. Agricultural workers are at high risk for fatal and nonfatal injuries, work-related lung diseases, noise-induced hearing loss, skin diseases and certain types of cancer associated with chemical use and prolonged sun exposure. Agriculture is also one of the few industries in which the families of workers, who often share the work and live on the premises, are also at risk for injuries, illness and death. This publication is intended for workers and health personnel in both industrialized and developing countries. Its purpose is to provide rural health practitioners (occupational health personnel, other health care specialists and practitioners working in parasitology, toxicology, accident prevention and primary health care) and public health officials with information related to the major problems facing agricultural workers in health practice. Fundamental principles in the development of an occupational health service are presented, with emphasis on the importance of the primary health care approach.

With These Hands

With These Hands
Author: Daniel Rothenberg
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 372
Release: 2000-10-30
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780520227347

"What makes this book so important is that it allows us to see into the lives of those who do the stoop labor to put that lovely salad on our tables. With These Hands is a unique and valuable documentary work that skillfully presents the voices of laborers and others, helping us to understand our connection to the world of America's farmworkers."—Studs Terkel