We’re back from Labor Day weekend and talking about a group of laborers that’s in short supply these days: farmworkers. The people who pick the food we eat are considered the backbone of the agricultural industry. So why are they treated differently than other workers and often go without the same labor protections like overtime and the right to unionize?
“The work is grueling, and then there’s just this host of other routine violations of their labor protections,” said Mary Hoopes, associate law professor at the Pepperdine Caruso School of Law. “There’s a reason that the most vulnerable people fill these jobs.”
On the show today, Hoopes explains why agricultural workers were left out of the New Deal’s labor protections, what’s changed since then and the exploitative nature of temporary visa programs used to fill ongoing farm labor shortages. Where do Big Ag and American consumers fit in all of this? And will the massive 2023 Farm Bill help?
Then, we’ll get into how a drop-off in funding for many federal aid programs could impact low-income families. And projections from Bloomberg Economics show that China will probably not surpass the U.S. as the world’s largest economy by 2030, as many economists had predicted. If not 2030, when?
Later, a listener tells us about why it’s difficult to avoid single-use plastics in the health care industry. And evolutionary biologist Jonathan Losos was wrong about why cats meow.
Here’s everything we talked about today:
- “Regulating Marginalized Labor” from the Hastings Law Journal
- “The Food and Farm Bill Can Do a Lot for Workers” from the Union of Concerned Scientists
- “Can the United Farm Workers of California Rise Again?” from The New York Times
- “As these farmworkers’ children seek a different future, farms look for workers abroad” from NPR
- “Farm Workers Exposed to Climate Change Effects Are Demanding Protections” from PBS
- The incredible American retreat on government aid from The Washington Post
- “A D.C. grocery store is removing Tide, Colgate and Advil to deter theft” from The Washington Post
- “China Slowdown Means It May Never Overtake US Economy, Forecast Shows” from Bloomberg
- “Opinion | Single-use plastics are everywhere in health care. That must change.” from The Washington Post
We want to hear your answer to the Make Me Smart question. You can reach us at makemesmart@marketplace.org or leave us a voicemail at 508-U-B-SMART.
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Make Me Smart September 5, 2023 Transcript
Note: Marketplace podcasts are meant to be heard, with emphasis, tone and audio elements a transcript can’t capture. Transcripts are generated using a combination of automated software and human transcribers, and may contain errors. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting it.
Kimberly Adams
Hello, I’m Kimberly Adams. Welcome back to Make Me Smart, where none of us is as smart as all of us.
Kai Ryssdal
I’m Kai Ryssdal. It’s Tuesday, five September is what the calendar says. We’re gonna do a single topic as we do today on a Tuesday it’s going to be labor, farm labor, specifically in these United States.
Kimberly Adams
That’s right, we want to know why agricultural workers have historically been left out of important labor legislation, and how it’s affecting farm workers today. Here to make us smart about this is Mary Hoopes, Associate Professor of Law at the Pepperdine Caruso School of Law. Welcome to the show.
Mary Hoopes
Thank you so much for having me.
Kimberly Adams
So when did agricultural workers start kind of being separated out from the rest of the labor force when it comes to the law?
Mary Hoopes
I think a lot of it dates back to the New Deal during a time where we started to see so many of the important labor protections that we still have today. And it’s been pretty well documented in the academic literature by scholars like Juan Parella or Mark Linder that during the New Deal era, when we saw major legislation like the farm, the Fair Labor Standards Act and the National Labor Relations Act, that excluding both domestic workers and agricultural workers, was essentially used as a proxy for race. So this allowed them to exclude a lot of black laborers, without explicitly doing so. And as a result, farmworkers were excluded from overtime protections of the Fair Labor Standards Act and from the right to be protected from retaliation for organizing under the NLRA.
Kai Ryssdal
Do a little compare and contrast for me would you, what’s it like today for that same category of worker.
Mary Hoopes
So very little has changed. They do have minimum wage protections, though there are more exemptions if you’re on a small farm, for example. And then for at the national level, very little has changed for union protections, it has turned into a situation where it’s state by state, so California, where I am, has been somewhat of a leader where farmworkers have had the right to organize now for a long time. There are a few other states where this is more recently in New York, but we still lack national protections.
Kimberly Adams
So okay, so California is one of the states that protects farmworkers’ right to unionize. But the rates of union participation are very low. Why? Why is that?
Mary Hoopes
I think there are a number of factors. So certainly, we’ve seen other interventions that have have basically been impediments, like the Supreme Court decision, the Janus decision in 2021, which removed the rights of union representatives, being able to come on to the farm. And that was really a critical part. I think there are a lot of other impediments. So farmworkers are in rural locations, they fear retaliation they are very, very vulnerable. They’re among the most vulnerable in our workforce. And so I think because of that, because of a fear of retaliation, we’ve seen rates of unionization in California decreased dramatically. I think current estimates put it at something like 2%. Were years ago, it was something like 12 times that number.
Kai Ryssdal
So I’m going to ask an intentionally naive question here. You said back during the New Deal era, they were left out as a proxy for race. And while we all would like to imagine that the perceptions of race and race relations in this country have evolved since then, is it still the case that neglecting farmworkers in this way is a proxy for race and also they’re foreigners too most of them? Right. That’s what that’s it?
Mary Hoopes
Yes, I think there’s a very good argument to say yes, right, that the people that we’re excluding, have shifted to a different racial minority, the majority are from Mexico. But I think yes, there’s a very good argument. And that is the argument that some scholars have made that this continues to be rooted in race, along with just in imbalances and power of who gets to lobby whose voices are heard and things like that.
Kimberly Adams
Right, because, you know, as these jobs are less and less often done by sort of middle class Americans, I imagine there’s even more of a disconnect between the experience of people working on farms and American voters.
Mary Hoopes
I think that’s absolutely right. And when they’ve done these interesting articles, where they interview employers These employers say we, we couldn’t get a US citizen to do this job we’ve tried, we’ve never had one stay past lunch. These are so grueling. The conditions are grueling, the work is grueling. And then there’s just this host of other routine violations of their labor protections. And so it’s very, there’s a reason that the most vulnerable people fill these jobs.
Kai Ryssdal
Let me go a little sideways here, right, with the understanding that there are some special visa categories with at least one special visa category for agricultural workers. We don’t have enough, do we?
Mary Hoopes
Well, so the the visa program that I assume you’re talking about is the H-2A program and this is a temporary visa. So the idea is that you don’t get a permanent legal status from this, that you come to fill a temporary shortage. And employers have to go through all these steps with the Department of Labor to show that they’ve tried to advertise this to U.S citizens, and that they’ve been unable to get anyone to take the job. I think there’s been a lot of debate about whether we can ever have a humane program, this program came out of the Brasero program that was very exploitative, but I don’t think it’s going anywhere. And so to the extent that we are going to continue to have temporary guest worker programs, this is actually what my current research is focused on. We have this link where a farmworker’s legal status is, is contingent upon a specific employer. And as you can imagine, that makes them extremely reluctant to complain about a violation of their rights. And that is exactly what the government has admitted and press releases when they brought lawsuits on this basis. They say they seek these workers out because they know they won’t complain, they know they can be exploited. And so I think in terms of legislative fixes, this is one really critical step is to to get rid of this link so that people don’t feel like they can’t complain, or they’ll lose their legal status. And there is a deferred action program that’s new under the Biden administration this year, it does allow people to get relief from removal on a case-by-case basis. But I think there have been a lot of questions about how will people know about this? Will they use it? Will it overcome the fear? So I think it doesn’t go far enough.
Kimberly Adams
So just to piggyback on what Kai was saying about sort of the still nevertheless, shortage of workers. We have the farm bill coming up for renewal this year, when it comes to either labor practices or labor supply when it comes to these farm workers. What kind of opportunities are in there, in this year’s farm bill?
Mary Hoopes
Yeah, I think it’s it is an important opportunity to do a lot better. And this past July, for the first time, there was a congressional briefing that was really well attended, where farm workers and farm worker advocates talked about the kinds of protections that they need. I think just getting their voices in front of the legislators was considered a real victory, because again, it was the first time whether anything will come out of it, I think I’m more pessimistic about this farm bill is apparently going to be the costliest in history. And a lot of the funding goes to anti-hunger programs that are critical for low income Americans. And there’s been a lot of debate over whether we should have a work requirements attached to that for the first time. So all of that is to say, there’s so much compromise that has to happen on other things that I don’t know. I’m not too hopeful that this bill will radically change things for farmworkers. But in terms of the things that would be nice to see, I think a pressing one is a need for for national overtime to to amend the the exclusion from the New Deal protections for also the right to organize, as I mentioned before, another one that’s critical is a standard for heat illness prevention. This is just becoming critical with climate change. We’re seeing so many more deaths from heat related illnesses, and we still lack a national standard. This is another case where it’s state by state, places like Oregon and California have put standards in place, but in many states, they simply don’t exist.
Kai Ryssdal
What does big ag have to say about this? I mean, you know, you can imagine their response to we need better working conditions and higher pay for these folks, but but also on the issue of just sheer labor supply.
Mary Hoopes
Yeah, I think they, they certainly concede that there’s a labor shortage. From their perspective. They say we can’t get citizens to do these jobs. They’re upfront that they really rely on these temporary A guest worker programs and and legislative hearings have been relatively upfront that they rely on undocumented workers that that is simply who, who produces our food in this country. And they they’re upfront about that fact.
Kimberly Adams
I wonder from your research or even just from talking to people, how willing, do you think the American people are to actually pay what it takes to allow farmworkers to be to make livable wages to have good working conditions, because that means our food will be more expensive?
Mary Hoopes
I think it’s a great question and a critical one, I think some of those costs could be deflected and reducing the profits that some of the employers are making. So we don’t necessarily need to pass the entire cost along to the consumer. But I think it’s true that presumably, if we had fair working conditions here that we would see increases in cost. And we’ve seen a little bit of that in places like Florida, with the the coalitions there where I think my sense is, if we had better marketing, better public awareness of these are the people who bring food to our table. And this is what their lives look like. And many of them are parents trying to feed their own children. I think if we had better attention to that I’m somewhat hopeful that that people would be more willing to bear the cost, though, again, I’m not an economist, but my sense is that some of this cost could also be borne in other ways by profits, that some of the employers are making as well, not necessarily just to being passed to consumers.
Kimberly Adams
Right. And it’s worth noting that some of these agricultural firms have recorded some record profits recently.
Mary Hoopes
Right. One of the recent articles profiled farm workers who are working for reasonable wages. This was an example of where they were really trying to recruit people, but they’re selling $300 bottles of wine, for example. So I think, you know, we could reduce costs and other ways as well. Yes.
Kimberly Adams
All right. Mary Hoopes is Associate Professor of Law at Pepperdine Caruso School of Law. Thank you so much.
Mary Hoopes
Thank you very much.
Kai Ryssdal
You know, there when she mentioned, you know, American workers who’ve tried this all you know, don’t last through lunch, there was a there was a piece, it’s got to be like 15 years ago now, about some journalist who had tried to be an agricultural worker for some period of time. And by like, day, one and a half, he was done. He was like, I can do this anymore. I’d say, you know, it’s brutal, brutal work.
Kimberly Adams
And I’ve seen videos on like, Tiktok, or Instagram reels, or YouTube shorts, whatever, all of them, where they talk about how often this work is referred to as low skilled work, but actually showing the techniques that it takes to harvest some of these things. And it is extremely skilled labor that just in the speed is fast, right. That’s absolutely astonishing.
Kai Ryssdal
I was gonna say it goes so fast. Yeah. Yeah, totally. Totally. Yeah. Let us know what you think about the topic at hand or anything else you hear on this podcast? 508-827-6278 is the phone number 508-U-B-SMART or you can email us makemesmart@marketplace.org. We are coming right back. Alright, news is what is up next on my rundown. Kimberly Adams, what do you got?
Kimberly Adams
I have two stories related also to food. So the first of them is a local story here in D.C both of the stories out of The Washington Post. And there’s a neighborhood in D.C called Anacostia that is across the river. It’s been traditionally pretty low income and a food desert. But there isn’t, there are a few grocery stores. And there is a giant food market in this area. That it’s in fact it’s the only major grocer east of the Anacostia River in this particular section of D.C and they are struggling to stay open because of the extreme levels of theft. And this has been a problem for retailers all over the country. Not just in grocery but in shopping malls and you know clothing stores everywhere. As this Washington Post story puts out, points out that incidents of organized retail crime increased in 2021 by an average of 26.5%. And store owners blamed organized retail crime for about half of the $94.5 billion lost to retail stores shrink. And lots of these companies are mentioning in their earnings calls, how much money they’re losing from retail theft. And in this case of this store, they’re trying to stay open. And in order to do that, what they said they’re going to do is that they’re going to clear their beauty and health aisles of all their national labels, no more Tide, Colgate or Advil, only the store brands, and that shoppers are going to have to present their receipts to an employee before exiting the store, like Costco style. And, you know, it really reflects, I think, a couple of different things, the you know, rising food prices are pushing a lot of people to desperation, I think we’ve heard a lot about law enforcement pulling back on enforcing these kinds of crimes because of backlash from the community because of racial profiling. And because they’ve got other things that, you know, communities would rather than be doing when they’re short staffed. And it will be interesting to see how retailers increasingly try to respond to this, because it’s a it’s a major, major issue. across all of these different industries. And Walmart’s closing locations, Target is really struggling as well, it’s and in this piece is talking about this one grocery store in a neighborhood in D.C that really needs that grocery store to stay open. But it’s really about a national trend.
Kai Ryssdal
Oh, yeah. Wow. Yeah. Yeah.
Kimberly Adams
So the other story is a, it’s actually from a Washington Post newsletter, kind of the daily 202 kind of collating a bunch of different stories of The Post has, as they label it, “the incredible American retreat on government aid.” And they’re talking about the wave of expiration of federal programs that were passed in response to the pandemic, that had a noticeable impact on the economy. So we’ve talked about all the people losing Medicaid coverage, and that’s having ripple effects throughout the economy. We’ve talked about, you know, the expiration a while back of unemployment benefits, and all these other things. So there’s a couple more coming up. I’m just going to read here from the post, billions in COVID era, federal funding to keep child care centers open, expire at the end of September, leaving states to scramble in the face of estimates of 70,000 facilities that could close and 3.2 million children, mostly five years old or younger, that could lose their care. You know, we talked about how great it was, so many women are, were returning to the workforce. After the worst of the pandemic, this will directly correlate to those numbers, which is pretty frightening. And back to the topic of food, the WIC program supplemental nutrition program for women, infants, and children, people call it WIC, which provides federal grants to pay for food, health care, nutrition education, for low-income pregnant women, nursing mothers, nurse, nursing parents, new parents, and children up to age five. That is also extra funding for that program is also expiring in October starting in October. And according to the post, this could raise the prospect that roughly 6 million low income Americans could feel the effects of that because the program, you know, Washington allocated more funding for WIC during the pandemic. But then when food prices rose so quickly, you know, a lot of those staples like fruits and vegetables, because you can get vouchers for those under WIC, cheese, milk, those kinds of things became a lot more expensive, which means that as access to the program expanded, it became much more expensive. And so that money is starting to run out too. So it’s going to be a pretty challenging fall for a lot of families,
Kai Ryssdal
For a lot of families. Okay, awkward little turn here, but that’s what I’m gonna do. Mine is more of a data point than anything else. And I just did just for a historical reference. There was a point in the before times for a long time in the before times, actually where economists looked at global growth rates for countries around the world and said, Well look by by 2030 or so China is going to be the biggest economy in the world. Well, there’s new analysis out from Bloomberg economics that says no, no, no, that’s not going to happen certainly by 2030. It’s going to take until the mid-2040s, for that to happen if it happens at all. And even if China is eventually a bigger economy than the United States, it will shrink back very quickly to be the second largest economy in the world. Now, it might seem that that’s just bragging rights. And to some degree it is. But look, with size comes influence, it comes power, comes cultural exports comes all kinds of things that we in the United States enjoy, because we’re the biggest economy in the world. And honestly, I don’t think Americans are ready to not be the biggest economy in the world. And that was the subject of a lot of talks I gave in the 2015 ish timeframe was hold on to your hats, because changes are coming. Well, now post COVID, post COVID lockdown, post zero COVID in in China, and the fact that the United States is right now the biggest, fastest growing developed economy in the world, those those tables have been turned a little bit and it’s going to be good long while before China recovers enough to start threatening whatever it is that we in America think we have, because we’re the biggest economy in the world. So
Kimberly Adams
Well and India is starting to catch up to China, as well. Absolutely. I wonder how much it’s going to matter though. As as that as that gap narrows, though, where China is a close second to the U.S and India is a close third to China and other economies start, you know, moving up that I wonder how much it’s gonna matter, sort of who sits it exactly number one, and number two, and number three, when so much of the global economy is tied to all of them? You know, we obviously we know the impact of China withdrawing from the global economy or having global supply chain disruptions. I imagine we’d see a similar impact on India, even if not necessarily so powerfully in the U.S, the rest of the global economy would certainly feel that in a major way. And I just I wonder how much number one is going to bear in the coming decades.
Kai Ryssdal
I think the big differentiator is going to be the dollar, right? As long as the dollar is the reserve currency, then we can be 1 or you know, 100, not really 100. But you know what I mean? Right? And as long as everything is dollar denominated or so much is dollar denominated, then I think we’ll have an advantage. But but good question, don’t know.
Kimberly Adams
Yes, that’s a good point. All right. That is it for the news. Let’s move on to the mailbag.
Mailbag
Hi Kai and Kimberly. This is Godfrey from San Francisco. Jessie from Charleston, South Carolina. And I have a follow up question. It has me thinking and feeling a lot of things.
Kai Ryssdal
The thing we talked about last week, Amy and I, was plastic how we can’t actually recycle as much of it as we think we can recycle. You can’t see me but I’m raising my hand because, everything goes in the blue bin. Anyway, we got this.
Anna
Hi, this is Anna in New Haven, Connecticut, I am doing my best to reduce my own personal plastic consumption use. But I’m stumped as to how to reduce the use of plastic in my profession. I’m a registered nurse, I work in a large hospital. And the amount of single use plastic items and the plastic packaging that they always come in, that we use throw away in health care is appalling. I get why we rely on these items. There are very real infection control reasons. But I can’t help but cringe when I think of all the plastic items that I as a single nurse throw away at work on a daily basis, and then multiply that by all of the healthcare workers across the nation doing the same. How can we possibly sustain that? Is there no other alternative? A very concerned and conflicted nurse, Anna.
Kai Ryssdal
Yeah, that. So number one, you think that’s a business opportunity, right? Because somebody can look at healthcare and say, let’s see how we can make money by getting plastics out of here. But the institutional part of it right? The the larger corporate part of it versus the individual part of it is is so much of a challenge in climate change and recycling and environment. Environmental awareness, writ large, but yeah, it’s a great question. I don’t know the answer.
Kimberly Adams
Our producers very helpfully included a link to yet another Washington Post story about efforts to encourage hospitals to shift to products that you can launder, like hospital gowns that can be washed and reused. And rather than pulling paper down on exam tables, using you know, towels or blankets that you can launder and I know at my doctor’s office that we are we they use fabric that can be laundered like they’re you know, fabric gowns fabric on the on the tables, and I mean, it doesn’t really make too much of a difference to me. I mean it well it looks clean, I feel like bleach and hot water will do a lot for you. And so we’re going to include a link to that in the show notes as well. So that’s that’s definitely something that can be done. So. Okay, let’s hear one more.
Amanda
Hi Kai and Kimberly, this is Amanda calling from Columbus, Ohio. And I just want to let you know that you’ve her and my sister Jenny and I need to complete Tradle obsessives. We are highly competitive against each other. And so giving us an opportunity to match our wits and intelligence on subjects such as geography and trade history, international diplomacy and other random knowledge is golden. We both usually get the answer in four or five guesses. And of course, we do not look at a map because that will be like using a word dictionary to find a word.
Kai Ryssdal
That’s right.
Amanda
Thanks for making a smart change.
Kai Ryssdal
That’s exactly right. You cannot look at a map. It’s against the rule. It’s all I’m saying.
Kimberly Adams
That’s awesome. I still need to play that game. I listened to the interview that you did about it. I need to play it.
Kai Ryssdal
It’s super for fun. It’s a little frustrating. I’ll tell you what, if I can’t get it in three usually I’m like “ahhh.” Anyway. So before we go, we’re gonna leave you as we always do with this week’s answer to the make me smart question. What is something you thought you knew but later found out you were wrong about? This week’s answer comes to us from evolutionary biologist Jonathan Losos. He’s the author of “The Cat’s Meow.”
Jonathan Losos
What is one thing I thought I knew but later found out I was wrong? Well, I used to think that cat’s meow to each other to communicate. And so that when my cat meow to me, I took it as a great honor that I was being treated as a fellow cat. Well I now know that’s wrong. Scientists have shown that cats rarely meow to each other. They do make other sounds to communicate. They hiss and they growl but they don’t meow. Rather what happened is that during the process of domestication, cats evolve the behavior of knowing so they could tell us what they want so that we could attend to their every wish and desire.
Kai Ryssdal
That’s awesome.
Kimberly Adams
As my mother, as my mother likes to say “dogs have owners, cats have staff.”
Kai Ryssdal
That’s right. That’s true. That’s true.
Kimberly Adams
Oh boy. All right. Well, we want to hear your answer to the Make Me Smart question. Our number is 508-827-6278 also known as 508-U-B-SMART.
Kai Ryssdal
Make Me Smart is produced by Courtney Bergsieker. Ellen Rolfes writes our newsletter. Today’s program was engineered by Drew Jostad. Mingxin Quigan is gonna mix it down later. Our intern Niloufar Shahbandi.
Kimberly Adams
Ben Tolliday and Daniel Ramirez composed our theme music. Our senior producer is Marissa Cabrera. Bridget Bodnar is the director of podcast Francesca Levy is the executive director of digital and Marketplace’s Vice President and General Manager is Neal Scarbrough.
Kai Ryssdal
I saw Daniel Ramirez’s wife in the local Piggly Wiggly the other day he now has a job at New York Times audio.
Kimberly Adams
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