PALM BEACH POST

June 11, 2005

EDITORIAL

New trap in the fields

State restricts ways to claim farmworker abuse

Other than pangs of conscience, Florida farmers have little reason to care about how they use pesticides.

The state's regulation is at best halfhearted and at worst nonexistent; reports of misuse seldom surface; and workers who complain of poisoning are largely powerless to seek lost wages or compensation for medical bills. The Legislature in recent years has made it much harder for field laborers — the overwhelming majority of whom are undocumented migrants — to make workers compensation claims. The changes have made an already complicated bureaucracy virtually impossible to navigate

As The Post reported on May 29, one of the worst revisions forces victims to name specific chemicals and amounts used when claiming pesticide injury. Because Florida farmers use many chemicals at once, the requirement is unrealistic, perhaps intentionally so. Workers can't say for sure what pesticides and herbicides caused the poisoning, and there is no incentive for employers to help substantiate a claim by providing the information.

Another change requires workers to have valid Social Security numbers to be eligible for benefits — which is another example of the nation's contradictory and unfair approach to immigration. The agriculture industry could not operate without foreign labor, yet there is no mechanism to supply it legally. Growers rely on illegal workers, who toil at their peril in Florida, which leads the country in per-acre use of chemicals.

As long as workers are on the job, employers don't have to care about their employees' Social Security number until they get sick. Congress is considering a guest worker bill that would put these undocumented immigrants into a legal system, establish ground rules for residency and end the nation's hypocritical policy. Help from Washington would reduce the exploitation in Florida's fields.

Farmworkers certainly will get no help from Tallahassee, where agriculture lobbyists continue to dictate self-serving policy and stifle reform. Undocumented workers have no chance against trade groups and their influence over key legislators. Since compensation judges started applying the Legislature's new standards, hundreds of workers' claims have been dismissed. What medical treatment poisoning victims do receive often comes at public expense, not the employers'. Floridians should want no part of a system that's this unfair.