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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] Ag workers seek compensation
  • Date: Mon, 31 Aug 2009 15:10:11 -0600


Ag workers seek compensation
http://www.pntonline.com/articles/workers-34910-clovis-agriculture-new.html%3Ehttp://www.pntonline.com/articles/workers-34910-clovis-agriculture-new.html
August 27, 2009 11:33 PM


New Mexico is hearing a debate over whether agriculture workers need to be
included in the state-run workers compensation system.

A group of civil rights organizations is suing to have New Mexico
agricultural workers included.

However, many in the agriculture industry have said their employees are
already covered and costs would be damaging.

Under current law, agriculture workers and domestic servants don’t have to be
covered by government workers compensation. An effort to change that in the
last legislative session failed.

But several groups and an injured Los Lunas dairy worker are filing suit to
try again.

“Farm labor is extremely hard and dangerous work,” said Carlos Marentes,
director of lawsuit plaintiff Sin Fronteras Organizing Project, in a press
release. “With no health insurance and very low wages, many of the men and
women who work our dairies and ranches and harvest the food we eat have
nowhere to turn when they are injured in the fields. Their families are
devastated.”

According to Web site for the New Mexico Center for Law and Poverty,
representing the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, 1 percent of New Mexico and West
Texas farm workers have private health insurance.

On the other side, Roosevelt County wheat and beef producer Matt Rush said
most farmers and ranchers provide insurance for employees and don’t need
another government mandate.

The workers compensation task force the Legislature appointed gave the
opinion the current system is working and the state shouldn’t mandate that
agriculture participate in workers compensation, Rush said.

If producers didn’t offer health coverage or give employees money to buy
their own policies, Rush said, workers would go elsewhere.

Walter Bradley, government and business affairs director for the Dairy
Farmers of America in Clovis, said DFA polled New Mexico dairies. Of the 90
percent who responded, all have health insurance for their employees, mainly
through private sources.

Bradley said dairies and farms having loans — as most do — are required by
the bank to carry such coverage.

“The bottom line is that dairies and farms have coverage, and there’s no
evidence to show that those costs should be raised,” Bradley said.

Joining the state workers compensation system would triple producers’
expenses, Bradley said.

Rush said he found estimates the move could increase production costs 50
percent to 60 percent.

“It would literally put a large portion of New Mexico agriculture out of
business because the profit margins are so slim right now anyway,” he said.

Bradley said increasing production costs would raise the cost of food.

However, the press release from the New Mexico Center on Law and Poverty said
adding farm and ranch laborers to the workers compensation would cost about 1
percent of the industry’s annual profit, which was $821 million in 2008.

Rush expects 2009 profit margins to be significantly lower than last year
because of low wholesale milk prices and a drop in corn and grain prices from
last year.

Rush believes 2008 saw unusually large profits because the demand for ethanol
led to high corn and grain prices.





  • [Livingontheland] Ag workers seek compensation, Tradingpost, 08/31/2009

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