ustxtxb_obs_1988_11_25_50_00012-00000_000.pdf

compliance programs no matter how comprehensive in scope, extensive in coverage, or beneficial to the workplace they are.” Pesticides and Agricultural Chemicals Beyond the general standards set for pesticide use by the Federal Insecticide, “the federal government and 25 states are now enforcing specific provisions relevant to the aerial application of agricultural chemicals. Eight states have adopted rules protecting field workers and other farm employees against potential hazards of pesticides and fertilizers applied to crops or incorporated into the soil.” “Still, over a fourth of the nation’s socalled ‘right-to-know’ laws exempt farm employers from the duty to inform their employees of the toxic materials they may be exposed to on the job and from providing prescribed written information and training to their employees to help reduce the risk of related injury.” Civil Rights Further, many agricultural workers fall through the cracks of the nation’s civil rights laws, according to the summary of the study. While the employment provisions of the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Equal Pay Act of 1963, and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 make no coverage distinctions between farmworkers and non-farmworkers, “all three federal statutes apply only to comparatively large employing establishments, leaving a significant share of the agricultural work force” to be addressed by state law, but “more than one in ten of the corresponding provisions at the state level explicitly exclude agricultural employment.” Collective Bargaining “Carrying on the federal tradition established in 1935 under the National Labor Relations Act, 12 of the 17 states which have general labor relations statutes summarily exclude agricultural workers from coverage,” according to Craddock. “Only nine states provide farmworkers the statutory right to bargain collectively with their employers over terms and conditions of the job; petition for and vote in state-supervised union elections; and seek administrative relief for unfair labor practices. But there is a wide variation in the range and depth of protection. “Of these states, Arizona, California, Idaho, and Kansas are the only ones with special-purpose labor relations laws pertaining exclusively to the agricultural sector, and the administering agency in Idaho is presently out of operation. Summary And while MET hopes that at least the blue book will be of some help to agricultural workers, Craddock understands the realities of the problem. The findings of unequal treatment under the law will probably not be a consideration for migrant farmworkers in their search for work; their worries will be more immediate. And when the time comes, they will pack the belongings they think indispensable, look at their home one last time before they BY MARY LENZ AS CRISES in humanity go, the Latin American debt mess presents a public relations dilemma. There are no hostages, no mad mothers collaring lawmakers, no photo opportunities of trapped and anguished finance ministers bobbing up and down amid ice flows. The crisis is gray, complex, invisible. The people who raise their voices in concern are pretty gray themselves the numbers men, the eco-wizards, featureless folks in business suits muttering statistics which would undoubtedly raise red flags if they didn’t put us straight to sleep. Imagine this scene: “This is Carole Kneeland of WFAA-TV on the docks at Tampico, Mexico, where we have just learned that 40 to 65 percent of Mexico’s exports must, I repeat, must be pledged to s service Mexico’s external debt. The number of casualties continues to mount. Weeping families line the street. They tell me in Latin America as a whole total imports of goods and services have declined 24 percent in real terms since 1980. . . . “This small five-year-old boy, clutching the body of a broken, doll, informed me between sobs that Mexican ‘imports from the U.S. dropped from $12.5 billion in 1980 to $8 billion in 1987, a 35 percent decline.” Right. The litany of statistics on the debt mess is important and it is alarming and there are casualties every day. It’s just very difficult to connect the clack of computer keys transferring enormous amounts of money from bank to bank with the people in the streets of Buenos Aires, Rio, and Monterrey. Zeros are added to zeros with deadening slowness. Latin America owes the world $400,000,000,000. Argentina owes $49,000,000,000. Brazil owes $111,000,000,000. Mexico owes $100,000,000,000. All those zeros that Freelance writer Mary Lenz lives in Austin. leave, and gather their children into their truck or car and travel to where they need to go. And more than likely, as Craddock says, “it may be up to others to be outraged by the legal inequities. And to make certain that some of them are corrected.” The workers will have the worry of daily existence. could have gone toward toys and food and tractors are instead hissing away in the computers. Latin America, like a giant radial tire, has been going flat for seven years. And it’s taking U.S. jobs and U.S companies with it. This is the message that the gurus at the Institute of Latin American Studies on the University of Texas-Austin campus tried to bring home with a late-October “town meeting” on the debt mess. The idea was that three economists would chat informally with students and Austin residents about the implications of the Latin American debt for Texas. They included Michael E. Conroy, ILAS associate director; Sidney Weintraub, Dean Rusk Chair, LBJ School of Public Affairs; and Dwight S. Brothers, research fellow at Yale. Weintraub led off with the following: In 1980, Latin America purchased $140 billion worth of goods and services. With so much money going to service the debt, only $107 billion in goods and services were purchased from the rest of the world in 1987. That’s a real decline of 24 percent or $45 billion. The Department of Commerce says that every billion dollars in U.S. exports represents 25,000 jobs. Weintraub says the missing $45 billion cost the rest of the world one million jobs, with 500,000 of those jobs lost in the United States alone. “These are manufacturing jobs,” Weintraub said. “By not giving some kind of relief to Latin America, we have been protecting financial institutions at the expense of our productive institutions. . . . Latin American debt payments have very, very seriously affected the U.S. productive sector and U.S. employment.” According to Weintraub, if the 35 percent decline in the sales of U.S. goods and services to Mexico is applied to Texas, it represents a loss of 120,000 jobs and the 120,000-job estimate is “fairly conservative” as estimates go. “There has been a lot less spending by Mexicans 011 along the border. Slower Deeper in Debt A Town Meeting on the Debt Mess 12 NOVEMBER 25, 1988