The Wikipedia article Hoe (tool) contains this paragraph:
The human damage caused by long-term use of short-handled hoes, which required the user to bend over from the waist to reach the ground, and caused permanent, crippling lower back pain to farm workers, resulted in the California Supreme Court declaring the short-handled hoe to be an unsafe hand tool that was banned under California law in 1975.[5] The short-handled hoe that Governor Jerry Brown gave to César Chávez in 1975 was displayed in the California Hall of Fame in 2006.[citation needed]
This sounds interesting, but I feel like it's missing some context. I know that César Chávez was a labor organizer (maybe not the right term?) who worked with agricultural laborers in California, but why did it take a court battle to deal with this issue?
Does anyone know more about this?
Short-handled hoes forced the workers to be closer to the plants to avoid damaging the crop while removing weeds. Working with a long-handled hoe added the risk of damaging the plan, but caused less damage to the workers' backs. So, guess which one the land owners wanted the workers to use?
The short-handle hoe was only one of the many labor issues César Chávez sought to address. With the link provided, you can get to the National Historic Landmark nominations honoring his life and work
Hi there,
I just wrote a rather long research paper on this in law school. I'd link you to it, but it is still going through the last round of faculty edits, so I'm not sure that's the best idea.
In short, though, the reason it went to the California Supreme Court was due to judicial procedure. It wasn't as if all of these workers sued farmers. Rather, certain field laborers sued Cal-OSHA (the department of workplace health and safety) regarding its judgment on what constitutes an "unsafe workplace condition." In Carmona v. Division of Industrial Safety, numerous farm workers from the Salinas Valley challenged the use of el cortito as an “unsafe hand tool” prohibited by state administration regulations forbidding the use of such unsafe tools. Initially, the Division of Industrial Safety denied the challenge. The agency held that it was not the tool itself which caused the harm, but rather the position in which it was used - that individuals stooped down to use the tool. The court reversed and held that, “any hand tool which causes injury, immediate or cumulative, when used in the manner in which it was intended to be used may constitute an ‘unsafe hand tool’ within the meaning of the regulation.”
As such, it went to the Supreme Court of California because that was the most likely avenue for redress. Individuals petitioned a government agency. The government agency denied their petition, so they went to the Supreme Court.
Sadly, the CA Supreme Court said absolutely nothing about stoop labor. Therefore, millions of individuals today must stoop down even further than they did back in the days of the short-handled hoe to pull weeds by hand. Cal-OSHA recommended in 1993 that this loophole be closed, but the legislature refused. In addition, multiple pieces of legislation have been raised in the California legislature to end - or, at least, curtail - this practice, but they have never gained traction (due to aggressive lobbying by both big-ag AND the organic industry).
It is vital to know that the FDA does not monitor the use of "sustainable," "local," and a myriad of other terms that could lead an individual to believe that a farm uses equitable labor rights. Therefore, if you buy foods at farmers' markets, please do some research and know from whom you are buying! Swanton Berry Farm has arguably the most progressive labor practices, and I wholeheartedly recommend both further reading on the Swanton Berry Farm and its strawberries (this isn't a plug, but an honest assessment after researching scores of Northern Californian organic farms for my thesis).