This content traces the historical development of labor laws and regulations in the United States, highlighting key legislative milestones that have shaped worker rights, protections, and the relationship between employers and employees, particularly within the context of agriculture.
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all right this next topic
is about labor
and that impacts agriculture in
many many many ways
so we're going to have first
first
a general lecture on labor and
i have another
set of materials from
one of the
members of our ag community here in the
central coast
so first there are some timelines
regulations related to
labor law
pulled out of that original history and introduction
introduction
powerpoint so you might recall that it
was right around 1870
after the civil war when we first hit
that mark where
the number of people employed in
agriculture was less than 50 percent for
the first time
in our country's history
uh the department of labor act signed by
william howard taft
back in
1913 the clayton act
exempting unions from
anti-trust laws as i know i mentioned previously
previously
in another in the introduction lecture
and i don't think i mentioned this when
the federal highway act provided for
cooperation with states in construction
of rural post roads
really important for
agriculture in many ways because
when you look at areas that are
successful with agriculture
it's largely
about transportation
you need to get
material people supplies into an area
and you need to get your agricultural
products that you grow out of an area so
without a
highway system it's really
difficult without railroads or highways
or other transportation
1918 california voters defeated a
referendum to permit
the establishment of a
state health insurance plan um
and here we are a hundred years later
still having interesting arguments about health
health insurance
insurance
won't go there right now
the railway labor act of
1926 laid the basis for the national
mediation board and
railway is really an important component
of transportation
it's largely been
in the shadow
of the
highway system transportation
trucks and highways are
far more dominant
dominant
in modern times but the railways remain
an important piece
of the transportation system for
agriculture and other industries
1931 the davis beacon act requires that
federal contracts for public buildings
or public works
pay workers the locally prevailing wages
and fringe benefits as determined by the
secretary of labor
so think about this you're a company
in some backwater place
in louisiana
or maybe you're in new york
one of the high wage areas
but you set up an office in a backwater
in louisiana to establish some of your projects
projects
and then you go back to new york
and you just say well we're going to
hire these
wages
based on
our backwater louisiana headquarters
rather than paying people the prevailing
wage where the job site actually is
bait and switch and game playing
happened all over the place
companies would open a tiny little
office in a tiny little nowhere that had
the lowest wages and use the wages of
that office to
pay people at the actual job sites
wherever they were someplace else in the
state or another state and
and
that became illegal
in 1931 you have to pay local prevailing wages
wages and
and
so in this
post-depression era 1935 the national
labor relations act establishes the
national labor relations boards now we
have a federal
regulatory agency
that is established for the purpose of
labor relations
protecting the workers
also in the same year the social
security act we still have a social
security that's moving ahead it would
probably be on financially stable ground
if every single administration i don't
care which party it is doesn't find reasons
reasons to
continue to steal money from social security
security
gain interest gain value for the
the
citizens of the united states that have
paid into it
it is not funded at all by
any government
monies or any tax monies it's purely
through employer
and employee contributions as part of a
payroll deduction
you might think it's a tax or feel that
it's a tax but it's different it's
separate money that goes into social
security the idea is
when you get to retirement age you've at
least got something
coming in if you put in years of work
uh you get something to help keep you
from becoming a burden on society
after retirement or if you die as a
worker it has some money that you paid
into the system that would be there to
help protect your kids that's the idea
the fair labor standards act establishes
the wage and our division so by 1938 the
concepts of wage
rules and minimum wages are now
in effect
modern era civil rights act
1959 labor management reporting and
disclosure act enacted to ensure
basic standards of democracy and fiscal
responsibility in labor organizations
representing employees
in private industry so essentially
organizations unions
1963 equal pay act prohibits sex-based
wage discrimination
and so
60 years later we're getting close closer
closer
we still have a ways to go
age discrimination employment act so
again we we've seen these earlier
in that powerpoint but these are the
ones that are really related to
labor 1971
occupational safety and health act
establishes the federal occupational
safety and health administration
otherwise known as osha
osha
and if you hear osha
depending on how it's used osha means
the law the act
occupational safety and health act as
well as the
the
regulatory agency at the federal level
the occupational safety and health administration
administration
now here in
california we have
and [Music]
[Music]
sometimes in california we call the federal
federal
occupational safety and health administration
administration
um but they are two different things and
usually 99 of the time california is a
little more restrictive a little more
controlled a little more worker
protection oriented
and generally
certainly over my lifetime and before
when i've looked into this generally
what happens is a more progressive state
like california will implement a an osha rule
rule
that gets a little bit of backlash some
of the details are worked out and then
it becomes federal
federal
later the federal government usually
soon after california
creates some of these
um
i don't need anything on this one 1974
the employee retirement income
securities act
establishes oversight and uniform rules
for pension and benefits plans
important in terms of pensions we used to
to
have companies that all dealt with
pensions they would put money aside
and build up this nest egg for people to
live off of in their retirement you
would have a pension and that still
exists in a lot of government agencies
fire and police and uh education systems and
and
postal workers a lot of
government agencies still use the
pension system
but it's largely been replaced by
only semi-voluntary
retirement plan which often has what's
called a 401k
401k
which is a federal tax code that allows
people to put money away for retirement
but instead of it being something like a
pension where you get paid until you die
a certain
uh under certain rules and amounts
uh 401k you retire you got a lump of money
money
and you have no idea am i going to live
five more years or 50 more years how am
i going to make that lump of money last
so the 401k system is um
seeing some problems in terms of
what it can and will be able to do for
people moving forward because we're now
starting to see people that are retiring
on the 401k system in much larger
numbers than
in the past where it was mostly people
retiring under pensions and
social security uh
uh
there's gonna be some
bumps and bruises people are gonna have
some challenges because there's not
gonna be enough money there people are
living longer which is a double-edged
sword it's great that people are
healthier and living longer
healthier in some ways at least living longer
but now with the 401k that money's gotta
last longer how is it gonna last when
you have a lump sum you're not putting
more money in anyway
anyway
not gonna worry about retirement
right now anymore the california
agricultural labor relations act becomes
effective in 1975 providing orderly
processes for protecting implementing
and enforcing the respective rights and
responsibilities of employees employers
and labor organizations
in their relations with each other and
and
if you're familiar with
central california history at all
you might
understand why the california
agriculture labor relations act occurred
around there
maybe you've heard something about a guy
named cesar chavez
and all of the issues with
labor unions the
united farm workers union in particular
and a lot of conflict between the
the unions
unions and
and
agriculture businesses
and it's really easy to sit on one side
or the other and you know say those evil
businesses were exploiting workers and
doing bad things
definitely some of that happened um
um
a lot of it happened
and a lot of changes had to be made um
but there were a lot of
things going on in both sides during
this tumultuous time
and the unions themselves had
some pretty unfortunate things on their
side as well in terms of how
how things were being handled it was it
was an ugly time
but it had to happen
when there are bad things when workers
are being exploited as they were
when safety was
not really important not only in the
living arrangements but on the work site arrangements
arrangements
it was
unacceptable absolutely unacceptable and
you can't go from
those kinds of situations to
in a clean neat and painless way
and the mid 70s were quite painful in
this area because of that but
we came through it in a much better way
having known people on both sides of the
fence i think
some of the things that went on both
sides can take some of the blame but certainly
the reason for the emergencies the
reasons for
the explosion of these labor relations issues
issues
was because of workers being abused and
and not being
provided with a safe working environment
1983 seasonal or migrant and seasonal
work protection act
you can read more
detail 86
immigration reform and control act
requires employees
employers to verify the identity and
employment eligibility of anyone to be
hired and to keep the employment
eligibility verification form so as of 1986
1986
employers had to make sure that they had something
something
that looked reasonably real that the employee
employee
that they hire is legal to be hired
doesn't mean they have to be a citizen
but they have to be at least
a green card carrying
uh or um and i don't know back then
their what status there might be but
there are certain visas
and green cards were eligible
for employment in the united states
citizenship obviously is the most
obvious of the
eligibility for employment so how do you
do that you have them file an i9 and at
then the employee
must present some kind of evidence that
yes i'm this person a lot has changed
though with the idea of an
old-fashioned i-9 form and we'll talk
about that
at a later time
uh 1988 the worker adjustment and
retraining act requires employers with
100 or more employees to provide notice
and assistance if a place of employment
will be closed again protecting the
workers where you can't just have
workers come to work one day and they're
all showing up and the doors are
chained shut
that kind of thing happened
happened
a lot
89 the americans with disabilities act
often called just ada
we have to deal with that a lot here at
hartnell providing
access through doors and elevators and
student learning spaces where they can
go to a desk with a
wheelchair accessible desk things like that
that
there are tons of things that the ada
requires of employers to make things
acceptable for
employees so employees can be protected and
and
they can receive the necessary accommodations
accommodations
in order to um
um
take a quick break
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