New and Emerging Research in Agricultural, Forestry, and Fishing Safety and Health - Agriculture Forestry and Fishing Research at NIOSH - page 168

children were performing tasks prohibited by hazardous work orders in hired
child workers of the same age (Marlenga et al., 2007). Furthermore, 76 percent of
workers less than 16 years old who died in connection with their work were working
in a family business and were thus exempt from child labor laws. The committee
recommends that the AFF Program continue research on how ending the “family
farm exemption” would affect the labor market and other family farm workers. A
related question is how raising the age restriction from 16 to 18 years for hazardous
agricultural work would affect safety and health. As the GAO review points out,
there are compelling reasons to question why children ages 16 and 17 are permitted
to perform hazardous tasks in agriculture but would be forbidden to perform the
same tasks in any other industry (GAO, 1998). The committee recommends that
the AFF Program continue to support research to inform this question.
Impact of State Policies on Agriculture, Forestry,
and Fishing Worker Safety and Health
New research is needed to study the effect of state policies on workplace
safety and health. State policy initiatives, such as increases in minimum wage, are
becoming more important because some state policies on occupational safety and
health (such as those in California) are more stringent than federal regulations.
An annually updated online reference source describing federal and state employ-
ment standards for the entire AFF workforce would be helpful. In 1988, a remark-
ably complete review of federal and state employment standards was published
(Craddock, 1988); updating this document would be a good place for the AFF
Program to start. It would become a valuable resource for employers, employees,
and AFF safety and health professionals. It appears that no document of that kind
has ever addressed the fishing and forestry industries.
High-quality surveillance and public policy assessment are clearly related, as
was shown through a recent review of the enforcement and education activities
of California's Cal/OSHA Program. California law states that employees must be
insured under workers' compensation (by law, only employees earning less than
$100 in any calendar quarter are exempt from this requirement); this system has
been in place for more than 75 years. The Workers' Compensation Insurance Rating
Bureau of California (WCIRB), the actuarial agency that reviews all paid claims,
issues annual summaries of paid claims by frequency and severity. It produces a
comprehensive record of the most serious injuries and deaths by job type and by
the important factors involved in each claim, and its reports are extremely useful
for surveillance purposes (Villarejo, 1998).