Overcoming Language and Literacy Barriers in Safety and Health Training of Agricultural Workers

Abstract

The workforce in all areas of United States agriculture and forestry is becoming increasingly diverse in language, culture, and education. Many agricultural workers are immigrants who have limited English language skills and limited educational attainment. Providing safety and health training to this large, diverse, dispersed, and often transient population of workers is challenging. This review, prepared for the 2010 Agricultural Safety and Health Council of America/National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health conference, “Be Safe, Be Profitable: Protecting Workers in Agriculture,” is divided into five sections. First, we describe the occupational and demographic characteristics of agricultural workers in the US to highlight their safety and health training needs. Second, we summarize current research on the social and cultural attributes of agricultural workers and agricultural employers that affect the provision of safety and health training. Worker and employer attributes include language, literacy, financial limitations, work beliefs, and health beliefs. Third, we review current initiatives addressing safety and health training for agricultural workers that consider worker language and literacy. These initiatives are limited to a few specific topics (e.g., pesticides, heat stress); they do not provide general programs of safety training that would help establish a culture of workplace safety. However, several innovative approaches to health and safety training are being implemented, including the use of community-based participatory approaches and lay health promoter programs. Fourth, the limited industry response for safety training with this linguistically diverse and educationally limited workforce is summarized. Finally, gaps in knowledge and practice are summarized and recommendations to develop educationally, culturally, and linguistically appropriate safety and health training are presented.

Hayvancılıkta İş Sağlığı ve Güvenliği

“…Tarım işletmelerinin büyüklüğü de gerek denetimler gerekse düzenli işgücünün bu alanlarda yaşaması için alt yapı çalışmaları açısından erken ölüm ve hastalıklarla yakından ilişkili bulunmuştur [11]. …”

Migrant Agricultural Workers and Their Socio‐Economic, Occupational and Health Conditions – A Literature Review

“…As our findings indicate, a participatory research model (community--based approach) was the most common model for United States researchers to assess and reduce pesticide exposure among migrant farmworkers and their families (30,208,212,225,228). The bulk of these authors argue that community--based participatory research, which engages the community at every stage of the research process, provides a model for mobilizing stakeholders and community members around the issue.…”

“…In addition, the lay health promoter or Promotora de Salud model has been extensively used by advocacy and academic organizations in the United States as a means of reducing migrant farmworkers' exposure to pesticides (30,212). For instance, AmeriCorps Volunteers have been placed in community--based organizations to focus on migrant farmworker pesticide health and safety training.…”

Partial evaluation of questionnaires monitoring the need of knowledge in forest workers from selected EU countries

“…The relatively high accident rate in Croatian forestry led Martinic et al (2011) to present a draft national certification for the education of forest workers. Arcury et al (2010) studied the influence of verbal skills on the level of safety in forest workers who do not speak English in the U.S.A. Perhaps the most interesting in this sense is the work by Skinner (2005) resolving the training of forest workers as an essential condition for sustainable forest management. Any research work whose methodology and results would be directly comparable with our study has not unfortunately been found.…”