Work Safety Culture of Youth Farmworkers in North Carolina: A Pilot Study

摘要

Objectives. We analyzed aspects of the behavioral, situational, and psychological elements of work safety culture of hired youth farmworkers in North Carolina. Methods. Data were from interviewer-administered questionnaires completed with 87 male and female hired farmworkers aged 10 to 17 years in North Carolina in 2013. We computed means, SDs, and Cronbach α values for the perceived work safety climate and safety perception summary scores. Results. Hired youth farmworkers in North Carolina described a negative work safety culture. Most engaged in unsafe general and unsafe work behaviors, few received training, and many were sexually harassed at work. They had mixed safety attitudes and knew that their employment was precarious. They reported a poor perceived work safety climate characterized by the perception that their supervisors “are only interested in doing the job fast and cheaply.” However, we could not detect statistically significant associations between work safety culture and injuries among these farmworkers. Conclusions. Increased scrutiny of agriculture as a suitable industry for workers as young as 10 years and additional regulations to protect hired youth farmworkers, if not to remove them from this environment, are warranted. Additional research is needed. Youths employed as agricultural workers in the United States experience high rates of injury and mortality. 1–4 Many youths are employed in agricultural work on their family’s farm, but many other youths are hired farmworkers working on commercial farms. Current regulations allow youths as young as 14 years to be employed as hired farmworkers without parental permission; youths aged 10 to 13 years can be employed as hired farmworkers with parental permission. 5–7 Youths employed in agriculture can work with sharp tools, machinery, and pesticides, as well as do the strenuous tasks of planting, cultivating and harvesting crops, and working with large animals. Most hired youth farmworkers in the United States are Latino, and often they are either immigrants from Mexico and Central American countries or the US-born children of immigrant farmworker parents. 8,9 An unknown number of youth farmworkers are unaccompanied minors who migrate for agricultural employment but are not accompanied by a parent. 10,11 Hired youth farmworkers share the same vulnerabilities as adult farmworkers, including low wages, few or no benefits, few regulatory protections, hazardous work, discrimination, and limited access to health care. 12–14 Youth farmworkers are especially vulnerable to occupational injuries because of their smaller size, lesser strength, and greater surface-to-volume ratio compared with adults; their developing neurological and reproductive systems; and their lack of maturity and experience. Few studies have addressed factors affecting the occupational health and safety of youths working on farms, with fewer studies focused on hired youth farmworkers. Work safety culture is an important aspect of workplace safety. 15 On the basis of Bandura’s theory of reciprocal determinism, 16,17 Cooper 15 argued that safety culture includes behavioral, situational, and psychological elements, thereby encompassing many different aspects of the work environment. Behavioral elements include observable safety and risk behaviors. Situational elements include safety management programs and actions. Psychological elements include subjective assessments of safety. For example, work safety climate, a worker’s perceptions of how an employer values safety over production, 18,19 has been related to adverse health outcomes, including musculoskeletal discomfort and working while injured or ill, among adult farmworkers. 20 Westaby and Lee 21 applied the work safety culture model in a longitudinal analysis of injuries among Future Farmers of America members. They found that a behavioral measure, dangerous risk taking, was positively associated with injuries; that a psychological measure, safety consciousness, was inversely related to injuries; but that a situational measure, safety knowledge, had a positive rather than a negative association with injuries. They suggested that this last, counterintuitive result may be explained by workers being placed in more dangerous environments for which they are provided greater safety information. Only a few elements of work safety culture of hired youth farmworkers have been addressed in the literature. For example, among the behavioral elements, general risk behavior (e.g., not wearing a helmet when riding a motorcycle) and work risk behavior (e.g., working with power tools, working with toxic substances) are positively associated with the incidence of injuries among youths working on farms. 22–24 Shipp et al. 25 reported that few (19%) adolescent farmworkers in Texas received pesticide safety training, a situational element. Parental attitude toward safety is another situational element that has been examined for youths working on far