Study citation: Chavez Santos, Santos, E., Moreno, M. F., Hernandez, A., Garcia, R. M., Spector, J. T., Ornelas, I. J., & Baquero, B. (2025). “A veces no aguantas lo pesado que es el trabajo”: A qualitative study on work conditions, labor and social policies, and health among Latino agricultural workers in Washington State. SSM-Qualitative Research in Health, 7, 100507. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssmqr.2024.100507

This report was written by Érica Chavez Santos, an alumnus of the Bridges Center, who received the Washington State Labor Research Grant (WSLRG) for the 2022-2023 academic year, and the Labor and Employment Relations Association (LERA)-Bassett scholarship in 2019 and is now a researcher at the Work Equity Research Center at the Washington State Department of Labor & Industries. She was also a panelist in the Social Determinants of Health discussion last April. The Bridges Center takes great pride in Érica's ongoing efforts to support all workers throughout Washington State.

Key takeaways:

• This study highlights agricultural workers in WA to understand their experiences at work and in navigating health care services in their communities as we work to increase access to safer work environments and access to health care services.
• Our findings offer insight to improve policies and their implementation to ensure agricultural workers’ equitable access to labor benefits, like sick leave and overtime pay.

Background:

There are about 2.3 million agricultural workers employed in the US. These are essential workers that grow, tend, harvest, and package the food we eat. Despite being integral to our food system, agricultural workers are excluded from many labor protections that most workers benefit from, this is called agricultural exceptionalism. Agricultural exceptionalism excludes agricultural workers from major federal labor laws, such as the right to unionize, receive minimum wage, and overtime pay. Agricultural exceptionalism is rooted in structural racism as agricultural workers have historically and presently predominantly made up workers of color. 

Labor laws & occupational health:

The exclusion of this group of workers from labor protections is important to consider because agricultural work is physically demanding and comes with a multitude of occupational health risks. Some of these risks include, exposure to heat and high force, awkward posture, and repetitive work, in addition to experiencing unfavorable work conditions unstable work hours and minimal sanitation standards, barriers to health care, and lack of access to public transportation, all of which impact overall health and well-being.

About the study:

In this qualitative study, we sought to understand agricultural workers’ health concerns associated with their work, their experiences with accessing health care, and their perspectives on policy changes. The interviews were conducted in-person or Zoom in Spanish from February-March 2023. The audio recordings of agricultural worker interviews were transcribed in Spanish and we had bicultural and bilingual team members co-code the qualitative data using thematic analysis. Thematic analysis aims to identify common themes and patterns across interviews.

Results:

We had 32 agricultural workers from five counties in Central and Eastern Washington participate in the study. All participants identified as Hispanic or Latine, 31 were born in Mexico (one in California), and 16 identified as female. More than half (n=25) of participants had 10+ years of experience working in agriculture.

We identified three themes based on the experiences agricultural workers shared:

Theme 1: Labor laws that are intended to protect agricultural workers are often not being implemented as intended across employers.

Starting in 2018, WA passed legislation to require all employers in WA to provide paid sick leave to employees. However, participants shared that employers did not always allow workers to use earned paid sick leave, employers did not accurately record workers’ earned sick hours, and/or retaliated against workers for asking about or using their sick leave hours.

One participant shared,

“Well, the truth is that they almost don’t want that as a worker’s right. If the boss has never said, you know that you have the right, that after so many hours you have the right to go to the doctor or all that, no, they are silent, you find out from other people or from other ranches and that’s how you find out the information … But other ranches also don’t want to, some workers have to fight for their sick leave and if workers ask for it, they’re almost fired for talking about it.”

Additionally, WA passed legislation in July 2021 to phase-in overtime pay to agricultural workers by 2024. However, participants described how employers found ways to avoid paying overtime by reducing workers’ weekly hours and/or hiring additional workers. As a result, participants were paid lower wages due to the shorter hours worked. One participant explained how employers avoid paying overtime and how this results in workers having a lower income overall.

“They’ve [employer] already cut the hours, so we don’t go over 40 hours and they no longer have to pay [overtime].”

Theme 2: Agricultural workers are vulnerable to mistreatment at work due to their marginalized social statuses

In addition to agricultural work being physically demanding, work place culture and supervisor mistreatment can lead to adverse mental health and well-being among agricultural workers. Some participants shared they were disrespected or yelled at while at work by their supervisor. Others shared that they felt pressured and stressed to complete quotas to keep their jobs. Participants that were undocumented shared that they were especially concerned with withstanding mistreatment at work or meeting quotas because they’d have more difficulty finding another job without work authorization.

One participant shared,

Yes, it worries me because they want us to do for example, like 90 trees, 3 per hour, but they want us to work hard during the day. And I’m worried about not meeting the quota, because then they say, that in three days if we don’t do it [the 90 trees], or whoever doesn’t come close to it, well, they’ll let us go.”

Additionally, most participants shared that they or their coworkers were negatively impacted by supervisor preference.

“If another person arrives and the supervisor likes them, they get preference, even if you have more time working there, and you do feel bad, but what can you do?”

This supervisor preference and mistreatment led to anxiety, feelings of depression, and not feeling valued at work among participants.

Theme 3: Agricultural workers face many barriers accessing health care and workers’ compensation due to marginalization

Participants expressed experiencing many barriers to accessing health care including, lack of health insurance options, cost, language barriers, and being mistreated or discriminated against by medical and clinic staff. A participant shared,

“The girls [receptionists] at the clinic are very rude, they don’t see you as people, they don’t take you seriously… I think because we are farm workers or because I don’t speak English”.

Participants also mentioned lack of doctors and medical appointments in rural areas as being barriers they experienced in trying to access health care. One participant mentioned,

“Sometimes I make an appointment for my kids… and they call you that the doctor is not going to be there, and they cancel it. So, they move my appointment further away… There are not enough doctors.”