Image borrowed from cfa-fca.ca |
The most common injury results from the handling of tractors one way or another, but injuries due to trucks, boats, and other machinery are not far behind. Because many agricultural workers are not unionized (and many are illegal), an injury means no money, which also means no money for their family which makes it increasingly more difficult to work one’s family out of poverty.
This high level of injury risk also cuts down on the amount of years an agricultural worker can work. Most need to retire due to physical ailment around the age of fifty. This wouldn’t be too big of a problem in most professions, but because income is so low in this industry, but the time they are fifty, most agricultural workers have little or no money saved up. And because the labor is so difficult most workers cannot begin working full time until they are in their early or mid twenties. So agricultural workers roughly have about thirty years, working minimum wage, to save up enough money to help put their children through college so maybe someday their family can assimilate into American society, even if it takes multiple generations to accomplish this goal.
There is good in this aspect of the work. With technology advancing, machinery is becoming more and more user friendly, lowering the risk of injury. These machines also make the work less taxing on the workers, allowing them to work for a longer time over their lives.
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