Farm Workers Deserve Insurance

Idaho legislators need only consider Javier Tellez-Juarez to understand why they should extend workers’ compensation insurance to farm laborers.

His arms are gone, torn from their sockets in a horrible farm accident Dec. 13. His left leg is sawed off at the knee. Tellez-Juarez, 23, was using his feet to push a post-hole digger deeper into the ground when a moving shaft snagged his shirt and pushed him in.

That was three limbs and nearly $500,000 ago.

Tellez-Juarez’s hospital bills have accumulated at $8,000 to $10,000 daily. If Idaho, like Washington state, required field hands to be protected by workers’ compensation, Tellez-Juarez’s bills would be paid and he’d receive a disability pension of $10,000 a year for life.

In a call to action, state Rep. Mark Stubbs, R-Twin Falls, correctly labeled agriculture’s exemption from the insurance law “a moral travesty.” Tellez-Juarez’s tragic case proves it’s past time to end it - in Idaho and the 13 other states that don’t provide insurance for farm workers.

Since 1971, the Legislature, usually under heavy pressure from the Idaho Farm Bureau, has resoundingly defeated eight tries to rescind agriculture’s exemption. The 1995 House of Representatives rejected the eighth attempt 47-23.

The vote will be closer this year.

Supporters include not only Stubbs, who voted against last year’s bill, but also Idaho Gov. Phil Batt and the Idaho Cattle Association.

Batt, a Wilder onion farmer, said he understands the reluctance of farmers to add any expense. But he has carried workers’ compensation for his employees for 45 years. Although there have been many accidents during that time, he has never been sued.

Farming, mining and logging are the three most dangerous industries in the Pacific Northwest. Workers, many of whom are poor migrants, regularly are injured by power lines that have fallen on irrigation pipes, propane explosions, livestock and machinery.

Since Tellez-Juarez wasn’t insured, his boss literally could lose his farm through a lawsuit, and taxpayers likely will foot some of the migrant’s bills through the state’s indigent trust fund. Even if his bills were paid, however, the young Hispanic faces a grim future without a source of income and only one damaged leg to stand on.

Idaho legislators should be ashamed for exempting agriculture from the universal requirement of worker’s compensation.

, DataTimes The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = D.F. Oliveria/For the editorial board