“We Force Ourselves”: Productivity, Workplace Culture, and HRI Prevention in Florida’s Citrus Groves

Efforts to disseminate heat-related illness (HRI) prevention practices among Latino farmworkers represent a critical occupational safety strategy in Florida. Targeted initiatives, however, require understanding the workplace dynamics that guide agricultural safety behaviors. This article reports foc...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Safety (Basel) 2020-09, Vol.6 (3), p.41
Main Authors: Morera, Maria C., Gusto, Cody, Monaghan, Paul F., Tovar-Aguilar, José Antonio, Roka, Fritz M.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
agricultural safety
Agriculture
Citrus fruits
Contractors
Drinking water
Employees
Employers
Employment
Ethnicity
farmworker
Farmworkers
Fatalities
Focus groups
heat-related illness (HRI)
Hispanic Americans
Injury prevention
Latino
Literacy
Manual workers
Occupational safety
Productivity
State laws
workplace culture
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Efforts to disseminate heat-related illness (HRI) prevention practices among Latino farmworkers represent a critical occupational safety strategy in Florida. Targeted initiatives, however, require understanding the workplace dynamics that guide agricultural safety behaviors. This article reports focus group data collected in 2018 from citrus harvesters in central Florida and provides an in-depth perspective on the workplace culture that shapes their implementation of heat safety measures. Results indicate that citrus harvesters regularly suffered HRI symptoms yet rarely reported or sought treatment for their injuries. In some cases, the risks of developing HRI were accepted as a facet of agricultural work and harvesters blamed themselves for their illnesses. Implementation of safety practices hinged less on knowledge than on the availability of water and rest breaks and the quality of employer-employee relations and exchanges. Thus, trust was a determinant of workers’ attitudes toward management that contributed to a harvesting operation’s safety climate. Results highlight the difficulties of putting into practice measures that are not rewarded by the workplace culture and suggest that the extent to which intervention strategies promote not only individual safety behaviors but organizational accountability may predict their effectiveness.
ISSN:2313-576X
2313-576X
DOI:10.3390/safety6030041