This is a YouTube video titled "The Racist Roots of our Labor Laws" containing a recorded conversation from December 15, 2019, discussing the historical exclusion of farm workers from labor protections in the United States. The dialogue features multiple speakers including Ask AI Mark, who provides context on labor laws and systemic racism affecting farm workers' rights and conditions.
From the farmer end of things, we need to pass the Fairness for Farm Workers Act because we still haven't updated our labor laws and farm workers don't have overtime protections, minimum wage, right to a day off in seven, right to.
Unionize, some very, very basic things in this country farm workers do not have. Yeah, just pause there for a second because I just want to put in context. So there was a lot of labor abuses in this country at the early part of the 1900s. And there was a law passed, there was a couple of laws, a Fair Labor Act and another one that were designed to protect workers, minimum wage, fair working conditions, removing abuse and so forth. But the exclusion within that was, and this was like 1938, okay? So we're talking like, I don't know how many, it's like, what is that, 80 years ago? It has not been addressed that the people who are working on farms and the food system were not protected by those laws.
Exactly, because they were black. Because the Southern Democrats would not vote for the bill. It was introduced originally.
That's right.
As including everyone, but the Southern Democrats parties were switched then, would not vote for it if it included black people. And we've, you know, we updated Social Security, but we haven't updated the labor laws to include everybody.
And so, and there's more people in the food and farm system as laborers, as workers, than any other industry in the United States. And they are the poorest, the most at risk for disease, the most likely to be harmed by farming and chemicals, the most in need of aid. So we're actually as taxpayers paying for their Medicare and all the services that they need. And we're also helping to support the food system as it is by using the tipping system, which was sort of designed also as a part of this whole legacy of racism in the food system, right?
