The standards board governing the Division of Occupational Safety and Health, or Cal/OSHA, has established a new stakeholder advisory committee in a step toward potentially easing regulatory barriers for autonomous tractors in California.
The move signals a dramatic change in the workplace safety regulator. In 2018 and 2021 the board shot down attempts to update a 1970s-era law banning tomato harvesters without drivers and later denied requests from farm groups to establish an advisory committee to explore the issue in more depth.
The shift coincides with Gov. Gavin Newsom’s installment of Joseph Alioto as board chair in June. It gained further momentum in August, when Cal/OSHA officially dropped its opposition to the use of autonomous vehicles in agriculture. In a memo to the board, Cal/OSHA Chief Debra Lee — also appointed by Newsom in June — said the officials have learned much about the technology after discussions with manufacturers, experts and academics and by observing demonstrations.
Yet Lee urged a cautious approach in opening up the state to the technology. She recommended the advisory committee focus selectively on lightweight, low-power and slow tractors, reasoning they are unlikely to injure bystanders. She would limit the equipment to less than 500 pounds, less than 20 horsepower and moving no faster than two miles per hour.
Lee also called for more data collection and analysis and dismissed a long-running experimental trial with Monarch tractors, since no workers were in the fields when the tractors operated. Seeking to strike a balance of opinions, Lee pressed for workers and labor advocates to have a strong presence on the committee.
Chris Laszcz-Davis, Cal/OSHA standards boardThe decision to launch a committee was welcome news to Chris Laszcz-Davis, management representative on the board.
“I'm glad to see that it's moving along,” said Laszcz-Davis. “The future is here. It's the perfect opportunity for us to get our arms around this.”
Alioto pressed the agency further, questioning its recommendation to prescribe limits on the technology before the advisory committee has weighed in.
“It strikes me that this will encompass so few autonomous ag vehicles the advisory committee will not be effective,” said Alioto.
Laszcz-Davis agreed, calling it absolutely critical to start the committee with a clean slate and to avoid the perception of being predisposition to a certain outcome.
Eric Berg, deputy chief of the Cal/OSHA health division, responded that the agency felt any regulations allowing autonomous tractors should be limited to the safest technologies and expand from there over time as needed.
“Basically, these robots will control the pace of work and force people to work much faster, with more risk of heat illness, more risk of ergonomic injuries and such,” said Berg.
The California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation, a farmworker advocacy group, echoed the comment. Policy advocate Anne Katten raised further alarms, claiming sensors and cameras could be obstructed by dust and mud or damaged by branches, leading to debilitating injuries or killing workers.
The state’s powerful labor interests, often opposed to autonomous technologies in other sectors as well, have put their support behind Ketten’s arguments. Mitch Steiger, a legislative advocate for the California Labor Federation, AFL-CIO, said he has been following the discussion over the years.
“I still haven't really heard much of a compelling argument for why we're moving forward with this technology,” said Steiger. “We don't really know if these things are safe or not, other than self-reported data from the industry that says everything is fine.”
Steiger and Katten urged the board to move forward slowly and cautiously.
Aligning with Berg’s comments, David Harrison, a labor representative on the board and executive at a construction trade union, reiterated his longstanding skepticism of both the technology and any data from manufacturers or nonunionized farms.
“I hesitate to open this up so broad that at some point, for the sake of collecting data, employees are put at risk,” he said.
Nola Kennedy, a professor in industrial hygiene serving as an occupational health representative on the board, pushed for further restrictions, saying the committee should avoid harvesters and focus on pesticide applicators and other equipment used when workers are not present.
“But I like the idea of leaving this conversation up to the advisory committee to think about what would be the best place to start,” she said.
The Wine Institute and the California Association of Winegrape Growers urged the board to follow that path, arguing the committee should “be empowered to gather data more broadly” and include equipment used in actual workplace settings.
“This work is so critically important to vineyard growers, because this technology provides for a safer workplace, is better for the environment and represents the future of farming,” said Michael Miiller, CAWG director of government relations, in a statement to the board. “As the DMV continues to gather data on autonomous cars, it is not relying on data from autonomous mini cars on a closed track at Sonoma Raceway.”
Similarly, Nick Tindall, senior director of regulatory affairs at the Association of Equipment Manufacturers, argued the committee should consider “real equipment and real situations on real California farms, not in the laboratory setting.” He pointed to the longstanding use of autonomous trucks in the mining industry, which have logged more than nine million miles, and said driverless tractors are already in use in other farming states.
Robert Moutrie, a policy advocate for the California Chamber of Commerce, worried about taking the slow and limited approach called for by labor advocates.
“If we were to limit it, I'm afraid that, with the staff's workload, it would be another decade before we could look at actually using the technology,” said Moutrie. “I would say we’re already decades behind.”
The board agreed to let the advisory committee guide the approach and tasked it with reporting back to the board on its initial discussions in about a year.
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