In 2014 the Full Court of the Federal Court of Australia raised one harassed employee’s compensation from A$18,000 to A$100,000, payable by Oracle. The trial judge had held Oracle liable for the harasser’s conduct. Oracle is a multinational employer, not a farm, and the ruling does not say what the law asks of yours. It still shows what one case can cost an employer. Before the next harvest crew arrives, write a one-page code of conduct: each farm rule in a plain sentence, the consequence beside it, and a complaint route that does not go through the boss. It takes an afternoon, plus a wait for an employment lawyer to check any line that ends in dismissal.
Employment law differs by state and country, and nothing here is legal advice. The rules and consequences are yours to write, and an employment lawyer where you farm checks the ones that end in dismissal.
Does a written code change what people do on a farm?
On its own, little. SafeWork NSW, the state’s work health and safety regulator, says in its 2024 code of practice on sexual and gender-based harassment that a policy used alone may not be the most effective control. A policy is useful, the code adds, to write down the more reliable controls and share them with everyone involved.
The wording matters too. Stöber and two colleagues ran an experiment with 1,005 managers at one multinational European corporation. A foreword from top management that stressed compliance in a positive tone raised the managers’ intention to behave ethically. A foreword that stressed the duty and threatened sanctions did not.
The managers answered scenarios, so the result measures intention, not conduct, and it comes from one company, not a farm. Still, it shows how to write the code: state each consequence as a rule, in plain words and a calm tone. Start from the rules your crew already follows by custom: no phone in hand while the auger runs, nobody drives the loader after drinking, the chemical store key goes back on its hook. Write each as one sentence in the language the person reads.
What goes beside each rule before anyone breaks it?
A consequence, graded from a warning up to dismissal, decided beforehand and the same for everyone. The clearest farm example is the Fair Food Program, a code in force on Florida tomato farms and monitored by the Fair Food Standards Council. Its 2015 annual report says the code requires firing a supervisor who breaks its zero-tolerance rules.
That supervisor cannot work on any program farm for two seasons to five years, depending on the offense, and must finish retraining before returning. A second offense is a lifetime ban. A grower that does not impose these sanctions is suspended from the program. In the 2014-2015 season, five supervisors were fired and suspended from all program farms.
Your farm cannot bar anyone from other farms, so its ladder runs from a warning to dismissal. Write each step beside its rule, and keep the same step for the same breach no matter who breaks it, the foreman and the owner’s nephew included. Labor law may limit when and how a farm can dismiss someone, so an employment lawyer where you farm reads the lines that end in dismissal before the code takes effect.
Why do people harassed at work say nothing?
Many judge it is not worth the trouble. In the Australian Human Rights Commission’s 2022 national survey, fewer than one in five people (18%) harassed at work in the previous five years made a formal report or complaint. Of the people who made no formal report, 42% said the incident was not serious enough and 38% said it was easier to keep quiet. Another 31% said people would think they were over-reacting, and 28% said it would not change anything or nothing would be done.
The same survey estimates that 47% of women and 17% of men in agriculture, forestry and fishing were sexually harassed at work in those five years, though that industry’s sample is small. SafeWork NSW adds that a lack of reports does not mean harassment is not happening, and it lists remote or isolated work among the conditions that may raise the risk.
The example farm in this article is a wheat and cattle farm in central west New South Wales. Its harvest crew starts on 3 November 2026 under the owner’s nephew as foreman, and a casual driver works the header alone at night. If the driver is harassed, nobody else sees it, and the nephew is the first person to tell.
Define harassment on the page with two or three examples from your own farm, so a person can tell whether what happened to them is worth reporting. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) asks employers for an easy to understand description of prohibited conduct, including examples. On the example farm that could be unwanted touching, comments about a person’s body, or a threat to cut someone’s hours after they turn down an advance.
Who can a worker go to when the boss is the problem?
To someone outside the boss’s chain of command and, for a complaint about the owner or the family, to an office off the farm. The EEOC advises employers to offer multiple avenues of complaint, including one for complaints about senior leaders. It also notes that a small business may tell staff that harassment can be reported straight to the owner. That works until the complaint is about the owner. On the example farm, a complaint about the nephew cannot go to the nephew.
The Fair Food Standards Council counted worker complaints of all kinds on the program farms over four seasons, from 2011-2012 to 2014-2015. Most came in through a route outside the farm.
| Route | Complaints | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Fair Food Standards Council, the monitor | 601 | 64.8% |
| Coalition of Immokalee Workers, the workers’ own organization | 275 | 29.7% |
| The farms themselves | 51 | 5.5% |
| Total | 927 | 100% |
So write three routes on the page. Only the first can be the person’s own boss. The second is someone outside that chain of command whom the crew trusts, such as a relative who supervises no one. The third is an office off the farm, chosen with your employment lawyer, for complaints about the owner or a relative. Beside the routes, write the days to confirm and to answer a complaint, who will see it, and that a complaint made in good faith costs the person nothing.
Everyday problems such as pay and schedules have their own route, set out in how your people raise a problem before it blows up. The three routes on this page are for a broken rule or harassment.
What do you write first, and how long does it take?
Write the rules and the consequence beside each first, then the three routes. That is an afternoon of work, plus the wait for the employment lawyer. Then comes about ten minutes per person to read the page aloud, answer what they ask and collect a signed line with their name, the date and a sentence saying they received it. SafeWork NSW’s code says information about controls should reach everyone involved, and the signed line shows you did that. On the example farm, the page is signed before 3 November 2026, the day the crew starts.
After that, write one line for every case: what happened, which rule, who received it and the consequence applied. The next case is decided from those lines, the same way. Date the page and the day it comes back for review. For anyone new, the page belongs in the list of what a new hire gets on the first day.
More on what buyers ask farms to show is in does a farm need an ESG report. Deciding rules beforehand is part of farm management, and more on how farm crews are treated is in the sustainability section.