Farmworker Justice News
News Roundup #1
Written by barb howe Monday, 30 June 2008 09:23
In the interests of drawing connections and keeping up to date with the latest news affecting farmworkers, here is the first Harvesting Justice NewsRoundup. Feel free to suggest links to anything I left out in the comments thread below.
There's a good interview with UFW president Arturo Rodriguez on Dominion.com, a monthly paper put out by Canadian independent journalists. The story does an excellent job of putting the death of Maria Isabel Jimenez within the larger context of harsh economic realities south of the border and the life-threatening perils that undocumented workers face every day. According to Rodriguez:
"Maria Isabel Vasquez Jimenez is one of nine individuals that we know of who have died of heat stress just in California. Multiple other deaths have occurred due to equipment failures, due to heavy use of pesticides, and you can go on from there. The overwhelming majority of these deaths are undocumented people, so we know that these deaths are very closely linked to the legal status of these individuals.
Meanwhile, a Riverside County Superior Court judge has issued a temporary injunction against another California labor contractor for not providing water and shade for their workers during the heatwave earlier this month. The lawsuit, filed by California Rural Legal Assistance, was brought on behalf of two farmworkers who were fired after complaining about poor working conditions.
And if you haven't already heard, last week the Arizona legislature let the state-run guestworker proposal die, its main proponent Senate Minority Leader Marsha Arzberger, admitting that they did not have enough votes to proceed.
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