Unnecessary tragedies in California's fields
Written by barb howe Friday, 31 July 2009 11:06
This week I have been visiting fields in California's central valley with outreach workers from California Rural Legal Aid. The temperature in Bakersfield today is expected to reach 100 degrees. Nonetheless farmworkers here are out in the fields harvesting grapes and doing maintenance work in other crops. The sun beats down on workers who cover themselves from head to toe to shield themselves from the heat and harmful pesticides. Last year six workers died from heat stress and countless others were sickened.
We have seen a lot of violations of heat-safety rules. One group of workers were working with no water provided at all (the workers had brought their own small water bottles with them but employers are required to provide two gallons of water per person per 8 hours). Another site had insufficient shade for their workers. We contacted the foremen of both of these sites and both corrected the situation immediately, but not all employers are so cooperative. One location where workers were working in fields owned by Sunview Farms which supplies grapes for Welch's grape juice, had only two beach umbrellas set up to provide shade for 95 workers. The legal aid outreach workers spoke to the foreman there and requested more shade. The foreman, an employee of Sunview Farms, called for one additional shade canopy to be set up and also called his supervisors to report our presence. The supervisors were angry and told us to leave immediately. It took a visit from Cal-OSHA the following day to get the company to do the right thing.
Heat-related illnesses and deaths are 100% preventable if employers provide a sufficient amount of shade and water for workers and if they allow them necessary breaks to recover from the heat.
California's occupational health and safety agency, Cal-OSHA, has stepped up some enforcement of heat-safety regulations in light of the stream of heat-related deaths in the state last summer, but farmworkers' unions say it's not enough.
Yesterday the United Farm Workers (UFW) and the ACLU sued Cal-OSHA arguing that the state agency is incapable of protecting the 650,000 workers laboring in California's fields this summer. The lawsuit claims that 187 inspectors cannot possibly inspect one million work sites on 35,000 farms. Moreover, in response to pressure exerted by powerful growers, Cal-OSHA has reduced fines for heat-safety violations down to a few hundred dollars in some cases, even when fatalities have occurred.
There is no excuse for employers not protecting the lives of the workers who labor so hard for them. People do not need to die in California's fields in order for us to have food on our tables. Growers need to be held accountable for the conditions in their fields.
More information about California's heat-safety requirements can be found on their website.
Media coverage of the lawsuit:
New York Times: Farmworkers' union sues California Agency over rules on Heat Safety
Modesto Bee: Farmworkers union sues safety agency
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► Heat-related Illnesses: An Occupational Health Concern for Farmworkers (discussion paper)
► Heat Stress among Farmworkers: A Preventable Cause of Injury and Death (MCN Streamline Mar-Apr 2008, page 5)