By Sherrill Futrell

Our great Assemblywoman Mariko Yamada was recently and wrongly criticized by a few local growers for her courageous support of AB 2346, the Farm Worker Safety Act (Butler). The Fresno Bee on June 5 reported that a farmworker, Maximo Lopez Barajas, had died at the Coalinga Regional Medical Center after collapsing at work “in heat that exceeded 100 degrees that day.”

According to the United Farm Workers, California has failed to enforce its 2005 regulations intended to protect farmworkers from dying of extreme heat. The UFW alleges that “preventable farmworker deaths still occur at a similar pace as before. Not only that, but when Cal-OSHA … finds violations of its regulations, reports show the state often does not issue citations, (or) go back to recheck violators and make sure the violations have been corrected.”

The UFW states that it filed “more than 75 serious heat illness complaints with Cal-OSHA in summer 2011, but as of March 2012, the state work safety agency issued heat citations in only three of those cases.”

If passed by the Senate and signed by Gov. Jerry Brown, the bill would allow farmworkers to sue delinquent employers, including farm labor contractors, for failing to supply water within 10 feet or shade within 200 feet of workers. The bill costs taxpayers nothing, and costs nothing to those employers who obey the law.

The UFW is also sponsoring AB 2676 (Calderon), that applies criminal sanctions “for employers whose mistreatment of farmworkers causes their deaths or illnesses from exposure to extreme heat. Long-standing penalties in the state Penal Code apply to anyone who ‘inflicts unnecessary cruelty upon the animal, or in any manner abuses any animal, or fails to provide the animal with proper food, drink, or shelter or protection from the weather.’ Now AB 2676, called the Humane Treatment of Farm Workers Act, says agricultural employers must treat farmworkers at least as well as animals or face the same criminal penalties.”

Because Congress in 1935 saw fit to exclude farmworkers from protections under the National Labor Relations Act, they are the most vulnerable members of the labor force despite their importance to our economy and well-being. The U.S. General Accounting Office has stated that “farmworkers are not adequately protected by federal laws, regulations and programs; therefore, their health and well-being (are) at great risk.”

In addition, the National Agriculture Workers Survey shows that nearly three-quarters of U.S. farmworkers earn less than $10,000 per year and three-fifths of farmworker families have incomes below the poverty level.

Thanks to Yamada and her Democratic colleagues, the California Assembly just passed both AB 2346 and AB 2676, which will next be heard in the Senate Appropriations Committee, chaired by Sen. Christine Kehoe. Please join me in contacting the committee and asking its support for these long-overdue bills at [email protected] or (916) 651-4101. Thank you.

— Sherrill Futrell is a Davis resident.

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