Farmworkers call for more extreme heat protections as Health Secretary Xavier Becerra touts existing policies: Secretary Xavier Becerra met with members of Líderes Campesinas, a statewide women’s farmworker advocacy organization, to hear about the risks California farmworkers face as weather conditions become more extreme.
CLARKSBURG — On a sunny August morning in this agricultural town, before temperatures soared to 103 degrees, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra stood outside the small public library. “There are still not enough protections for workers that are picking the food that we eat,” Becerra told a group of local reporters and government officials, who outnumbered the farmworkers in the audience.
California has sharply cut its enforcement of heat-protection laws for outdoor laborers while extreme heat has intensified in recent years — endangering farmworkers, construction workers and others who toil in scorching temperatures — an investigation by the Los Angeles Times and Capital & Main has found.
Many undocumented workers in California have some of the most challenging and dangerous jobs with little to no benefits. While federal and state taxes are deducted from their paychecks, the law prohibits undocumented workers from unemployment compensation for services performed in California.
They worked nearly three triple-digit days before it felt unsafe to go on.
Maria Paredes said she already had a headache while working in a tomato field near Dixon on June 5, when high temperatures hit between 99 to 107 degrees. The hotter the next day got, the 40-year-old farmworker said, “the more it started to go back to my head, and I started to feel like vomiting.”
Novelist Helena María Viramontes deftly captures farmworking conditions of the mid-20th century in the August California Book Club selection, Under the Feet of Jesus. In carefully drawn descriptions and scenes, the book reveals the grueling circumstances workers are forced to toil under: constant exposure to the sun and toxic chemicals, minimal breaks, a lack of safe drinking water, and the push to always keep working faster and faster.
I’ve worked in the fields of the Salinas Valley since I was 18, tending grapes and picking broccoli.
Agricultural work has many contradictions. It is both steady and uncertain. I work constantly but don’t have one job. Instead, I work different jobs for different contractors during the picking season.
I could not have survived without doing this work, but sometimes I wonder how much longer I can survive doing it. Farmwork is getting easier in some ways, and harder in others.
Líderes Campesinas aims to strengthen the leadership of farmworker women and youth so that they can be agents of economic, social and political change and ensure their human rights. For over 35 years, Líderes Campesinas has used outreach, organizing, and activism to improve the lives of farmworker communities.
ARVIN, Calif. (KERO) — With the temperatures well into the triple digits, Líderes Campesinas of South Kern say they are facing an environmental and economic crisis.
CAMARILLO, Calif. – Tres Hijas Berry Farms, LLC, will pay $200,000 and furnish injunctive relief to settle a sexual harassment and retaliation lawsuit filed by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the federal agency announced today. The EEOC brought the lawsuit on behalf of a class of agricultural workers, whose primary language is Spanish.
