Despite protests in person by hundreds of farm workers and thousands of supporters signing petitions, on Wednesday, March 9, a Stockton, Calif. judge accepted a plea deal letting criminal defendants escape any jail time for the 2008 heat death of pregnant 17-year old farm worker Maria Isavel Vasquez Jimenez. Maria Isavel’s life is not worth much in the courts of justice of California. The government repeatedly failed Maria Isavel-and it failed to protect the other 14 farm workers who died from the heat since the UFW convinced Gov. Schwarzenegger to issue the state heat regulation in 2005. After the state work safety agency in 2006 fined the farm labor contractor that later employed Maria Isavel for serious violations of the heat rules, including failing to provide shade and accessible water, Cal-OSHA never collected the fine. The state didn’t inspect the fined labor contractor or the vineyards owned by the Franzia wine subsidiary that hired the contractor to ensure compliance. Maria Isavel died in 2008 because those violations-no shade and accessible water-were not corrected and when she collapsed from the heat on May 14, 2008, the labor contractor failed to summon emergency medical aid, another gross violation of state heat rules. Our government repeatedly failed Maria Isavel and the other 14 California farm workers who died from the heat because of lax enforcement of the heat regulation designed to prevent these needless deaths. Unless farm workers can find a more effective way to protect themselves, these senseless tragedies will continue.
Arturo S. Rodriguez, President
United Farm Workers of America