Some 200 farm workers Wednesday
urge passage of contractor bill
AB 2468 set as special order of business at 1:30 p.m. Wed. in state Capitol Room 447
Nearly 200 farm workers will travel to the state Capitol on Wednesday to lobby and testify for a bill targeting the worst abuses legendary farm labor leader Cesar Chavez spent his life fighting against.
AB 2468, by Assemblymember Gloria Romero (D-Monterey Park), would remedy what the United Farm Workers terms California’s "corrupt" farm labor system by making growers liable for the illegal acts of their farm labor contractors. AB 2468 faces its first legislative hurdle before the Assembly Labor and Employment Committee as a special order of business at 1:30 p.m. on Wednesday, May 3, 2000 in state Capitol Room 447.
In the union’s view, policy-makers too often only address the symptoms of a problem while ignoring the root causes. After 13 farm workers employed by a labor contractor died in an Aug. 13, 1999 farm labor van crash in Fresno County, the Legislature passed UFW-backed reforms requiring seat belts and other safety improvements.
But the underlying cause of many such tragedies is a labor contractor system that allows the true employer–the grower–to hide behind the legal fiction that the labor contractor, and not the grower, is the employer and the one responsible for complying with the laws. In increasing numbers (at least 30%, according to U.S. Labor Department figures), farm workers are hired by labor contractors and not by growers.
Under AB 2468, growers who employ farm workers would have "joint" liability for ensuring that basic wage and hour, and other legal protections are observed.
About 200 farm worker victims of labor contractor abuses are traveling to Sacramento on Wednesday from Kern, Tulare and Fresno counties as well as the Central Coast to lobby for AB 2468.
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