Steinberg bill makes it easier for farm workers to protect
themselves after state, courts fail to protect them
Sacramento, Calif. — A week after a San Joaquin County judge let two farm supervisors escape jail time for involuntary manslaughter in the 2008 heat death of 17-year-old farm worker Maria Isavel Vasquez Jimenez, dozens of farm workers and supporters join the United Farm Workers at the state Capitol on Tuesday to lobby for SB 104, the Fair Treatment for Farm Workers Act, which would help field laborers better protect themselves by making it easier to join unions.
Farm workers from Delano and Salinas are traveling to Sacramento to lobby for the bill by state Senate leader Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento), which is being taken up in the Senate Appropriations Committee. “California laws and law enforcement did not protect Maria Isavel or the 14 other farm workers who died from the heat since the state heat regulation went into effect in 2005,” says UFW President Arturo Rodriguez.
On May 14, 2008, Maria Isavel collapsed after working in the blazing sun for nine hours without accessible water or shade at a Farmington, Calif.-area vineyard. Instead of summoning medical aid, Merced Farm Labor Contractors told the girl’s fiancé and father of her unborn child to take her to a clinic in Lodi. By then, her core temperature was 108 degrees on a day the state work safety agency issued a heat-danger warning to employers. She died two days later. The contracting firm was fined earlier for similar violations of the state heat regulation.
“I am going to Sacramento with the union so that we can ask those in charge to change the laws and make them fair to farm workers,” says farm worker Jose Alfredo Ramos. “We don’t want to continue to die in the field when we are forced by to work in extreme temperatures.”
WHO: Farm workers, United Farm Workers leaders, DREAM Act students and supporters.
WHAT: Lobbying for a bill that would make it easier for farm workers to protect themselves.
WHEN: Tuesday, March 15, 2011, 10:30 a.m. to 12 noon. Farm workers from Salinas and Delano are leaving at 5 a.m. for Sacramento.
WHERE: State Capitol, Sacramento 95814.