‘Needless tragedies will continue’ so long as
government fails to protect farm workers
United Farm Workers President Arturo S. Rodriguez issued the following statement from the union’s Keene, Calif. headquarters after a Stockton judge accepted a plea deal allowing criminal defendants to escape any jail time in the 2008 heat death of pregnant 17-year old farm worker Maria Isavel Vasquez Jimenez.
The life of Maria Isavel is not worth very much in the courts of justice of California. The government failed Maria Isavel at least four times—and it failed to protect the other 14 farm workers who died from the heat since Gov. Schwarzenegger issued the state heat regulation in 2005.
• First, in 2006, Cal-OSHA, the state work safety agency, fined the farm labor contractor that later employed Maria Isavel for serious violations of the heat regulation that later helped cause her death, including failing to provide shade and accessible water. Cal-OSHA never collected the fine.
• Second, Cal-OSHA never inspected the farm labor contractor it fined or the vineyards owned by the Franzia wine subsidiary that hired the contractor. Maria Isavel died because violations that prompted the fine—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.
• Third, the government did not protect Maria Isavel’s uncle, Doroteo Jimenez, when he was fired for meeting with Gov. Schwarzenegger’s office about his niece’s death. Doroteo got permission from his employer, another labor contractor hired by the Franzia subsidiary, to take the day off. When Doroteo returned to work the next day, he no longer had a job.
• Fourth, the district attorney and defense attorney agreed to a plea bargain under which criminal defendants charged in Maria Isavel’s death would serve no prison time in exchange for probation and community service—without informing Maria Isabel’s family about the proposed deal.
Our system of 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 exactly these types of tragedies. Unless farm workers can find a more effective way to protect themselves, these needless tragedies will continue.