First, thank you Assemblymember Lorena Gonzalez and Senator Maria Elena Durazo—as previous Latino Caucus chair and vice chair—for your help, in particular, in supporting Foster Farms workers. We look forward to continuing to work with the caucus for them.
California farm workers suffered at once from a perfect storm of deadly perils: Too many have been devastated by the coronavirus pandemic while they have also endured extreme heat and choking smoke from raging wildfires.
• Agricultural workers are especially vulnerable to COVID-19 because they must often live, commute and labor in cramped, overcrowded and unsanitary conditions. They are deemed essential—and must do their jobs. They can’t afford to miss a day of work to pay rent and buy food. An alarming number are getting sick—yet most receive no federal benefits that helped other workers survive because of immigration status.
Most people are unaware how enduring discrimination still plagues farm workers due to their historic exclusion from national and state protections other workers long enjoyed.
We in California have remedied some of these injustices. We thank Lorena Gonzalez and all caucus members who helped us end 80 years of racism by passing overtime in 2016. Next year, after eight and one-half hours of work, farm workers will finally enjoy full overtime pay.
Yet California farm workers were still treated differently than other workers this year in protecting them from COVID through workers’ comp.
When the virus first emerged, the UFW approached all unionized employers to ensure protections for the thousands of workers covered by union contracts.
One company that fell short is giant Foster Farms in Livingston. Senator Durazo expressed deep concern over an L.A. Times report that the company failed to comply with state law when it only reported one out of eight COVID-related deaths to Cal-OSHA. The senator also cited Foster Farms for relying on its two “doctors”—a staff veterinarian and a food safety consultant—who did not seem adequate to handle a pandemic that has now infected more than 400 workers and killed at least nine of them.
We constantly communicate with 50,000-plus farm workers—most non-union—through our social media platforms. Surveys showed most non-union employers were not taking legally-required steps to protect workers from COVID.
At too many non-union operations, basic safety measures have been ignored. At one company where workers staged one-day walkouts, worker leaders who spoke out were terminated.
The UFW and other food industry unions helped convince Governor Newsom to require two weeks paid sick leave for all food workers, including farm workers. But there is an urgent ongoing need for enforcement of this and other requirements.
Food insecurity continues. Through a partnership with Chef Jose Andres’ World Central Kitchen, we supplied 189,000 restaurant-prepared fresh meals from April through August across rural California. We have thus far distributed some 40,000 additional food boxes.
We are distributing more than 900,000 face masks in farm communities.
• As the pandemic worsens, the Trump administration has acted to slash or freeze farm worker wages. We sued in Fresno federal court last October—and won an order stopping the USDA from effectively cutting wages for both foreign and domestic farm workers by more than five percent in California and up to a fourth to a half in some other states. Then, the day before the election, Trump moved to freeze for two years the pay of H-2A guest workers—which will also wreak havoc with domestic workers’ pay.
• Beyond COVID and heat, farm workers suffer from a third plague: Smoke from wildfires. Cal-OSHA is supposed to protect employees, but farm workers tell us many are still at risk. Employers must provide N95 masks if the Air Quality Index exceeds 150. One survey in September showed 90-plus percent of responding field workers had not been supplied respiratory masks.
So the UFW has been handing out hundreds of thousands of donated N95 or equivalent coverings.
• Whenever you hear horror stories about farm worker abuse, the industry says California has the toughest laws in the nation protecting agricultural workers. This is true.
But farm workers’ experiences over the decades have been that the laws on the books are not the laws in the fields. With so many lives at risk we cannot afford to have the same experience with COVID. Let’s make sure mandates from the state of California are actually enforced in the fields.
Thank you.
###