Contributor: Thermal safety law is not enough. Farm workers are still dying every summer
By the mid-Central Valley, the lights become hard and white, bleaching the sky and flattening each shadow. A row of melons stretched to the horizon, and the vines twisted low in the soil in the broken soil. The demand for pickers to move crops at rhythms – bend, twist, lift, drop – long sleeves of moisture, sweat, hats are low-key, and turbans hide the hot-burning cheeks. The Spanish followed the joke along the line, making a joke here, warning in the heavy air.
These are the cruelest days of harvest, when the sun turns into a slow oven, the heat before breakfast climbs until the stars go out. By nightfall, the damage had caused: another collapse of the dirt, and another family handed the death certificate instead of the salary.
In California, this is a very familiar old question. About 20 years ago, in the shadow of four farm funerals – Alvin, Fresno County, Kern, Empire Valley – California formulated the first Heat rules for basic workers in the United States: water, shadows, rest. You don’t think the mercy of the law is needed. I wrote these rules with my legislators and Gove at the time. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who signed them as law, thought they were enough. But for twenty years, the cold harvester still walked in rows: 110 degrees, no trees, no tarpaulin, a can of water warmed, its handles sliding from dust and hands. The break denial is not just based on cruelty, but because of the mercilessness of the harvest.
This is not a failure of the law itself, but a failure of law enforcement. Some people regard the signature of the bill as the finish line, rather than the starting gun. Too few inspectors. The fine is too light. The investigation is too slow. The latest report from state auditors like Cal/OSHA’s credibility: outdated rules, missed opportunities, offices are spaced and unable to answer calls.
At the same time, the climate becomes mean. The once cool night now holds the heat of the day like a resentment. And the danger in the fields is not just the sun. Now, the immigration raid now swept across the valley like a sandstorm- suddenly, uninformed, ruthless. For more than half of California’s 350,000 farm workers, the greater threat is not a stroke, but a knock on the door before dawn, or a traffic stop, a vehicle that arrives full of workers is detained and transported to a remote location. People who work under a triple-digit sky but live in the shadows will feed the country’s food from the earth, where a complaint can make their work, home, freedom.
Twenty harvest seasons later, I call for action – not another bill signed at the Capitol step, but signed, but the dollar, real, and qualifying regulations. With this willingness and funding, four simple fixes can turn promises into protection.
First, bring the tools of the 21st century into the field. In 2005, the “high-tech” solution was a plastic kettle in the shadow and a slap pop-up canopy. Today, for $50 (for two boxes of gloves), employers can deploy a wearable sensor that is clipped to the worker’s arm to track core temperature and heart rate, warning before the body crosses the edge and enters the hot ball. That’s not Silicon Valley Moon’s money. This is a pocket change for agribusiness, which for workers can mean the difference between getting out of the row or being executed.
Secondly, real-time execution. If workers fall to one knee in high temperatures, the country should not hear about it after a few days. Imagine connecting growers, regulators, and first responders to a network of the same information pulses, turning a slow reactive system into a system that can record tragedies that can act quickly and stop many of them.
Third, select the train before the first row. Ten minutes – No more – Let the workers stand upright and learn in their own language: dizziness, nausea, fog crawling in their minds, which means it’s time to stop. Not a photocopy handout in English is hidden in the envelope behind the salary, not a hasty speech in Spanish on the edge of the field, but a proven safety course – certified by both labor contractors and farmers. Knowledge here saves lives like water and shadows.
Finally, match the urgency we see in other areas. Cal/Osha, while the staff were hungry and fell into the traditional Chinese tape festival in the opposite direction, immigration and customs enforcement fees – by $170 billion in new fundingan immigration enforcement and border security blitzkrieg employs thousands of people, pending signing bonuses, pay off student loans, abandon age restrictions, and even pull retirees back to double-domain wages. This happens when the government decides the wrong tasks most important. We confide urgency to farmers chasing the fields, but cannot summon the will to protect them in the heat. Before Cal/OSHA gets the same drive (inspectors recruited in every corner of the state), inspiring a new generation, crossing the barriers, the laws we write will be promises without witnesses.
Some people will say that this industry cannot afford the cost. But I walked behind the hearing of the valley dust, stood on the gravel, the funeral home of many farm towns, watching my wife clutched her work shirts, as if they were still warm, and saw the children staring at the dirt on Sunday clothes. There is no budget line to measure this loss.
The valley will continue to feed the country. The question is whether we will continue to feed the cemetery as well.
Once, by setting thermal safety rules, California announced that the value of life is more than just a box of agricultural products. If we give up that promise in the heat, then we were writing a press release at the time. Government system able A quick and tortuous billion-dollar project, but it didn’t catch this attention until the more affordable priority, the rules were just ink on paper, while the lawsuits for the deceased were getting longer and longer.
Dean Florez is a former California Senate Majority Leader who represents part of the Central Valley.
