Vol. 72/No. 35      September 8, 2008

Militant/Joel Britton

Farm workers and supporters protest at Sacramento state capitol, August 18. Crosses represent 15 workers who have died of heat stroke while working in the fields in last three years.

Grape field worker Doroteo Jiménez told the Militant that employers don’t abide by the state’s rules to prevent heat stroke. He cited the death of his 17-year-old niece Maria Isabel Vasquez Jiménez, who collapsed while pruning grapevines in near-100-degree heat close to Stockton on May 14. She died two days later.

Maria Jiménez’s boss refused to summon emergency medical help right away. By the time she was driven to a clinic in Lodi her body temperature had reached 108 degrees. She was revived several times but never regained consciousness.

Doroteo Jiménez asked the United Farm Workers (UFW) union to assist him and his coworkers in protesting working conditions in the grape fields. On the day his niece collapsed, workers had started at 6:00 a.m. and were given only one water break.

UFW president Arturo Rodríguez joined farm workers and supporters in a protest march in June from Lodi to Sacramento.

State of California rules require that bosses provide “enough fresh water so that each employee can drink at least 1 quart per hour, and encourage them to do so.” It further requires bosses to provide “access to shade for at least 5 minutes of rest when an employee believes he or she needs a preventative recovery period.”

Jiménez says that workers need to understand the laws that protect them but, he said, the bosses can’t be relied on to enforce the rules. “Farm workers need to be organized ourselves,” he said. Without the union, “we will never be united. With it, we can have more voice.” Jiménez was fired in June for backing a wrongful-death lawsuit on behalf of Maria Jiménez’s mother against West Coast Grape Farming and Merced Farm Labor, the contractor who hired the workers.

Following the rally at the capitol, farm workers were organized to visit members of the state legislature and urge them to vote in favor of a bill supported by UFW officials that would allow “mediated” representation elections. As the Associated Press reports, “bill supporters likened [it] to voting absentee. Workers would fill out a ballot to decide if they wanted to authorize a union at that point or make the decision through the traditional ballot-booth vote.

“That would reduce the potential pressure that workers could face from growers as they walked into a voting booth, bill supporters said.” The Senate has now passed the bill. It goes back to the Assembly, which had passed it earlier, and then to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger who vetoed two previous versions.  
 
 
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