California has experienced an unseasonable stretch of warm March weather, breaking temperature records across the state.
The heat can also take a toll on those who work outside, including some of the state’s most critical and vulnerable industries — like the hundreds of thousands of California farmworkers.
The state Division of Occupational Safety and Health (Cal/OSHA) has issued reminders for employers to protect their workers from heat-related illness. California was also the first state in the country to pass regulations to protect its agricultural workers over two decades ago.
But whether these protections are being implemented, or effectively enforced by state officials, is a different question.
Edward Flores is the Faculty Director of the UC Merced Community and Labor Center, which conducts education on research on issues of community, labor and the environment. In 2022 the center released the Farmworker Health Study, which is described as being the largest-ever academic survey on the health and wellbeing of agricultural workers.
Flores spoke with CapRadio’s Andrew Garcia on Insight about the challenges this critical workforce is facing, including about what happens when temperatures rise.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Interview highlights
What did you find in the 2022 Farmworker Health Study?
We found that agricultural workers still experience a range of disadvantages that are linked to conditions in the workplace. We found that they have high rates of chronic health conditions — 43% have one or more chronic conditions — but we also found that there are a number of challenges that they face with regards to workplace health and safety.
When we look at heat specifically, what kind of health impacts can that kind of exposure cause for the agricultural workforce?
So there are immediate consequences of high heat, and farmwork poses actually the highest rate of heat-related deaths in the country. But also there are long-term consequences of being exposed to elevated temperatures. We see this in higher incidences of diseases, such as kidney disease, among farm workers.
We’ve been going through a hot spell recently. What heat standards does California have in place right now to protect its farmworkers and laborers?
In 2005, California passed a heat standard that provided greater protections for workers than the federal standard. Namely this was providing shade and water. But after an employee of Merced Farm Labor, 17-year-old Maria Isabel Vasquez Jimenez, died in the workplace, the state worked to reform how it conducted enforcement and those protections under the heat standard.
In 2015, as a result of advocacy from farmworker organizers, we had a greater enhancement of the protections. Now when it’s above 80 degrees, all workers in agricultural work, as well as other industries such as construction [and] landscaping, there’s requirements for shade for all workers, for drinking water.
When it's above 95 degrees there has to be a buddy system in place, monitoring of employees, extra breaks every two hours, as well as measures in place in case a worker should become sick and there’s an emergency.
Are these standards well-communicated by employers to workers? Are farmworkers typically aware of them?
There are workers that are aware of certain protections that they may have, but then there are those that are not. And more concerningly, in regards to those protections for workers themselves, more than one in four in our survey said that they were unaware of their right to file a workplace health and safety complaint. Forty-four percent said they were unaware of the right to file a complaint with the local department of public health.
And so at the same time that there are challenges with education and enforcement of these added protections in California, we do see that there's just a general concern that farmworkers have with regards to fear of retaliation.
The Central Valley is one of California’s major food-producing regions. What do conditions look like there for agricultural workers and others?
The type of agriculture that exists in California and specifically the Central Valley is very different from the idea of farms that Americans often think of, a small family farm. That might be more often the case in the Midwest in other places in the country. The type of farms that we have in the region are large industrial farms with roots in slavery and the plantation model.
This is an industry that has had to grapple with the legacy of racism, especially insofar as the fact that agricultural workers and domestic workers are still excluded from modern-day worker rights.
A recent brief focused on meatpacking and food processing found higher rates of serious inspections like injuries, accidents and deaths in the Central Valley compared to all other regions. But at the same time, the region had the lowest rates of violations. How does that square up to you as a researcher?
The question that we have to ask ourselves is, do we think that there is enough enforcement happening and that it's effective enough? And what we would expect to find if there was not adequate enforcement is continuing high rates of accidents, injuries, deaths as well as violations that are relatively minor. For some large farms that have millions or billions of dollars annually in revenue, is a fine of a few thousand dollars for one of these violations really sufficient to change company practices?
With regards to the heat standard, many of the reforms that happened after 2015 were focused on greater enforcement. And so the research has shown that it had an impact in terms of better regulating noncompliance with practices. We do see that enforcement has an added value.
How well are incidents, accidents or illnesses tracked among agricultural workers?
Well, the challenge is for employees to feel comfortable reporting concerns to their employers. And in those cases where they have to be reported outside of the workplace, do workers feel comfortable sharing those concerns?
With regard to how the state can play a role in enforcement, this is one industry that faces unique challenges because it’s one [thing] for the state to visit a worksite and do an inspection in an office building, a place with a physical address that's easy to find. But for large farms that are private property, how would someone who's going to inspect working conditions visit a farm and find exactly where the workers are? Those are the challenges that are unique to the industry.
Can you tell us a little bit more about the penalties employers may face if they violate workplace regulations?
The case that I mentioned earlier of the death of Maria Isabel Vasquez Jimenez was a notable one because the fines that were assessed to the contractor were the largest in the state's history. But generally speaking, the fines are a few thousand dollars for noncompliance, and those can even be lowered based on appeal and an assessment. So, the question is do fines of a few thousand dollars really have an impact, especially for those larger farms that may set industry standards?
What are some of the other less known challenges or issues that farmworkers are facing?
Farmworkers tend to have higher rates of childhood adverse experiences. We didn’t have the level of details that comes with open-ended interviews, but you can imagine for a population that's largely immigrant, noncitizen, low-wage, Spanish-speaking, often undocumented, that there are many risks and trauma that accompany the journey to arriving in the United States and working in one of the most challenging industries.
For example, in our study we found the majority of farmworkers did not have access to unemployment insurance. And so for those that lack an economic safety net, there are added challenges in exercising other rights. If one has health insurance or health coverage, does that necessarily mean that they have access to mental health resources, if they're afraid of taking time off of work, if they fear retaliation, and they're afraid of missing days on the job.
When we look at enforcing and monitoring the regulations for farmworkers in the state, are there enough resources to be able to effectively enforce the regulations?
In terms of education the state has really made strides in recent years, especially with the creation of the California Workplace Outreach Project (CWOP), which is the largest worker rights public education project in the state's history, maybe in any state's history. This is certainly commendable.
But in terms of enforcement, I think there are still a lot of questions about how to meet the needs of observing, visiting, inspecting work sites for the state’s 10 million workers. What we hear is that there's been a challenge even just staffing the positions that are open. If there’s understaffing, if there are relatively few inspectors for the thousands of farm worksites in the state, then I think the question is how can the state better fill those positions to meet the need to inspect sites that happen to report issues?
When you speak with workers, labor groups and other organizations as part of your research and studies, what are you hearing from them? Are there changes that they would like to see made to regulation or education?
I think right now is a moment when the wellbeing of farmworkers is acutely at risk because of what actions the federal administration is taking with regards to an attempt to have the largest deportation campaign in U.S. history. This affects farmwork more than any other industry because it has the highest rates of immigrant, noncitizen undocumented workers.
How can we best protect workers and worker rights within this context? There are a number of initiatives that the state is advancing, like CWOP. But I think what organizations will share is that, on the ground, the challenges are escalating whether it’s escalated enforcement of raids, immigrant detentions or the changing climate and escalating temperatures. Or just the increasing cost of living in California, and the fact that agricultural work is largely low wage.
Many of these issues have become acute in recent years… how do we meet needs in those changing contexts?
