(It was disappointing, but not particularly surprising, to see Arnold axe AB 2386. It should have been signed. – promoted by Brian Leubitz)

We need to share some very disappointing news with you and then ask you to e-mail Gov. Schwarzenegger and let him know how you feel. Last week, the Governor vetoed AB 2386, a vital bill to reform secret ballot elections for farm workers. With this single stroke of his pen, the governor denied farm workers the tool they need to protect themselves. While we are disappointed with the Governor’s veto, sadly we are not surprised.

When the governor vetoed a bill with similar goals last year, his veto message said:

“I am directing my Labor and Workforce Development Agency to work with the proponents of this bill to ensure that all labor laws and regulations are being vigorously enforced, and to make it absolutely clear to all concerned that my veto is premised on an expectation that agricultural workers receive the full protections of the law.“

Tragically this has not happened. During the black summer of 2008, as many as six farm workers died due to heat-related causes.

Governor Schwarzenegger’s enforcement has not saved lives. And his administration has not “rigorously enforced” the law. In May of this year, 17-year old Maria Isabel Vasquez Jimenez died of heat illness, working for Merced Farm Labor. The Associated Press reported that the state ignored collecting the fine on Merced Farm Labor for not complying with heat regulations back in 2006.

Associated Press – 5/29/08

A division official said Jimenez’s employer, Merced Farm Labor, had been issued three citations in 2006 for exposing workers to heat stroke, failing to train workers on heat stress prevention and not installing toilets at the work site.

The Atwater company has not paid the $2,250 it owes in fines, said agency spokesman Dean Fryer.

Sacramento Bee – May 30, 2008

The labor contractor that employed a teenage farmworker who died after working hours in a hot vineyard was cited in 2006 for failing to provide employees with training to avoid heat stress, Cal-OSHA records show.

California’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health also cited Merced Farm Labor contracting services in 2006 for not having an injury-prevention plan for its workers or enough toilets for them to use, agency spokesman Dean Fryer said Thursday.

The company was fined $750 for each of the violations and was told to fix them by December 2006.

Company representatives told Cal-OSHA it had corrected the problems, and staff members “felt comfortable the abatement was done and didn’t make an actual field visit,” Fryer said. “That’s not unusual. Usually, we get great cooperation from employers.”

Consequently, young Maria Isabel Vasquez Jimenez died while working at a company that provided no shade, did not have adequate water, and had no emergency plan in place. All due to the same type of negligence Cal-OSHA had fined the same company for in 2006.

After Maria Isabel’s death, the Governor boasted that enforcement was at its highest level. Yet sadly, the lives of five more farm workers were lost this past summer.

In last week’s veto message, the Governor says he can enforce the laws.

As I indicated last year in my veto of SB 180, I remain committed to ensuring that agricultural workers receive all the workplace protections that our labor laws afford. To that end, I am calling for the creation of a dedicated funding source to facilitate enhanced oversight and education in the agricultural industry. I am directing my Labor and Workforce Development Agency to work with the proponents of this bill and all stakeholders to develop a proposal which will create such a program in a fiscally responsible way, for the ultimate benefit of both agricultural employees and employers.

Gov. Schwarzenegger words ring hollow after he promised simular things in his veto message last year and still as many as six farm workers died due to heat-related causes.

The support of poor farm workers means so much less to him than the support of big money agricultural interests. We also know that had it not been for the Governor’s fundraising agenda, or had we been a rich organization the Governor may have been willing to sign a bill for farm workers.

Please e-mail the Governor today!

(It is unconscionable that people have to fight for something so basic as safe drinking water. – promoted by Julia Rosen)

Approximately 200 farm workers and their families live in the 49 units at the Rafael L. Silva Migrant Family Housing Center in Los Banos, CA. These workers don’t have access to safe drinking water. Please help.

According to the Merced County Health Department, the water that comes out of their pipes has unacceptable amounts of arsenic, copper and radionuclide. Families get a ration of bottled water. However, they say the amount is not enough to have clean water for household chores and practice good hygiene. Families end up using having to use the contaminated well water.

Martin Jimenez and his family use the well water to shower. “Your hair falls out,” he said, describing the experience. Jimenez also said he has a rash from using the water. Other workers wash their dishes in this water. (July 12, Los Banos Enterprise)

Fish and Game has a pipeline that could provide safe water to these families, but they refuse to allow these families to use it. The Housing Authority has been negotiating with them ever since the camp re-opened in 2006 to be allowed to use Fish and Game’s pipeline until the Housing Authority could put in its own. Every excuse that Fish and Game has given has been resolved. However, they still refuse to allow the community to connect to their water line that receives safe water from the City of Los Banos.  

Please help. Sign the online petition TODAY & tell Fish and Game to be a good neighbor and stop forcing kids and their families to use contaminated water.

You can go to: http://www.ufwaction.org/campaign/losbanos

(Nice action diary from the United Farm Workers. – promoted by Julia Rosen)

E-mail CA officials today!

A little over a week ago, the EPA approved the use of methyl iodide–a dangerous toxic, mutagenic pesticide. The EPA is refusing to listen to us and the dozens of prominent scientists who have repeatedly pointed out the dangers associated with this pesticide.

California is one of the largest users of fumigant pesticides. The state must give a separate approval to methyl iodide before this toxic chemical can be used. We asking for your immediate help to encourage California authorities to do the right thing and refuse approval of this deadly compound.

http://www.ufwaction…

By sending an e-mail today, you can help protect the tens of thousands of farmworkers who work and live in California along with consumers who eat the California-grown produce.

There is still time to pressure the CA Department of Pesticide Regulation (DPR). The California’s state review of methyl iodide isn’t scheduled to be completed until late 2008. Up until this point, DPR has been cautious about use of this pesticide. A February 2006 letter that the California’s Department of Pesticide Regulation (DPR) submitted to the EPA expressed serious reservations about the chemical’s high toxicity and the potential harm it posed to “workers and bystanders, as well as residents living near treated fields.” However, it’s very important that you give DPR immediate feedback, in order to let officials know you are watching their actions in light of the EPA’s disastrous decision. 

http://www.ufwaction…

As an October 11, Sacramento Bee editorial, entitled “New danger in the fields – State should keep methyl iodide out” points out, “While [methyl iodide] does not damage the ozone, methyl iodide is more acutely toxic than methyl bromide. It is so dangerous that chemists who handle tiny amounts of it in laboratory settings must first don protective hoods and double gloves and use specially sealed bottles and syringes to ensure none of the chemical escapes…The EPA ignored objections raised by 52 eminent scientists, including five Nobel Laureates for chemistry, who signed a letter last month advising the EPA not to register methyl iodide. ‘As scientists and physicians familiar with this chemical,’ they wrote, ‘we are concerned that pregnant women and the fetus, children, the elderly, farmworkers and other people living near application sites would be at serious risk if methyl iodide is permitted in agriculture.'” (For background information, click here to see last weeks’ UFW alert to the EPA)

Please E-mail Mary-Ann Warmerdam, Director of the Department of Pesticide Regulation TODAY and tell the DPR to protect the public and the environment by not allowing this pesticide to be used.

http://www.ufwaction…

Sacramento Bee editorial

Letter to EPA by scientists

I saw Bill Maher on Friday in an interview with former Mexican President Vicente Fox, lamenting that Bill Clinton and Arnold Schwarzenegger wouldn’t be able to face off as Presidential candidates due to Constitutional violations.  “Isn’t that sad,” he said.  For all his conceits as a free thinker, Maher represents a kind of baseline Hollywood groupthink when it comes to Arnold, reading the headlines and the magazine covers but never bothering to uncover the whole story.  That story can be easily divined from this weekend’s veto massacre.  In addition to stopping the California DREAM Act, he vetoed needed legislation for the state’s migrant farm workers, allowing them to organize through a “card check” system.  He even disabled a bill that would have added a sunset clause to the card check system, making it ever harder for them to organize and support themselves and their families.  Here’s another bill that went down the drain:

On Saturday, another bill was vetoed, AB 377, by Assemblymember Juan Arambula (D-Fresno). It would have required an employer who is a farm labor contractor to disclose in the itemized statement furnished to employees up to five names and addresses of the legal entities that secured the employer’s services.

According to the sponsor of the bill, the California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation more than 40,000 California farms grow fruits and vegetables on almost four million acres in this state, so it is not surprising that a 2006 survey of Central Valley farm workers found that 70% could not identify the name of the farm they were working on.

The same survey found that 56% had not been paid the minimum wage when working on a piece rate; 31% had not been paid all the overtime they were owed; and that 42% had unexplained deductions made from their pay. Between 60% and 80% of harvest work is done by labor contractors. Without being able to readily identify the farm who hired the contractor, enforcement actions against the contractor are unlikely to either make the worker whole for wages owed or to have any deterrent effect at all against a grower who shares legal responsibility for the contractor’s labor law violations.

So while Governor Schwarzenegger told the hundreds of farm workers who were at the Capitol in September that he was supportive of their goals, in the end, he vetoed these bills and sided with agribusiness.

Indeed, this is part of a persistent pattern by the Governor to make life harder for working families while protecting the corporate interests that helped get him elected.  Far from a governor of the people, he is simply a corporatist who has the backs of the elite.  Because we don’t have a functioning political press, this contempt for the average Californian will probably not make it too far off the blogs and insider political circles.  But they have real-world consequences that people will only discover when they are put in the situation that legislation could have covered, and they aren’t likely to connect the dots.  A sampling of the pro-worker legislation that was vetoed:

• SB 549 (Corbett)-this bill would have protected the job of a worker taking time off to attend to the funeral of a family member.

• SB 727 (Kuehl)-this bill provided that employees covered by family temporary disability insurance (FTDI) could take the leave to care for a grandparent, siblings, grandchildren and parent-in-law.

• AB 537 (Swanson)-this bill expanded the definition of family under the California Family Rights Act (CFRA) to allow eligible workers to take job-protected leave to care for a seriously ill adult child, sibling, grandchild, or parent in law.

• AB 435 (Brownley)-this bill would have addressed harsh limitation periods on bringing certain wage discrimination claims. These claims are frequently brought by working women who have been underpaid relative to their male counterparts, and many of these women are struggling to raise kids in single parent situations.

• AB 1636 (Mendoza)-this bill would have expedited a job retraining voucher to disabled workers unable to return to their former jobs; workers such as these are struggling to adapt to replace the income needed for the family to survive.

• SB 936 (Perata)-this bill would have increased the benefits paid to permanently disabled workers over a 3 year period. Since 2004 these workers have seen their benefits slashed by 50% or more according to studies by University of California researchers. At the same time, insurer profits have exceeded all benefits paid to or on behalf of disabled workers; it’s a concept that is clearly not family-friendly. The families and kids of disabled workers suffer as they struggle to keep pace with the financial devastation of injuries.

AB 435 is the state version of the Lily Ledbetter Pay Act, attempting to remedy a horrible Supreme Court decision from earlier in the year.  So Arnold is putting himself squarely in the position of Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, John Roberts and Smuel Alito.  This is our post-partisan “leader.”

Furthermore, he vetoed meaningful health care reform in AB 8, and put forth flawed legislation of his own that has no chance of coming out of the legislature, partially financed by the stupid, shortsighted practice of leasing the lottery to private interests.

I’d like to say that there’s an “on the other hand,” a couple bills Arnold allowed through that provide aid or comfort to the working class.  But on these issues, he comes down squarely on the side of his corporate buddies.  It feels like spitting into the wind to keep noting this.  Maybe someday Bill Maher won’t have a big-time TV show, he’ll be working for his own retirement, and he’ll realize that he’s been screwed by this Administration.  But I wouldn’t bet on it.