Our agriculture industry is enormously important to the continued vitality of the state’s economy. Few will dispute that, after all this the Republican’s bread and butter. Yet, we have so slashed our human services budget that we allowing farmworkers to die in the fields:

California’s Occupational Safety and Health agency is investigating the death Wednesday of a farm laborer in Kern County as another possible heat-related fatality on the job. … Cal-OSHA is already investigating the confirmed heat-stress deaths of one farmworker and an oil worker in May, and a possible third heat-related farmworker death in June. (Sac Bee 7/11/08)

I suppose these folks aren’t the Republican’s constituents, so let’s slash Cal-OSHA further. They still have inspectors? Well, that seems darn right wasteful!

The sad truth is that Speaker Karen Bass is exactly right when she said earlier this week that we have cut the fat, we have cut the muscle, now we are getting to the bone. It’s already a very hot summer, fatally so for some. Part of the solution rests with employers demanding that their workers take breaks and properly hydrate. But the state needs to be there to enforce worker safety as well.