‘Essential’ but Undervalued: Industry Must Do More to Protect Farmworkers

He collapsed while being isolated at an employer-provided labor camp in Washington State. He died of COVID-19 related causes shortly thereafter. This was early July of 2020. Juan Carlos Rincon was a legally documented H-2A visa holder from Mexico. Within 3 weeks at the same labor camp, Earl Edwards, an H-2A visa holder from Jamaica, collapsed and quickly died of COVID-19 related complications. Not once during their time at the labor camp had they received medical attention. This, despite being isolated for apparent COVID-19 symptoms and employed at one of the country’s largest growers of sweet cherries. Had parents failed to provide medical attention to their sick children in such a manner, criminal charges would likely have ensued. But this was a grower/worker relationship, so no criminal charges resulted. Not a single retailer publicly denounced what happened to Juan Carlos or Earl. Business continued as normal. Had Juan Carlos and Earl been dairy cows filmed by animal rights activists, history shows that numerous retailers would have condemned the act in the media and taken their business elsewhere. Advocates in Washington successfully petitioned the governor to issue an emergency order requiring growers who isolate farmworkers in grower-provided housing to provide regular medical checkups by licensed professionals.

Noticeably absent from these calls, both in Washington and nationwide, were the growers. While some growers took unilateral action to further protect farmworkers from COVID on their worksites and should be applauded for the same, most remained disturbingly silent as COVID ravaged agricultural worksites nationwide. The COVID 19 pandemic is an industry threat that requires action at an industry level, not just at a scattering of individual worksite.

The COVID-19 epidemic has highlighted few of the absurd contradictions that characterize migrant and seasonal employment in US agriculture. When farmworkers were deemed “essential’ at the beginning of this outbreak, many of us who work on behalf of this community celebrated, crying “at last!” Finally, society was recognizing the importance of these women and men, who in the case of Juan Carlos and Earl, gave their lives to put food on our tables. But that determination quickly became a curse, for the protections that would preserve health and life were not simultaneously initiated. Essential women and men reported to work in the fields with no masks, no social distancing requirements, or even ready access to handwashing facilities. With the closure of schools, day care costs skyrocketed. One worker shared how her weekly daycare expenses ballooned from $50 to $200. Ironically, hunger amongst these food producing workers quickly followed. Many of the early food distribution efforts happened during the daytime, at exactly the time farmworkers were conducting their essential tasks working. When they got off work in the evenings, the shelves of many grocery stores had been picked over. Agriculture did not provide for hazard pay, and only a handful of states implemented economic relief programs to support the largely undocumented essential workforce of agriculture. Contrast this to the $900 billion Congress allocated to growers; not a penny went to support farmworkers.

Given the failure of the federal government to implement binding rules to protect agricultural workers, advocates were left having to push states to develop and implement their own rules. Yet even with these measures, the damage COVID-19 wrought on the farmworkers and the Latinx community is clear. They are one of the hardest hit constituencies in the United States, with too many women and men, and their families, having needlessly lost their lives to this virus.¹ Unfortunately, the preventable loss of life in agriculture is not a new development. We know that agriculture is dangerous, not because it is by nature, but, as in the case of COVID-19, systematic measures to address workplace risks simply have not been taken broadly.

This is a direct legacy of black lives not mattering.² In the 1930s, farmworkers were excluded from two key legislative acts: the National Labor Relations Act, which provided workers with a legally binding mechanism to unionize, and the Fair Labor Standards Act, which, amongst other things, stipulates all workers must receive two 10-minute paid breaks per 8 hours and overtime pay after 40 hours. The Congressional record is clear that many white Congressmen did not want the then black farmworker population to enjoy the same rights and ability to engage in collective activity as their white counterparts. Fast forward to Pasco, Washington, in 2015 and witness Antonio Zambrano-Montes, a disabled farmworker being gunned down by police in daylight, shot in the back as he walked away from officers after having thrown rocks at their patrol car.

However, there are wisps of hope to be found. In Washington State, the Supreme Court recently ruled that dairy workers should immediately receive overtime pay, citing the elevated injury and fatality rates in the Washington state industry as the primary reason why. So, some 90 years after farmworkers were excluded from the right to overtime pay, the courts have done what the industry and legislature failed to do. Yet the overwhelming majority of states continue the racist legacy of denying the essential women and men employed in agriculture the right to overtime pay, not to mention paid breaks.

Other growers have learned from this pandemic the importance of a healthy workforce in a way I’ve never seen before. One Yakima Valley grower has gone as far as offering employees a $100 bonus and paid time off to get vaccinated for free. Imagine if we could expand this model. What if, rather than having to come to work sick as so many essential workers currently do, they could get needed medical attention at no cost and take time off from work to do so, without loss of income? Imagine if farmworkers received the same rights and protections as other workers, and the risks specific to agriculture were moderated using the well-established hierarchy of control methodology. Imagine if the dairy industry invested in physical barriers around manure lagoons, making Juan Panzo Temoxtle’s asphyxiation in a Colorado dairy lagoon in March 2021,³ the last of a woefully long list of people who have died this way. Having a healthy, safe workforce is cheaper than the consequences of not.

Those of us who work in agriculture know the inherent truth behind naming the women and men who feed this country as “essential.” Simply stamping the “essential” label on the workforce while retaining what was “normal’ pre-pandemic is hardly a win. It is time to follow Winston Churchills’s advice and act in this moment of crisis. The pandemic and the heightened awareness about racism have provided us an unprecedented opportunity and demand of us a new normal where essential includes meaningful, impactful measures that truly uphold worker’s health and safety.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.