Calfornia probes death of farmworker employed by Merced Farm Labor

By SUSAN FERRISS
THE SACRAMENTO BEE

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SACRAMENTO -- 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 "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."

Merced Farm Labor representatives did not return phone calls for comment.

On Thursday, Cal-OSHA officials continued to investigate the May 16 death of Maria Isabel Vasquez Jimenez, 17, who had collapsed two days earlier in a field east of Stockton after pruning vines for eight hours.

Attorney General Jerry Brown said one of his investigators has joined Cal-OSHA representatives as they interview workers, supervisors and others involved in the incident.

"I'm concerned about what happened to this woman, and I'm concerned about what's happening on other farms in other counties," Brown said.

Merced Farm Labor, which was paid by West Coast Grape Farming to provide workers for its fields east of Stockton, could face fines of as much as $25,000 if Cal-OSHA finds the contract company willfully violated laws designed to protect workers from the heat. Representatives of the company also could face criminal prosecution by the local district attorney or the state attorney general.

Brown said he has contacted the San Joaquin Country district attorney's office to offer assistance should a decision be made to pursue criminal charges.

Like Vasquez Jimenez, many low-wage workers are "undocumented and vulnerable," Brown said. Their legal status, he said, makes no difference to state officials when it comes to decisions to investigate or prosecute.

State labor laws apply to all workers, regardless of legal status, and Fryer said Cal-OSHA does not inquire about status.

"We would never get any cooperation in our investigations," he said. Probing a worker's status, he said, "would erode the trust" the agency has tried to build in industries heavily staffed by immigrants.

The federal agency in charge of immigration, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, fields tips about employers suspected of hiring illegal immigrants, and takes notice of stories about such employers in the news, said spokeswoman Virginia Kice.

But Kice said the agency will not discuss its investigations of employers until it takes action.

At a funeral Wednesday for Vas-quez Jimenez, Gov. Schwarzenegger and United Farm Workers President Arturo Rodriguez said the teen's death was preventable, and they condemned employers that violate regulations designed to protect workers.

Vasquez Jimenez's fiancé, Florentino Bautista, who was working with her, said temperatures reached more than 95 degrees on the day she collapsed. Workers had no shade, he said, no break long enough to go get water, and no training to cope with heat.

He said it took 90 minutes to get Vasquez Jimenez to a clinic after she fell to the dirt in the field and that a foreman told him to tell clinic workers she became ill while exercising, not working.

She died May 16 at Lodi Memorial Hospital. Doctors discovered she was two months pregnant.

Concerned about a spike in temperatures in mid-May, Cal-OSHA issued a news advisory the same day. Communications staff at the agency didn't know of Vasquez Jimenez's death at the time. The advisory, which was sent to English and Spanish-language media, warned employers and workers to be aware of the risks of heat exposure and to follow state rules.

The state instituted stronger protections for workers in 2005, after the heat-related deaths of three farmworkers and a construction worker. It also has become more aggressive in its enforcement.

In 2005, inspectors went to 39 work sites to check for compliance with policies and for equipment to protect workers from the heat. Last year, it checked 936 and found 488 violations. This year, inspectors have checked 248 work sites and found that 40 employers haven't done employee training and 129 don't have a written safety program.

Employers are required to report a worker accident or injury to the state within eight hours.

Fryer said Merced Farm Labor did not report Vasquez Jimenez's collapse until the day she died, two days after she collapsed.

"This is something we will be looking at," he said.

In the 2006 Cal-OSHA report about Merced Farm Labor, which stemmed from a routine inspection, an inspector wrote: "The employer failed to provide employee training on heat stress issues. ... The employer requires employees to work in agricultural fields and orchards during summer months, thereby exposing workers to heat stress or heat stroke producing weather conditions."