Wednesday, Jun. 11, 2008

Inspectors find labor violations on Central Valley farms

LINDEN -- In just two days, labor inspectors had reaped a dubious harvest.

At least 10 confirmed or suspected minors harvesting fruit and weeding fields. A crew using short-handled weeding tools banned under state law. Filthy toilets. No place to seek shade. Water jugs but no cups. No safety plans, or training for farmworkers about the perils of heat.

Then, when they were about to call it a day, the inspectors pulled off a country highway in east San Joaquin County and drove just seconds down a dirt road cutting through a canopy of cherry trees. A vision from the Great Depression lay before them, they said.

More than 30 tents rose like mushrooms under the trees. Clothes hung from branches, and empty cans and food packages were piled high.

Smoke curled from one of the fire pits that had been dug in the soil.

About 100 male migrant workers who follow crops were sleeping on the ground by night in this orchard owned by R & J Don-dero Inc., and climbing ladders by day to pick the company's cherries. Only a few overflowing portable toilets and the orchard were available for the men.

"We're just working people, with nowhere else to stay," one of the migrants, Ramon Jiron, 32, said apologetically in Spanish.

State labor inspectors found all this, off back roads but in plain sight, during routine checks over two days in the Central Valley orchards and fields where anonymous human figures labor day after day.

In the 1960s, labor leader César Chávez began prodding the state to enact laws to protect farmworkers from wage theft and unsafe conditions. Yet poor treatment and flagrant violations endure in many California farms, activists and labor officials agree.

Beginning with Gov. Jerry Brown in the 1970s, each administration has formed special teams to root out abuses. Gov. Schwarzenegger formed the Economic and Employment Enforcement Coalition, with 66 inspectors versed in wage and occupational safety law. Inspectors spend three weeks a month on surprise visits to farms and other low-wage industries: car washes, construction sites and garment assembly shops.

Despite oversight, a young farmworker died last month after collapsing in a vineyard in 95-degree heat. Maria Isabel Vasquez Jimenez, 17, fell ill after allegedly working hours without required water breaks and shade. According to witnesses, 90 minutes passed before she was taken to a clinic. She died two days later. Her employer, Merced Farm Labor, is under investigation on suspicion of violating state heat-stress rules.

Like thousands of California farmworkers, Maria was in the country illegally. Labor activists say such workers, often unaware they are covered under state and most federal labor laws, are most at risk of exploitation.

A week after the girl's funeral, her death sharp in their minds, state inspectors fanned out through eastern San Joaquin County to monitor employers and educate workers. In two days, they went to 25 farms, ordering two audits and citing employers for 80 violations, 25 related to heat-stress laws.

'Only as good as compliance'

The first day, a dozen inspectors gathered at 6:30 a.m. in front of a Holiday Inn in Modesto. They wore work clothes and enforcement coalition jackets, and supervisors making a special appearance gave them a pep talk before they headed out.

"A regulation is only as good as compliance," said John Duncan, director of the Department of Industrial Relations.

David Dorame, coalition director, told inspectors to put workers "in a comfort zone" by assuring them they were not immigration agents. If workers are scared to speak frankly, he said, they should be encouraged to call.