Dying to work: Dozen farm deaths in California since May linked to high heat

When temperature rises, field hands face death despite protective rules

By SUSAN FERRISS
THE SACRAMENTO BEE

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BURNHAM -- Francisco Muñoz's hands grabbed at unripe salad tomatoes as fast as they could, filling two buckets that together earned him $1.05.

Heat waves undulated overhead as he bent over to pick, raced to a truck to dump the buckets -- each 25 pounds -- then raced back to start again.

"I'm the champion. I can earn up to $20 an hour," Muñoz, 42, said in Spanish, his chest heaving, his face glistening with sweat.

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PDF: Heat related deaths

The option of piece-rate pay allows a farmworker such as Muñoz to vault far above the $8 an hour state minimum that he and 200 other workers were guaranteed, no matter how fast they picked this field east of Stockton. But during heat waves, job safety specialists say, the piece-rate system may be contributing to laborers working -- or being worked -- to death.

Since May, half of the 12 heat-related job deaths under investigation in California have been of Latino farmworkers, four of them in jobs paying piece rate. The deaths are consistent with a study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that documents a disproportionate number of crop worker fatalities.

The June report found that from 1992 to 2006, U.S. crop workers died from heat illness at a rate 20 times greater than all other workers, and 3½ times greater than construction workers.

The six farm fatalities in California from May 16 to

July 31 this year match the total farmworker death toll in 2005, the year California enacted emergency heat regulations to protect workers. The rules, which require shade and the right to rest breaks for those who work in the sun, were the nation's first.

Yet, even with Gov. Schwarzenegger supporting the rules and with outreach aimed at employers, workers have continued to die.

Gross negligence and persistent ignorance on the part of field supervisors and workers are to blame, said Len Welsh, chief of Cal-OSHA, the state's occupational health and safety agency.

Critics such as the United Farm Workers union also say the state has too few inspectors and hasn't punished violators enough.

Dr. Robert Harrison, a University of California at San Francisco occupational medicine expert, said there are more reasons.

Harrison served on the job safety standards panel that adopted the heat rules in 2005. He called them "path breaking" because they order every worker to be provided shade, specific amounts of water and heat-stress training in their native language.

Rest in shade required

But the rules were a compromise to gain support from industries and health and labor advocates, Harrison said. Their Achilles' heel may be their reliance on workers, not supervisors, to step forward, even in 100-degree-plus heat, and ask for an extra heat "recovery" break.

All workers in California, on any day, have the right to two 10-minute breaks and a lunch period. The heat recovery break is extra, and supervisors must allow it for at least five minutes in 100 percent shade.

Harrison said workers are unlikely to step forward if it means appearing weak or being scolded for falling behind in production quotas, which are common even for hourly wage workers.

"Do they feed their families, or protect their health? It's a choice someone shouldn't have to make," Harrison said.

"If they don't toe the line, then they're out of there," said Dr. Marc Shenker, who directs the University of California at Davis' Western Center for Agricultural Health and Safety. "The reality is, rest is a luxury."

In the tomato field near Stockton, Muñoz's co-workers accused him, teasingly, of becoming a champion because he doesn't rest as much as others. "I eat well, and drink lots of sodas," he said, but "hunger for money" makes it hard to rest.