A memorial for seven farmworkers killed on the way to work in February in Madera County. California lawmakers acted to regulate the vans that take farmworkers to the fields. However, few vehicles are covered under the regulations now, leaving it less clear who is responsible for workers’ safety.In these challenging times, the need for reliable local reporting has never been greater. Put a value on the impact of our year-round coverage.
And it was the kind of tragedy California has been trying to prevent for decades. In 1999, after 13 workers were killed in a single crash, lawmakers ushered in a slew of regulations to make farmworkers’ commutes safer. For a while, it worked. The number of farmworkers who have died in a vehicle regulated by the state since 2000
The law doesn’t cover smaller vans that carry eight or fewer passengers and that have become more common. These unregulated vans are deadlier: While only a single person has died in a crash involving a state-certified farm labor vehicle since 2000, 54 have been killed since 2012 in uncertified or unregulated ones, according to California Highway Patrol crash data.
In one high-profile case, the department fined both contractor Healthy Harvesting and melon grower Fisher Ranch in Blythe for failing to provide safe transportation in a 2017 crash. A van driven by a foreman for the contractor blew a tire and rolled over, killing one worker and injuring six. The borrowed van was missing a seat belt, had bald tires and two of the wheels weren’t properly secured. The driver had a suspended license.
Now, smaller vans like the one in the February crash are much more common. Florez said nine wasn’t “a magic number” that can’t change. But without the requirement for many labor vans to be certified, officers don’t know who’s responsible. They visit the fields and farm labor contractors instead, reminding workers and employers to use seatbelts.
The state’s crash data may be an undercount. Not all officers statewide include farm vehicle information when responding to crashes. The data does not include, for example, a crash last October in northern Sonoma County, where a van carrying seven workers ran off the road and hit a tree, before dawn on the way to the Cooley Ranch vineyard near Cloverdale.
The primary exception is the H-2A guest worker program, which requires labor contractors to provide housing, food and transportation. There are more than 40,000 of these workers in California each year, compared to as many as 800,000 year-round and seasonal farmworkers overall. Last month, the federal Department of Labor“Whoever is employing these farmworkers, we think they should be held accountable for keeping them safe,” said Elizabeth Strater, a union spokesperson.
Source: Law Daily Report (lawdailyreport.net)
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