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Stand Up for Farmworkers

We Need Farmworkers, We Don’t Need Greedy Capitalists

by Jennifer Lin

COVID-19 is killing migrant farmworkers across the country. Farmworkers cannot socially distance as they work closely together and live in overcrowded housing. Many do not have access to bathrooms or clean water. While these essential workers risk their lives during a pandemic to put food on everyone’s tables, corporate farmers are denying them masks, paid leave, and hazard pay. How dare they, when Congress and the U.S. Department of Agriculture gave corporate “farmers” over $19 BILLION to boost their profits.

Over 70% of farmworkers are migrants. Even though they feed us all they do not get unemployment benefits or stimulus checks, food stamps or Medicaid. Because of their terrible working conditions, which can be taken away if unemployed, working or staying home is equally a death sentence. Now racist politicians are blaming them for spreading COVID-19.

Florida governor DeSantis is scapegoating migrant farmworkers for the state’s record surge in COVID-19 cases. He said these workers are “overwhelmingly Hispanic” and “you don’t want those folks mixing with the general public.” DeSantis is not just racist, he’s a liar. The state health department did not provide data to back his claims, and according to the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, most new cases have occurred in areas with little agriculture and is due to bosses bowing to corporate pressure to reopen and refusing to carry out measures to stop the spread. Beaches, bars, and right-wing churches are packed disease-spreaders. COVID-19 cases in Florida are spreading in migrant communities at a deadly rate because DeSantis and the capitalists do not care about the people. The Coalition of Immokalee Workers (farmworkers), have been demanding tests, contact tracing, quarantine spaces, PPE, and relief funds for the county’s farmworkers since April. DeSantis has ignored their demands.

Farmworkers are joining hundreds of meatpacking workers, warehouse workers, healthcare workers, hospitality workers, teachers, firefighters, longshore workers, and more in strikes to demand essential protections. In Wasco, CA, workers in the union United Farm Workers organized a strike and picket line after 150 of 200 workers at Primex Farms, a nut company, tested positive for COVID-19. After ignoring workers’ demands for PPE, social distancing, and sick leave, Primex retaliated against the workers by firing them. But these workers will not back down; they demand to return to their jobs under safe conditions. The Coalition of Immokalee Workers and the United Farm Workers have started petitions around their demands.

Trump and Democrat politicians are killing essential workers. They are giving billions to agribusiness and Agribanks but withholding benefits to farmworkers. They do not care if we starve or die; they want to send us all back to work so that they get can get rich off our backs. These greedy capitalists are waging war on us, and farmworkers and other essential workers are on the frontline, fighting back. Without farmworkers, we don’t eat. It’s time we stand in solidarity with farmworkers and demand protection for them and all the essential workers who keep us alive!

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Outdoor Workers Must Join Fight for Heat Protection

Louisiana farmworkers protest conditions at Bimbo’s Best Produce. Amite, LA in 2008.

By Nath Clarke

As summer creeps closer and temperatures start to rise, workers across the South are subjected to sweltering heat. With Trump and other politicians refusing to take action in the face of global warming, the problem will likely only get worse: because of a steady increase in greenhouse gas emissions, temperatures will continue to rise, and so will heat-related injuries.

The Farmworkers Association of Florida (FAF), a grassroots organization fighting for the rights of farmworkers and rural communities, has been one of the only groups to agitate around this issue in Florida. The organization, founded by and made up of mostly Black and Brown farmworkers, collaborated on several studies highlighting the heat-related health risks faced by farmworkers, construction workers, and other outdoor workers.

A report from Public Citizen, the Farmworker Association of Florida and an Emory University researcher found that in every single Florida county, temperatures exceeded the Center for Disease Control’s safe limit for heavy labor for at least 71% of days between May 1 and September 30. That’s 71% of days where outdoor workers were risking their lives on the job. Chronic exposure to such conditions increases the risk of dehydration, muscle cramps, headaches, nausea, and acute kidney injury.

The FAF told the Workers Voice they’d continue to agitate around this issue until the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) issues a rule protecting workers from dangerous heat. Through petitions, advocacy, and workplace organizing, the FAF has already started conversations all over the South around workers’ safety in the face of heat stress; but the bosses and other members of the ruling class are already fearing for their profits and pushing back. If we truly want federal rules on heat stress to change, a massive movement of workers will need to support any such initiative.

All workers in southern states should support such an initiative. Louisiana has the highest rate of heat-related emergency department visits out of all the states in the Southeast. We don’t need studies to tell us what our lives show us: our bosses would gladly poison us with toxic chemicals, work us to physical exhaustion, or subject us to dangerous heat and dehydration, in the name of profit. Just as workers in Florida are rising up, workers in Louisiana must get organized to make sure our working conditions are safe.