On march to honor farmworker, relatives call for reforms
By GARANCE BURKE , Associated Press Writer

last updated: June 03, 2008 05:12:00 PM



LODI, Calif. —
They fell for one another in junior high school, in a village deep in Mexico's Sierra Madre range.

Within a few years, the young couple had crossed the border and found jobs pruning grapes in a California vineyard.

It wasn't long after that Florentino Bautista, 19, lost his pregnant fiancee when she fainted in his arms following hours of work in 100-degree heat. This week, Bautista is leading an emotional march to Sacramento to call for safer labor conditions on farms.

State authorities suspect Maria Isabel Vasquez Jimenez, a 17-year-old undocumented immigrant, died the afternoon of May 14 because the farm labor contractor the couple worked for denied her proper access to shade and water.

Both Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Mexican government have called her death preventable.

Since the four-day pilgrimage began Sunday, Bautista, farmworkers and their advocates have been demanding stricter enforcement of state regulations that require farms and contractors to give workers water, allow regular shade breaks and have an emergency plan in place to help those suffering from heat exhaustion.

"The farmworker is not an agricultural implement. We're not a tool, we're human beings," said Arturo Rodriguez, president of the United Farm Workers, which organized the caravan. "People need to feel that the life of Maria Isabel, of whoever it is who's working in the fields, is important."

The incident has brought on-farm working conditions in California - the only state with a heat-illness standard - to the political forefront.

The rules implemented on an emergency basis in 2005 were intended to protect the 450,000 seasonal workers who pick and sort much of the nation's plums, peaches and other crops in the summer heat.

Rodriguez claims they're routinely violated on farms across the state.

The 62 inspectors tasked with overseeing health and safety in agriculture and other low-wage industries make enforcement a priority, said Dean Fryer, a spokesman for the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health. Inspectors have investigated at least 23 suspected heat-related fatalities since 2005, he said.

San Joaquin County authorities are considering whether to pursue criminal charges against Vasquez Jimenez's employer, Merced Farm Labor, which was issued three citations in 2006 for exposing workers to heat stroke, failing to train workers on heat stress prevention and not installing toilets at the work site.

The Atwater company has yet to pay the $2,250 it owes in fines, Fryer said.

The firm did not return repeated calls seeking comment.

Carl Borden, an attorney with the California Farm Bureau Federation, says most farmers strictly adhere to the rules and make a conscious effort to inform workers about how to stay healthy on the job.

"California farmers are already subject to the most stringent requirements in the nation," he said. "If they were not being followed, there would be many, many more tragic incidents than what's been reported."

On the day Vasquez Jimenez died, she was making $8 per hour on a 9.5-hour shift - more than four hours over the state limit for minors working during business days.

After she fainted, Bautista said the foreman recommended she rest in a hot van and be revived with rubbing alcohol before he could take her to a Lodi medical clinic, almost two hours later. Doctors later realized she was two months pregnant.

"I was just holding her in my arms," he said in an interview on the first leg of the march, which drew more than 500 people. "She looked like she was in pain and she wasn't reacting to anything. I told her to be strong, and that I was with her. I thought maybe she could hear me."

As farmworkers threaded their way through backroads and strip malls Sunday, those at the front held up three caskets: one symbolizing the death of Vasquez Jimenez, one for the fetus she carried and the third for other victims of heat-related illness.

Aztec dancers shook their feather headdresses to a drumbeat, and a man marching with a popsicle cart jingled his bell in time to the Spanish-language chants.

"There are lots of people who are just getting here and they don't know about the working conditions," said Pedro Najera, 32, a grape picker from Greenfield who arrived on a union-chartered bus. "That's what happened to Maria Isabel."

On Friday, Vasquez Jimenez's body arrived in Oaxaca, said Alejandra Bologna, Consul General of Mexico in Sacramento. Relatives held a funeral ceremony over the weekend in her village of San Sebastian Nopalera.

On Wednesday, another Catholic prayer service was scheduled in her honor on the Capitol steps.

Since her death, foremen at the Stockton-area vineyard have placed water jugs throughout the grape vines, said the victim's elder brother, who still works for the same contractor.

"They're taking care of everything now, and are putting water all over the place due to what happened," said Jose Luis Vasquez Jimenez, 20. "But there's still no shade."






http://www.modbee.com/state_wire/story/317711.html