Asunción Ponce knows well the damage that high temperatures have on the body. She has been in the field for 60 of her 67 years. She started when he was a child in his native Puebla (Mexico). Since 1988 he has worked on the ranches of the San Joaquin Valley in central California, where he has harvested grapes, plums, nectarines and peaches. Last year he was admitted after sunstroke. He began to feel exhausted and dizzy. He drank water, but it was too late. “My stomach was very hot and if you drink the drink cold it makes you feel very bad. I started vomiting. I imagine it’s like an ember that you pour water on and how the embers scream! “That’s how one’s stomach,” he says in the garden of his house in Fresno.
Ponce has the right to a 10-minute break at eight in the morning. You have 30 unpaid minutes to eat and another 10-minute break at one in the afternoon. Breaks are union triumphs. And like many workers’ benefits, these have been earned through tragedies. The 2008 death of María Isabel Vásquez Jiménez, a 17-year-old day laborer who collapsed after working for nine hours without shade or water, put California on a rapid course of action. Protections for day laborers had been in local laws since the 1980s, but these were barely applied. In 2005, five workers died from the heat and another five died in the three months after the Vásquez tragedy. Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Republican governor in power, attended the minor’s funeral and promised to pass stricter laws. These were promulgated on May 14, 2015, exactly seven years after the death of María Isabel.
The United States is now preparing for a hotter-than-usual summer. The national meteorological agency assures that the El Niño and La Niña phenomena will combine to raise temperatures in all states except North Dakota. Elsewhere, climate change is expected to raise heat in several regions. Among them Texas, which has recorded more than 47 days in recent years with the mercury above 100°F (37°C) than there were 50 years ago. The prognosis is almost a death threat for tens of thousands of agricultural workers in the country, a silent force composed mostly of undocumented immigrants, who work entire days under an increasingly leaden sun.
Short and lean to the point that his belt almost turns him around, it is surprising that Ponce’s daily task is to fill 20 kilo backpacks with fruit from half past five in the morning until two in the afternoon for $16 an hour. no matter what degrees the thermometer shows. “When you feel bad you have to tell the butler right away because if you act too strong you can fall off the ladder and it will be worse. Now they pay more attention to you when you get sick. “Before, they didn’t treat you,” explains Ponce, who obtained US nationality three years ago.
United Farm Workers (UFW), the union created by the emblematic Latino leader César Chávez, has been fighting for years to approve a law at the federal level that gives minimum protections to outdoor workers. California was the first of five states (Colorado, Minnesota, Oregon and Washington) to have similar legislation.
These regulations are increasingly important due to climate change. Of 168 farmworkers killed on the job in California between 2018 and 2022, about 83 died when temperatures exceeded 80°F (26°C). When it exceeds 95°F (35°C), workers have the right to rest, according to the regulation. Last year, the hottest in recorded history, the entity broke 358 records for maximum temperatures in 28 days in July. Arizona, on the other hand, suffered 31 straight days with the thermometer reading above 110°F (43°). Some non-governmental agencies estimate that farmers work at least 21 days per season in temperatures that pose a health risk.
“Our goal for this summer is for President Biden’s Government to promote executive action and for the federal agency to adopt a federal regulation for the entire country,” says Antonio de Loera, UFW spokesperson. In this way, the Democratic president could avoid the blockade of the Republicans in Congress. At least 344 workers have died from heat exposure since 2011, according to figures officers of the Department of Labor. This institution proposed a regulation to protect workers against heat in December 2021, but it has not been approved.
The most conservative sectors of the Republican party have made it clear that they are willing to politicize basic measures that can prevent deaths. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed a law in April that prohibits cities and counties from creating these types of protections. This leaves about two million people uncovered, ranging from agricultural workers in the central areas of the State to employees in the construction industry. DeSantis’ decision was the product of a political battle with Miami-Dade’s local government, led by Democrats.
“They are discriminating against us because we are the only ones who work in the fields,” says Antonia Catalán, an agricultural worker from Florida and defender of the rights of this sector. “Politicians are not interested in taking care of the people who work here. They prefer to support ranchers and those who have businesses. People put up with it because they don’t have documents. They are afraid that they will be expelled if they raise their voice,” says the activist, who is originally from Ixmiquilpan (Hidalgo, Mexico) and became a citizen with Ronald Reagan’s amnesty in 1986.
On January 1, 2023, a 28-year-old man died in Parkland, Florida, during his first shift as a farm laborer. The worker had arrived days earlier from Mexico with a temporary visa to work on a pepper farm. After five hours of pulling up weeds and placing stakes, he began to feel fatigue and that his legs stopped responding. “Shortly later, his companions found him unconscious in a ditch. Like many of his colleagues, he presented symptoms related to high temperatures,” indicates an investigation by the Department of Labor published in June of last year. The institution considered that the death was avoidable and fined the employer $15,600 for exposing workers to heat. The thermometer was then close to 90°F (35°C).
High temperatures not only cause heat stroke. They are also linked to heart attacks and other cardiovascular problems. Scientists, however, have linked them in recent years to chronic kidney disease, a silent and less noticeable epidemic. These can affect individuals who carry out physical work in high temperatures without rest and without proper hydration. The condition is not caused by traditional risk factors such as diabetes, obesity or hypertension. The kidneys begin to fail, which can lead to death if not treated properly.
This disease particularly affects agricultural workers. A study carried out on a California crew found that this condition was present in 12% of the group of almost 300 day laborers. Another similar analysis done in Florida, a state that does not have strict protections, found many more cases. Of 192 farmers observed in 555 days between 2015 and 2016, 33% of the employees showed kidney lesions. Additionally, the study determined that 53% of workers began their shift dehydrated, a figure that rose to 81% at the end of the day.
“If now that we have many protections, labor abuses continue to happen, what would happen before?” asks Lourdes Cárdenas, another unionized agricultural worker from Fresno, California. “The abuses will continue to happen unless we raise our voices,” adds the 61-year-old woman, originally from Sinaloa and who has been in the United States since 2003. She and Asunción Ponce are witnesses that times have changed. “Now people are aware that heat kills. Some ranchers still go overboard, but not so much anymore,” says Ponce. California is waiting for the rest of the United States to learn its lesson.
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