Word: waterous
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...California's occupational-health and safety agency on behalf of the United Farm Workers (UFW) and five farm workers who had become sick or are relatives of workers who have died from heatstroke. According to the lawsuit "large numbers of agricultural employers fail utterly to provide basic access to water and shade for their employees" and, as a result, hundreds suffer heat-related illnesses and hospitalizations - or worse - each year . (Read a story about how a pro-football player died of heatstroke...
...California implemented the nation's first heat-illness standard, requiring farms and contractors to provide water and shade to the state's 650,000 farm workers who help supply 44% of the nation's fruits and vegetables. The lawsuit claims the enforcement agency, the State's Division of Occupational Health and Safety (Cal-OSHA) is woefully understaffed (only 198 inspectors for 17 million state workers including the 650,000 farm workers) and that since California enacted its Heat Illness Prevention regulation, "the number of farm-worker heat-related deaths has increased." Catherine Lhamon, assistant legal director for the ACLU...
Lawyers for the farm workers say that the big growers, who own the land and who most profit by the workers' labors, have little incentive to ensure adequate water and shade because farm-labor contractors employ the farm workers. In addition, says the lawsuit, employers see little reason to comply with the regulation because "those few violators who are occasionally identified generally escape with little or no punishment." Attorney Bradley Phillips of Munger, Tolles & Olson says the way to improve worker safety is to "create the maximum economic incentive" for the large growers. Under the current system, labor contractors...
Growers say more is being done to protect workers than in past years. Manuel Cunha Jr., president of the NISEI Farmers League, cites the heat-training received by 409 contractors who employee 209,000 of the 380,000 seasonal workforce and the new Igloo water containers that spell out heat-safety precautions in use on farms across the state. "The growers have responded in the most positive and honest way," says Cunha. "We are getting the message to workers that they need to drink cool water, to rest in the shade and to watch for heat-illness symptoms in their...
...risks in mind, to remember that good times can dramatically end and systems suddenly fail. But in plotting our national reconstruction and reinvention it's just as important - and maybe more so - to imagine the unimaginable on the upside. As we gasp in horror at our half glass of water, we really can - must - see it as half full as well as half empty...