OXNARD, Calif. — Smoke stung his eyes and throat, but Santiago said his supervisor told workers to go faster because ash from the wildfires could wreck the produce.
As public health officials urged people to stay inside, Santiago remained bent in the field. No one gave him a protective mask against the dangerous air quality, he said.
“They don’t care about our health,” said the 34-year-old farmworker in muddy jeans, who spoke on a first-name-only basis because he is undocumented.
“They just care about the strawberries.”
A sharp increase in wildfires, heat waves, and other climate-fueled disasters has added urgency to California’s efforts at employee protection, especially for the most vulnerable: low-income and undocumented workers on the state’s sprawling farms.
The California Labor Federation, which represents some 2.1 million workers, said it is pressing for tougher legislation aimed at protecting those most at risk, such as farmworkers.
“We’re most concerned about farmworkers, construction workers and others in low-wage industries that might not have scrupulous employers and are vulnerable to exploitation,” said federation spokesman Steve Smith.
State law requires employers to provide protective gear to outdoor workers during wildfires.
Sheriff’s deputies wore protective masks as they helped residents evacuate and maintained order during the Hill and Woolsey fires in Ventura County, said Garo Kuredjian, a captain with the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department.
Companies are also required to train employees how to wear the gear — typically N95 disposable face masks — and regularly check on their safety.
But the Mixteco/Indigena Community Organizing Project and the Central Coast Alliance for a Sustainable Economy — both groups that serve California migrant workers — said only some field managers followed those rules to their fullest extent, exposing many of the roughly 36,000 farmworkers in the area affected by the wildfires to the dangerous air. Organizers said they visited 25 area farms last week and saw workers without protective covering at practically all of them.
In interviews with The Washington Post, workers and supervisors in the strawberry fields described a patchwork of measures — including shortened hours and partial access to protective masks — to deal with the air quality threat.
When Ventura County declared a health emergency Nov. 13, closing schools and warning residents to keep their windows shut and avoid outdoor exercise, photographers captured pickers still bent between dense rows of strawberry plants.
The fires released potentially hazardous levels of particulate matter over Ventura County’s strawberry fields at least three times over the last 10 days, according to the local Air Pollution Control District.
The risk increases the longer workers are outside — particularly if they already have heart or lung disease.
“Factors to keep in mind are physical exertion while outdoors, the amount of time spent outdoors and preexisting medical conditions,” said Frank Polizzi, public information officer for the state’s Department of Industrial Relations.
Cal/OSHA would not immediately say how many employers it has cited for failing to protect workers this year during the wildfires.
Risk is common
Mallory Ham, manager of the Ventura County Air Pollution Control District’s monitoring division, said outdoor work on even the most moderate smoke days could pose a risk.
“The wind can carry smoke a certain way to where certain workers are — and we could miss that,” Ham said. “Smoke rolls into the ocean and circulates back into the coastal plain where the most of the strawberry farms are.”
Some strawberry pickers told The Washington Post they went to work wearing the face masks recommended by authorities or covered their mouths with bandannas. Others said they rejected what they saw as itchy, damp facepieces.
Santiago’s company did not distribute respirators, he said, so he brought a black fleece winter mask to work.
“I want to go to a doctor,” he said, speaking through a translator in Mixteco, an indigenous language from southern Mexico. “I want to ask about the longer-term effect on my health, but I can’t afford it.”
Rob Roy, general counsel for Ventura County Agricultural Association, which represents dozens of enterprises in the area, disputed claims that pickers were not offered adequate protection.
“There were only two days when the winds shifted that a couple of production areas may have been impacted,” he said in an email.
Downplaying concerns
Advocacy groups that raised concerns online have exaggerated the threat, he said, “They were just looking for free publicity and soliciting funding on Facebook making it appear that they were helping farmworkers.”
Other employers said they took additional action to protect workers. One Camarillo field manager, Juan Gonzalez, said on a smoky day last week, he let the workers go after four-and-a-half hours. “They didn’t need masks,” he said. “It wasn’t that bad.”
Some workers in other fields said their companies did distribute disposable masks — but did not make it clear the coverings should be tossed out after a day of use. Gabriela, a mother of five who spoke on a first-name-only basis because she is undocumented, said her employer gave her just one disposable mask to last the week.
“For three days the smoke was so bad — it looked like a big storm was coming,” she said.
After one shift, her mask was too sweaty and dirty to wear, she said. It was hard to breathe.
She pulled a bandanna over her face, took Tylenol for her headaches and drank cinnamon tea with lemon to soothe her throat.
“Still I was so dizzy,” she said, “but what can I do? I have to feed my kids.”
Halting the strawberry harvest during the fires wasn’t realistic, advocates said, because pickers lose income — an average of $11 an hour, California’s minimum wage — for every day they miss in the field.
An estimated 60 percent of pickers in Ventura County are undocumented, according to the Farm Bureau of Ventura County, which makes them especially vulnerable to labor abuses.
Many speak indigenous languages and don’t know who to trust if they do try to lodge a complaint.
During the fires, workers said they experienced sore eyes, upset stomachs, headaches and dizziness.
Worsening the problem, former government officials say, is a scarcity of oversight at Cal-OSHA. The state’s worker protection agency employs just 210 field inspectors in a state with roughly 200,000 farmworkers, according to the latest data from California Employment Development Department.
