California’s 650,000 farm workers routinely toil in hard working conditions. They work long days in temperatures that regularly exceed 100 degrees all summer long. These workers are entitled to protection from workplace injury and death. California’s heat regulations-including the new proposed regulations—just don’t do it.

The Schwarzenegger administration had repeatedly said that they would do something to protect farm workers. Despite these promises, employers continue to flout the law, without effective penalty.

Eleven farm workers have suffered heat-related deaths since 2005, when California enacted its first emergency Heat Illness Prevention Regulation—six farm workers died last summer alone. Employers with as many as six heat regulation citations in three years are still not been considered repeat violators. Employers routinely avoid paying fines because the state fails to check to see whether the fines have been paid. Fines imposed, even in instances of worker heat-related death, have been as low as $250.

This must stop now—farm workers need tools with which to protect themselves.

Please support SB789, CA Employee Free Choice Act for Farm Workers (Steinberg), which has passed the Senate and will next be heard in the Assembly. This important bill will make it easier for farm workers to organize and enforce the laws that California’s government is not enforcing.