New California law funds COVID-19 outreach, enforcement for farmworkers
Gov. Gavin Newsom this week signed two laws aimed at helping California’s “unsung essential workers” during the COVID-19 crisis, one of which aims to ensure farmworkers have access to reliable information about how to stay healthy.
The main bill, Assembly Bill 2043, calls for an outreach campaign to inform farmworkers on best practices to prevent COVID-19 infection, and provide information on paid sick leave, workers’ compensation and other coronavirus-related services.
The bill will also direct California Division of Occupational Safety and Health to enforce COVID-19 guidance and track and report workplace investigations in the agricultural industry.
The law does not allocate a specific amount of money for the campaign. The Department of Industrial Relations estimates it would cost about $1.8 million over two years.
The second bill, Assembly Bill 2165, expands the availability of electronic filing to all state trial courts. The law would provide more courthouse access to farmworkers living in rural communities or with limited transportation options.
“This is a major victory for California’s most vulnerable essential workers – farmworkers,” said Assemblyman Robert Rivas, D-Hollister, one of the sponsors of the bills.
California is home to an estimated 800,000 farmworkers, according to a COVID-19 farmworker study conducted by advocacy groups and researchers at UC Davis.
About 90% of farmworkers in the state are from Mexico and 60% are unauthorized to work in the U.S., according to the study. Throughout the summer, California’s Central Valley region faced serious spikes of COVID-19, making agriculture workers vulnerable to the virus.
Less than one-third of the state’s crop workers have health insurance, according to the U.S. Department of Labor’s National Agricultural Worker Survey.
Advocates for farmworkers lobbied for the bills, noting that agricultural employees often live in crowded housing and can work in close quarters even when outdoors.
“At a time when people throughout the world are encouraged to stay home, and stay 6 feet away from others when out in public, our agricultural employees are still working shoulder to shoulder to pick and process produce.COVID-19 has created an unavoidable risk of illness that they now face daily,” the Center for Farmworker Famileis said in a written statement.
The laws came from a package of farmworker bills by Rivas and Assembyman Eduardo Garcia, D-Coachella, early in the outbreak.
Garcia said farmworkers have been on the frontlines throughout the health crisis, “making extraordinary sacrifices to keep us fed throughout this pandemic.”
Last week, Newsom vetoed one of the bills included in the relief package, Assembly Bill 2164. The proposed legislation sought the expand telehealth services in rural and community health centers to benefit farmworkers with limited medical care access.
“While I am supportive of utilizing telehealth to increase access to primary and specialty care services, the Department of Health Care Services is currently in the process of evaluating its global telehealth policy to determine what temporary flexibilites should be extended beyond the COVID-19 pandemic,” Newsom said in a veto message to lawmakers.
That week Rivas took to Twitter to express his disappoint of the bill not moving forward.
“This bill would have helped ensure rural communities, especially farmworkers, had access to telehealth services,” he tweeted. “We must do better for this group of essential workers.”