Californians say they were fired for leaving their jobs in sweltering heat. Is the state on their side?

While California has rules to protect farmworkers from excessive heat, inspections and citations are significantly down. A bill before the Legislature would make it easier to file workers’ compensation claims for heat illnesses.

BY JEANNE KUANG | CalMatters

They worked nearly three triple-digit days before it felt unsafe to go on.

Maria Paredes said she already had a headache while working in a tomato field near Dixon on June 5, when high temperatures hit between 99 to 107 degrees. The hotter the next day got, the 40-year-old farmworker said, “the more it started to go back to my head, and I started to feel like vomiting.”

Seeing other workers feeling ill, Paredes and five coworkers said they got their forewoman’s permission to go home early on June 6, during one of the first heat waves this year.

But when they showed up again at dawn the next day, they were given their last checks — and told there was no more work for them.

Two state agencies are investigating the incident as a retaliatory firing. Conrad Ruiz, owner of the contractor that employed the workers, denied that’s what happened but declined to explain further.

As California confronts the dangers of extreme heat, labor advocates say some workers are underprotected despite the state’s nearly two-decade-old outdoor workplace heat rules. Enforcement is slow, the Division of Occupational Safety and Health is understaffed and hesitance to report poor conditions is widespread among low-wage workers. After a sharp decrease in inspections during the COVID-19 pandemic, Cal/OSHA reports show the agency hasn’t returned to its pre-pandemic heat enforcement levels.

Following up on the workers’ complaint, the agency is investigating whether Ruiz had followed the heat rules, which require water, shade, breaks, training for workers and a plan to prevent heat illness.

Those who were let go say they’re worried the incident will discourage their former coworkers from taking breaks or raising concerns. As they await the results of the state’s investigations, they have embarked on a series of media interviews to warn other farmworkers of the risks of heat illness.

“If you die in the fields, what will happen to your kids?” asks Paredes, who made $16 an hour in the tomato field.

A 2022 UC Merced study found that 20% of surveyed farmworkers said their employers never monitored the temperature on hot days, as required by the state rules, and 15% said they were never provided shade. More than a quarter of workers said they were unaware of their right to file safety complaints, and nearly two-thirds said they would not report a violation out of fear of retaliation or concern they’d lose their jobs.

The United Farm Workers union this year is pushing a bill that they say will prompt employers to make farm work safer.

Senate Bill 1299 — authored by Silicon Valley Democratic Sen. Dave Cortese, a former farmworker, and co-authored by Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas, a Salinas Democrat and son of farmworkers — would make it easier for workers to make a workers’ compensation claim for heat illness. It would specifically apply when employers can’t prove they were taking all the required precautions under the heat rule.

Workers’ compensation claims cover all workplace injuries regardless of whether the employer is at fault. An approved claim can cover costs such as medical care, lost wages and death benefits to family members; it’s paid for by insurance policies that employers purchase. But it’s often difficult to prove heat illness cases were developed at work, said Megan Ruble, president of the California Applicants’ Attorneys Association, whose members represent injured workers.

The bill proposes tying eligibility for workers’ comp coverage to not following the Cal/OSHA heat rules, despite the two systems being handled by separate state agencies — a novel approach that the union says adds financial pressure for employers to protect workers.

“Cal/OSHA’s enforcement is limited,” UFW President Teresa Romero said during a June hearing on the bill. “It is nearly impossible, and no amount of money can monitor approximately 40,000 farms in this state. For the basic standards in outdoor heat regulations, this bill encourages employer compliance.”

The California Chamber of Commerce and insurance carriers, however, oppose the bill, arguing that the workers’ comp system should not be enforcing Cal/OSHA’s rules. They also warn the bill could saddle employers and insurance companies with unrelated injuries. A study conducted by an insurers’ organizations found less than 1% of California agricultural workers’ comp claims involved heat injuries.

Bryan Little, director of labor affairs at the California Farm Bureau, an association of growers and labor contractors, is skeptical more regulation is needed. He said he regularly educates farm employers on heat safety; many have responded to extreme heat by shifting work schedules, using more machinery instead of hired labor or at times even scheduling shifts at night. It’s not uncommon, he said, for supervisors to cut the workday short rather than risk workers’ safety.

“The regulations have been in place a long time, everybody understands it, and it works as a result,” Little said.

Still, the bill has sailed through the Legislature so far with the endorsement of liberal politicians eager to stake a claim on protecting vulnerable groups in the face of climate change. Attorney General Rob Bonta also supports the legislation, which could be heard in the Assembly Appropriations Committee as soon as today.

Nationally, policymakers are looking at California as they grapple with how to prevent workplace heat illness. The Biden administration last month announced a federal workplace heat rule that mirrors many of the state’s requirements. Tuesday, Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra marked Farmworker Appreciation Day by meeting a group of grape pickers in the Sacramento Delta, and touting planned programs to give farmworkers and employers “advance warnings” of extreme heat and wildfire smoke levels.

Some of the workers he met said they worry about the heat — but worry about paying their bills more. Sayda Turcios, a Yolo County farmworker and member of the advocacy group Líderes Campesinas, said the hotter it gets, the more she sees her hours cut when supervisors decide it’s unsafe to work.

“It affects us in pay,” she said. “They end work early, three or four hours. At the end of the week when they pay us, it’s reduced a lot.”

California was the first state in the nation to adopt outdoor heat rules in 2005, after the deaths of four farmworkers.

The rules require outdoor employers to provide water, shade, breaks and training to workers on how to prevent heat illness. On days hotter than 95 degrees, even stricter regulations apply for certain industries including agriculture and construction. Farm employers must provide 10-minute breaks every two hours of work.

The United Farm Workers sued twice, in 2009 and 2012, to boost Cal/OSHA’s enforcement of  the rule. It’s now one of the most-cited workplace safety violations. The agency must respond to complaints with an in-person inspection, rather than an inquiry “by letter.”

But state reports show enforcement of the heat rules has declined in recent years, even as heat waves grow longer and more intense. A Cal/OSHA report, which includes data for almost all of 2023, shows the agency opened 1,000 fewer heat-related inspections than in 2019, and issued nearly 800 fewer citations.

Outreach activities — both ad campaigns telling workers about their rights and consultations with employers on how to protect employees from heat — also plummeted, from nearly 1700 in 2019 to just over 300 last year.

Erika Monterroza, a Cal/OSHA spokesperson, did not respond to repeated inquiries starting July 8 about those numbers, and said in an email Tuesday it would “take a few more weeks.” Cal/OSHA declined to make an official available for an interview.

Instead, in a statement, Monterroza wrote the agency’s heat response efforts include “proactive targeted high-heat inspections at outdoor worksites with a particular focus on construction, agriculture, landscaping, and warehouse industries,” responding to complaints and outreach in numerous languages.

The agency has been plagued with understaffing. An April 30 organizational chart, obtained and published by advocate and former Cal/OSHA employee Garrett Brown, shows 37% of positions in the agency’s enforcement branch were vacant.

Two months after being let go, the group of workers at the Dixon tomato farm are still waiting to hear the results of their complaints.

Jorge Santana said he called Cal/OSHA to report concerns about heat safety at Ruiz Farm Labor the day the workers were dismissed, but said he only spoke with an inspector about three weeks later.

Some of the workers said they spoke in June with the Agricultural Labor Relations Board, which confirmed it has opened an investigation into the dismissals. And some, with the help of local advocate and United Farm Workers spokesperson Antonio De Loera-Brust, also filed a retaliation complaint at the state Labor Commissioner’s Office.

Reached by phone in July, Ruiz, the labor contractor, said none of the workers had been fired. “They weren’t fired, they were let go,” he said. “Everybody’s got it wrong. You’re going to have to talk to my lawyer.”

But he declined to refer a reporter to the attorney, saying only, “She’s telling me to say no comment.”

CalMatters spoke with five of the six who were dismissed, including Paredes. Their accounts match hers and the retaliation complaint. Several said they saw other workers who felt ill, but finished the workday.

Santana, 61, said he knew the state’s heat rules from previous work in construction. He said there was water and shade for workers at the tomato field, but on forecasted hot days, supervisors didn’t always hold meetings to remind workers of the risks, which he said is common in other fields. When he saw others getting sick on June 6, he didn’t want to risk it and left along with Paredes and four others.

When they were handed their checks the next day, Santana said he argued with Ruiz over the phone.

“I tried to tell him, there was a lot of people around here feeling sick and getting sick, because of the heat,” Santana said. “He said, ‘The checks are made out, I don’t have to explain.’”

Santana and another worker, Gerardo Reyes, disputed Ruiz’s characterization and said the six workers were fired in retaliation for raising concerns about heat.They said there was still work on June 7 for all the crew members who hadn’t left the field.

Santana said he doesn’t regret raising concerns: “I’d rather lose a couple of hours of work than lose my life.”

The worker who felt the most ill, a 32-year-old woman, felt differently. “If I had known they were going to fire me” the next day, she said, “I would have stayed. I would have held on.”

The worker declined to file a complaint out of fear of jeopardizing an immigration case, and agreed to an interview only if she was not named.

She said she had felt sick on a hot day about two weeks prior, and a relative of the forewoman had taken her home early. Reyes, a longtime farmworker with whom the 32-year-old carpools, corroborated her account.

On June 6, she said, she again felt dizzy and nauseated. At the forewoman’s direction, she took a break under a tree, taking off her hat, gloves and shoes. It helped, she said, but when she returned to work, temperatures had climbed. She was shaking, had stopped sweating and said she thought she might fall over.

It was Reyes who insisted she couldn’t keep working; he was among those who left — with the forewoman’s permission, he said — so that he could drive her home.

The pair have since found a couple of other jobs in the fields, but both times the work ran out after about a week. In one of them, the woman said she felt ill again and missed a day of work, during the early July heat wave. Around her, she said, she saw older workers falling ill, with hardly any shade. But she didn’t make a report.

With debts to pay and three children to support overseas, she said she’s desperate to find another job. She considers farm work her only prospect, though she said she now knows of the dangers of working outside in extreme heat.

“I’m the one who has to adapt,” she said. “The weather is something no one can control.”

CalMatters’ Carlos Aviles contributed to this story.