FARM WORKERS MARCH IN MEMORY OF PREGNANT MOTHER WHO DIED ON JOB

Friday, June 6, 2008

(PAI)

LODI, Calif. (PAI)--In protest of one of the more-horrifying recent incidents of worker exploitation in the nation’s fields, the United Farm Workers conducted a mass march June 1-4 from Lodi to Sacramento, Calif., in memory of a pregnant mother who died on the job in a California vineyard.

Maria Isabel Vasquez Jiminez, 17, died May 16, two days after collapsing of heat stroke while working a vineyard near outside of Stockton. She toiled for a “labor contractor,” Merced Farm Labor, cited in past years for breaking state rules limiting when workers could work in heat, UFW said.

She had labored for nine hours in temperatures that reached 101. Union President Arturo Rodriguez called her death completely preventable. Vasquez was two months pregnant. Witnesses said the labor contractor who supplied to the farm did not provide shade and cool drinking water for several hours. By the time she was taken to a hospital--two hours after collapsing--her body temperature was an ultra-hot 108.4.

UFW said the labor contractor was cited in 2006 for violations of the state's heat regulation. That rule, which barred farm workers from toiling in certain ultra-hot conditions, was signed by GOP Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2005, at UFW’s urging after three farm workers died that year from the heat.

UFW named the Lodi-to-Sacramento march a “peregrinacion,” Spanish for a religious pilgrimage. It was to honor the memory of Vasquez and other fallen workers who died from heat, “as well as bring attention to abusive conditions and egregious violations of safety regulations farm workers face,” UFW said. The peregrinacion ended with a prayer vigil on June 4 at the state capitol building in Sacramento.

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