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<font size="1"><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/aug/08/california-covid-19-central-valley-essential-workers?fbclid=IwAR0Vb1o0bUOVNnfvI--3GrO_F6Nc4QR-jaRQDkaScXyfAv_Bt46kiUXdvDk">https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/aug/08/california-covid-19-central-valley-essential-workers?fbclid=IwAR0Vb1o0bUOVNnfvI--3GrO_F6Nc4QR-jaRQDkaScXyfAv_Bt46kiUXdvDk</a></font>
<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">'Everyone tested positive': Covid devastates agriculture workers in California's heartland</h1>
<div class="gmail-credits gmail-reader-credits">Vivian Ho - August 8, 2020<br></div>
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<div class="gmail-moz-reader-content gmail-reader-show-element"><div id="gmail-readability-page-1" class="gmail-page"><div><div><p><span><span>A</span></span><span>cross
California’s Central Valley, hundreds of thousands of workers wash the
vegetables, debone the meat, sort the nuts and package the produce that
finds its way into kitchens throughout the United States.</span></p><p>When
the coronavirus hit, their work was ruled essential, so they kept
working in the often cramped facilities that fuel a state industry that
exports <a href="https://www.cdfa.ca.gov/statistics/PDFs/2018-2019AgReportnass.pdf">$21bn </a>in agricultural products each year.</p><p>Workers
told the Guardian that in the past months, as much of California
sheltered at home, they took their places at the production lines and
sorting tables, against all social distancing guidelines, as their
companies made excuses for why coworker after coworker stopped showing
up for their shifts. Some workers said they had to learn from news
reports that they had been exposed to Covid-19. Others said they felt
obligated to work even when showing virus symptoms.</p><p>Then they
returned to their homes in cities across the region, unknowingly
exposing their parents, their spouses, their children, aunts, uncles and
cousins to the virus.</p><p>“We felt like they would tell us. They
would take precautions. But they didn’t,” said Marielos Cisneros of her
former employer, the nut producer Primex Farms, when the pandemic began.
“In a sense, we felt secure.”</p><p>Now the virus is surging in the
Central Valley, with several reported deaths among essential workers. In
10 counties, state authorities list workplaces and businesses as likely
drivers for increased transmission. In at least two more counties,
outbreaks in several food processing facilities have led to hundreds of
infections.</p><p>Workers and workers’ rights organizations say these
outbreaks and the subsequent swell of infections in the Central Valley
point to a devastating truth: that we are each only as protected as our
least protected; as vulnerable as our most vulnerable.</p><p>“You can
appear to contain the spread among middle-class workers but when it
reaches those workers who are furthest on the margins, who are most
disadvantaged, the virus is going to spread,” said Edward Flores, a
sociology professor at the University of California, Merced.</p><h2><strong>Fears for hundreds of thousands of workers</strong></h2><p>The
Central Valley runs 450 miles down the center of California, much of it
flat fields, lush fruit trees and vibrant orchards. The region contains
the largest concentration of dairies in the state, as well as a number
of meat-processing centers, together with the farms forming an
agricultural juggernaut. In the San Joaquin Valley alone – the southern
bulk of the region – more than 173,000 work in agriculture, with 45,000
more in food manufacturing, 60,600 more in grocery retail and 86,000 in
transportation and warehousing, according to UC Merced’s Community and
Labor Center.</p><p>In the eight counties of the San Joaquin Valley, a
27,000-square-mile area of 4.3 million residents, coronavirus cases are
at 1,900 per 100,000 residents. In comparison, the San Francisco Bay
Area, with 7.7 million residents in 7,000 square miles, has 770 cases
per 100,000 residents.</p><div><div> <img alt="California’s Central Valley." src="https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/f882f20b681458ad9c0458391eede241160d2d4c/0_0_2000_2361/master/2000.png?width=445&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=ddcae648f4bf9a1654d833495874f3d5" style="margin-right: 0px;" width="353" height="417"></div><span></span></div></div></div></div></div></div><div><span>California’s Central Valley.</span> Photograph: Wikimedia/Thadius856</div><p>From the beginning of the pandemic, advocacy groups expressed concern for <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/31/us-coronavirus-outbreak-california-farm-workers">the safety of essential food workers</a>.
Much of this work does not allow for social distancing, with workers
squeezing next to each other in fields and crowding together at the
plants. Many who do the low-wage labor that keeps these industries
afloat are Latinx and do not speak English, making it difficult for them
to communicate with their employers and understand their rights. Some
are undocumented, with the fear of deportation preventing them from
coming forward with any grievances.</p><p>Still, over the past five
years, the federal and state occupational safety and health division has
received more complaints out of the Central Valley and inspected more
accidents in this region than anywhere else in the state, according to
Ana Padilla, executive director of UC Merced’s Community and Labor
Center. The San Joaquin Valley has 13% of the state’s meat-processing
centers, but has received 49% of the state’s inspections, Padilla said.</p><p>Roxana
Alvarado, 30, worked at Primex Farms in Wasco up until a few weeks ago.
When she tested positive for the virus in June, dozens of her coworkers
had already been infected, according to the workers and the United Farm
Workers of America (UFW).</p><p>At least 151 Primex workers have tested
positive for Covid-19, according to the company – more than a third of
the plant’s staff. UFW, which is keeping a census of infected workers,
said the first confirmed infected worker, whom the company has blamed
for bringing the virus<strong> </strong>into the facility from abroad and fired, last worked on 20 May.</p><p>Workers
told the Guardian management held a meeting when the pandemic first
took off, warning them not to travel or put themselves at higher risk
for infection, but gave out little other information. Before the
outbreak, they offered no testing and told the workers they could bring
masks from home if they wanted but that they weren’t mandatory. They
made little effort to create social distancing. “In a typical day, an
eight-hour shift, I can be in contact with 100 or more people, walking
between people, going around the floor, chatting with people without
masks,” said Alvarado.</p><p>Alvarado had worked at Primex for almost
two years, cleaning both the facility and the produce. When people
stopped showing up for their shifts, management would say they were on
vacation, Alvarado said. On 23 June, the company admitted that it had 31
confirmed cases – although UFW says the real number of infections
around that time was closer to 76.</p><p>By then, Alvarado had brought
the virus home to Bakersfield, where she lived with her husband and two
children. Her five-month-old baby tested positive.</p><p>“They took away
my right to choose whether to expose my family and myself to Covid when
they didn’t inform us what was going on,” Alvarado said. “If I had
known there was Covid, I would have made the difficult decision to not
go to work because I never would have put my family at risk.”</p><h2><strong>A marginalized workforce</strong></h2><p>Marielos
Cisneros, 40, had worked as a sorter and then a production clerk for
Primex for almost three years when she contracted a fever and went to
the hospital on 10 June. She made sure human resources knew. “When I
told them that I was positive, the HR lady told me not to tell anyone,”
she said. “She told me to say I had a headache, that I had anything else
but Covid.” Primex denies the allegation.</p><div><div> <img alt="Marielos Cisneros with her family." src="https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/d9b4d77a92f2d7f6971a21e822a5fc4afe81722f/0_0_2320_3088/master/2320.jpg?width=445&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=2dcafafdb2978af0d9913848a2b9ec82" style="margin-right: 0px;" width="313" height="417"></div><span></span></div><div><span>Marielos Cisneros with her family.</span> Photograph: Courtesy Marielos Cisneros</div><p>All
four of her children got coronavirus, including a son with asthma,
Cisneros said. As a single mother dependent on one paycheck, she said
she would have gone to work regardless, but she would have taken more
precautions had she known how prevalent the virus was at the facility.</p><p>Flores and Padilla, the researchers at UC Merced, <a href="https://clc.ucmerced.edu.672elmp01.blackmesh.com/sites/clc.ucmerced.edu/files/page/documents/hidden_threat_july_12.pdf">authored a study</a>
looking into the connection between low-wage work and the spread of
Covid-19. They found that most counties in California with high worker
distress were on the state’s coronavirus watchlist, including much of
the Central Valley.</p><p>The disadvantages of this region and its
workforce put them at higher risk not just for exposure to the virus,
but also for unsanitary and unsafe work conditions with little freedom
to advocate for themselves, Padilla said. More than 21% of workers in
the region live below the poverty line and 17.9% are dependent on food
stamps, according to the researchers. The region’s immigrants have the
lowest rate of naturalization in the state. Most workers don’t qualify
for federally guaranteed emergency leave, and if they are undocumented,
they do not qualify for unemployment. From these tenuous circumstances,
they go on to live in households that rank as the largest in the state.</p><p>“One
lady told me that she got infected, went home and unfortunately her
entire family of 16 others was there,” said Armando Elenes, UFW’s
secretary-treasurer. “I’m talking her husband, her sons, her son’s wife,
their kids. It went from her to 16 others.”</p><p>So far, 49 adult family members of the workers at the Primex plant and 34 children have tested positive, Elenes said.</p><p>Jesse Rojas, a Primex spokesman, said the allegations by workers and UFW were “false” and “hearsay”.</p><div><div> <img alt="Workers pack orders for face shields at Mask & Shield, a division of Monster City Studios, in Fresno, California, in May." src="https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/d580963618d14bb70b27a2632bc25d22ae694442/0_0_4000_2668/master/4000.jpg?width=445&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=70b3a5bf212a7ad5de4c559c59f9db81" style="margin-right: 0px;" width="417" height="278"></div><span></span></div><div><span>Workers pack orders for face shields at Mask & Shield, a division of Monster City Studios, in Fresno, California, in May.</span> Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images</div><p>“The
overwhelming majority of current and actual Primex employees are upset
over UFW’s lies and feel entirely safe going to work, as the company has
gone above and beyond to ensure their safety,” he said. He added<strong> </strong>that
Primex “has been adhering to and following guidelines and
recommendations by each institution at every level from the very
beginning of the pandemic”, but he declined to provide details of what
those guidelines were and the dates that the company put them in place.</p><h2><strong>‘Everyone has tested positive’</strong></h2><p>About
60 miles north in Kings county, another outbreak swept through Central
Valley Meat Co, a slaughterhouse and beef-packaging plant. Attorneys
representing workers in a class-action lawsuit against the company
assert that the virus arrived at the facility in Hanford in April,
eventually spreading to about 200 workers.</p><p>At one point, in early
May, Kings county reported that it had 158 coronavirus cases while
Central Valley Meat Co reported internally that it had 161 cases,
according to the lawsuit – more than 100% of the county’s total cases.
“It is beyond peradventure that Central Valley Meat is responsible for
the significant increase in COVID-19 cases in Kings county,” the lawsuit
states.</p><p>Central Valley Meat Co did not return repeated<strong> </strong>requests for comment.</p><p>The
company did not put in place good social distancing guidelines, hand
sanitizing stations or offer face masks until an outbreak was in full
swing, according to workers and the lawsuit. Now, so many of the workers
have gotten coronavirus that they’ve given up on following any
guidelines, said a former deboner who asked to only be identified as
Martin out of fear of losing his job. “It’s almost like the virus has
passed because everyone has tested positive,” he said.</p><p>The first
person infected stopped coming to work in April, and when workers asked
why, management told them he had an earache, Martin, 31,<strong> </strong>said.
It wasn’t until that person’s brother, who lived with him and also
worked at the plant, tested positive and told their coworkers that they
realized coronavirus had arrived.</p><p>When Maria Pilar Ornelas, the
lawsuit’s main plaintiff, began struggling to breathe at work on 23
April, she asked management if she could get tested, according to the
lawsuit. They told her testing was only offered to employees “chosen by
the company”, the suit said, and told her she had to finish her shift,
even though she had a headache so severe that her vision became blurry.
She soon developed a fever of 103.7.</p><p>Ornelas eventually paid $225 for a test because the company does not provide health insurance, the lawsuit<strong> </strong>said. By then, she had unknowingly spread the virus to her boyfriend.</p><p>Martin,
who has worked for the company for six years, tested positive in late
April, along with another relative who lived with him. While Martin’s
wife and two children did not display symptoms during their 14-day
quarantine, the wife and child of Martin’s relative tested positive.</p><div><div> <img alt="A farm worker repairs irrigation pipes during spring planting in the Central Valley in Davis, California, in 2017." src="https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/c30e7d6f5d12e047f86eb591ffda5d676a0e18ca/0_0_3500_2333/master/3500.jpg?width=445&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=ca89499104dd0eb5a26501344a237383" style="margin-right: 0px;" width="417" height="278"></div><span></span></div><div class="gmail-container" dir="ltr"><div class="gmail-content"><div class="gmail-moz-reader-content gmail-reader-show-element"><div id="gmail-readability-page-1" class="gmail-page"><div><div><div><span>A farm worker repairs irrigation pipes during spring planting in the Central Valley in Davis, California, in 2017.</span> Photograph: Hyungwon Kang/Reuters</div><p>Martin
said some of his coworkers kept working despite displaying symptoms
because they were afraid to lose their jobs if they stopped. Other
coworkers stopped coming into work because they were scared of getting
infected, he said – enough that in May and June, the company paid
workers a bonus to risk their health and come to work.</p><p>“I felt like I was being bought out,” Martin said. “It felt like they were trying to buy my life for an extra $100 a week.”</p><h2><strong>A strike and state action</strong></h2><p>Last
month, California officials indicated that combating the spread in the
Central Valley must be a priority. The governor, Gavin Newsom, announced
that he was dedicating $52m to expand contact tracing, quarantine
efforts and investigations in eight counties.</p><p>Newsom has been
upfront that coronavirus has harmed parts of California’s population and
economy in disproportionate ways. In particular, the Latinx community
and low-wage essential labor workforce have borne the brunt of the
burden, with the recent rise in cases in the Central Valley making the
differences strikingly clear.</p><p>Padilla and Flores of UC Merced say
that only more stringent policies and enforcement around workplace
conditions will curb the crisis. Workplace safety and health concerns
existed before Covid-19, they argue. Now, with the threat of a virus all
around, the risks are potentially fatal.</p><p>Maria Hortencia Lopez, a
57-year-old Primex employee, died of Covid on 14 July. Another worker
who tested positive was taken off life support last month and is not
expected to survive. Pedro Zuniga, a 52-year-old produce handler at a
Safeway distribution center in Tracy, died weeks after coworkers began
displaying symptoms at the center. Management told the sick employees
that they had to keep working, according to a lawsuit filed by Zuniga’s
widow. Fifty-one workers eventually tested positive.</p><p>Teena
Massingill, a spokeswoman for Albertsons Companies, which owns Safeway,
said the state occupational safety and health division inspected the
Tracy distribution center on 15 April – two days after Zuniga’s death –
“and no violations were found”. “Prior to Mr. Zuniga falling ill, the
Company had instituted enhanced cleaning practices and social distancing
protocols at the facility, and was implementing health screening and
temperature checks,” she said.</p><p>At Primex, employees went on strike
on 25 June and 6 July to demand the company adhere to federal law that
requires employers like Primex to provide paid leave for specified
reasons related to Covid-19 for up to 80 hours. Workers at the company
struggled to get their full 80 hours paid, workers and UFW said.
Cisneros said Primex told her it counted as vacation time.</p><p>After
the strike, workers received their 80 hours, but then Primex laid off 40
employees, including, according to workers, Alvarado and some of the
most outspoken when it came to the virus. Primex said the cuts were
necessary because of production needs. Soon afterwards, it began hiring
new workers. Rojas, the Primex spokesperson, said the company “has
always paid the state COVID-19 80-hour sick pay” and that “the company
has never retaliated against any employee”. He added: “All of the
changes in personnel are typical changes during the season.”</p><p>Marielos
Cisneros felt that she was being bullied by management after she
participated in the strike. She also still didn’t feel safe in the
facility, so she quit a week ago.</p><p>She knows that the work they do is essential. She only wishes they were treated as such.</p><p>“To them, we’re just workers,” Cisneros said. “They replace us really fast. They don’t think of us outside of production.” </p><p><em>Kari Paul contributed reporting</em><br></p></div></div><div id="gmail-slot-body-end"><div><br></div></div></div></div>
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