A new emergency standard proposed by California’s Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board to address the threat of heat-related illness to farmworkers and other outdoor laborers is totally inadequate, and only underscores the state’s failure to provide an effective system to protect the workers on whom California’s huge agricultural industry depends, a team of legal groups charged today.

In public comments made in Los Angeles and Sacramento, attorneys from the ACLU of Southern California and the law firm of Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP joined representatives of the United Farm Workers of America and field laborers in calling on Cal/OSHA to make crucial modifications to regulations requiring shade and water for workers, and to focus on preventing and correcting violations by employers.

“We’re glad that the state has finally acknowledged the urgent need to act. But today's announcement is just a baby step that won't increase worker protection,” said Catherine Lhamon, assistant legal director for the ACLU of Southern California. “Years of farmworker deaths and injuries from the heat show that what we need are regulations without exceptions and loopholes, and strong enforcement, not minor changes to a broken system that employers already flout with impunity.”

“Cal/OSHA must cut out the exceptions and loopholes now, and focus on investigating employer compliance, imposing fines and other sanctions where appropriate, collecting fines that have been levied, and creating a role for workers in seeing that regulations are enforced,” Lhamon added.

Heat-related illness and deaths are a threat every year in California’s agricultural fields, where 650,000 farmworkers labor in temperatures that regularly exceed 100 degrees as they help produce and harvest crops that feed consumers from Malibu to Massachusetts. Eleven workers have died of heat-related causes since new state regulations became effective in 2005, with six workers dying last summer alone.

Among the latter was Audon Felix Garcia, 42, who died after spending hours loading grape boxes into a truck in 112-degree weather in Kern County. An ambulance was called to his work site, but he could not be revived. His core body temperature was 108 degrees when he died.

In recent weeks, as California’s withering summer heat arrived, Cal/OSHA discovered that a disturbing number of employers were not complying with the 2005 regulations. However, the agency’s proposed solution is totally insufficient. Among other things, it is full of exceptions and vague language, allowing employers to comply with high-heat procedures only “to the extent practicable,” for example, and enabling them to not provide shade when doing so would be “infeasible.”

In addition, the proposal states that a shaded area must be provided no more than five minutes’ walk away for all workers when temperatures exceed 85 degrees F. But shade that is five minutes’ walk away would require workers -- who are paid by the amount they produce -- to take repeated breaks of at least 15 minutes throughout the day. In other words, they would lose wages as they walk back and forth between shade areas and work sites in the full summer heat.

Farmworkers, like all workers in California, are entitled under the state Constitution to a comprehensive workplace safety system that protects them from workplace injury and death. Similarly, farmworkers and all other California workers are statutorily entitled to Cal/OSHA enforcement of health and safety regulations. But the rampant failures of that enforcement are well-documented and longstanding.

“It’s time for all Californians to let the state know that worker safety is a basic human right that can truly be protected only through better enforcement and regulations, including incentives for employers to comply,” said Brad Phillips, an attorney with Munger, Tolles. “We’ve been asking the state for some time to take immediate action, and we continue to hope that resolving this issue in the courts won’t be necessary. However, we’re prepared to go to court if that’s what is necessary to achieve a system that truly safeguards farmworkers and others who work outdoors.”

Employers routinely avoid paying fines levied against them for violations because the state fails to ensure that the fines are paid. And fines imposed – even in cases of worker heat-related death – have been as low as $250.

“Six farmworkers died of heat last summer, and similar numbers of farmworkers died in 2005,” said Arturo S. Rodriguez, president of the United Farm Workers of America. “The changes the governor is proposing would not have saved any of the people who died last summer. The UFW has decades of work on behalf of farmworkers, which gives us practical understanding of the tools farmworkers need to survive the rigors of their labor. We know that most meaningful worker protections are only accomplished when a powerful group of thousands and thousands of workers come together to demand what is their basic right. Those are the voices that the UFW has been representing and will continue to fight for.”

LOS ANGELES, Calif. – A three-judge panel today upheld the Los Angeles Police Department’s use of Special Order 40 – a decades old policy prohibiting officers from using immigration status to initiate investigations. The decision by the California Court of Appeals strikes a balance between immigrants’ rights to equal protection and officers’ duty to protect communities.

The panel affirmed a lower court’s determination that Special Order 40 is constitutionally sound, and sided with the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, which fought the lifting of the policy on behalf of community groups representing domestic violence victims and day laborers. The case arose out of Los Angeles’ resident Harold Sturgeon’s 2006 lawsuit to stop the city from spending money on enforcing Special Order 40.

Special Order 40 was adopted in 1979 by then-LAPD Chief Daryl Gates as a way to encourage immigrants to cooperate with police and build community trust. Police chiefs and experts throughout the country agree that local enforcement of federal immigration law is neither consistent with police authority under federal law nor does it foster trust among immigrant communities.

The following statement can be attributed to Belinda Escobosa Helzer, ACLU/SC staff attorney.

“Immigrants in Los Angeles no longer have to worry that they will be forced to choose between personal safety and their future. The court understands, as does the LAPD, that stripping away Special Order 40 would have not only violated the law but been a grave mistake in a city with such deep immigrant roots. With Special Order 40 securely intact, beat cops can continue to build strong trust with community members, residents can report crimes without fear of being deported, and Los Angeles – with all its diversity - will be a safer place. I hope this will be the final chapter in what has frankly been a misguided challenge to a sound policy.”

U.S. terrorism finance laws and policies unfairly prevent Muslims in Southern California and around the nation from practicing their religion through charitable giving, and undermine America’s diplomatic efforts in Muslim countries, according to an American Civil Liberties Union report released late Monday. The 164-page report, “Blocking Faith, Freezing Charity,” is the first comprehensive report that documents the serious effects of Bush administration terrorism finance laws on Muslim communities.
“Without notice and through the use of secret evidence and opaque procedures, the Treasury Department has effectively closed down seven U.S.-based Muslim charities, including several of the nations’ largest Muslim charities,” said Jennifer Turner, a researcher with the ACLU Human Rights Program and author of the report. “While terrorism financing laws are meant to make us safer, policies that give the appearance of a war on Islam only serve to undermine America’s diplomatic efforts just as President Obama reaches out to the Muslim world. These counter-productive practices alienate American Muslims who are key allies and chill legitimate humanitarian aid in parts of the world where charities’ good works could be most effective in winning hearts and minds.”
According to the report, for which the ACLU conducted 120 interviews with Muslim community leaders and donors in several states, including California, federal law enforcement agents are engaging in practices that intimidate Muslim American donors, such as widespread interviews about their donations and surveillance of donations at mosques. Those interviewed say the government’s actions have a chilling effect on Muslim charitable giving, or Zakat, one of the five pillars of Islam and a religious obligation for all observant Muslims.
In one case, a Buena Park man was held for two years in immigration custody and threatened with deportation for his role as an independent contractor to a charitable organization that provided humanitarian relief in the Middle East and around the world. The government shut down the organization, the Holy Land Foundation, in 2001 even though it admits the money went to legitimate charitable causes.
“It’s ironic and extremely sad that laws designed to prevent another 9/11 have instead served to curtail the provision of humanitarian relief to people around the world who need it most, while undermining religious freedom here in the United States – one of the freedoms that makes our nation worth protecting,” said Ahilan Arulanantham, director of immigrants’ rights and national security at ACLU/SC. “We hope that the comprehensive information set forth in this report will spark reform of these misguided laws.”
There has been extensive FBI surveillance of charitable organizations and fundraising activities for humanitarian relief in Southern California, according to the agency’s own records obtained by the ACLU of Southern California under the Freedom of Information Act. Under a constant microscope, many Muslims Americans in Southern California are no longer freely giving. They are finding themselves having to choose between their fear of vague and overbroad laws about charitable giving and discriminatory enforcement of those laws, and their religious obligations to give to charities.
“There is a pervasive fear in our community that has to be undone. People are afraid to give to worthy causes because of flawed laws that have criminalized legitimate humanitarian aid,” said Shakeel Syed, executive director of the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California, an umbrella organization representing over 70 mosques and Muslim organizations. “If a Muslim American is going to have second thought before he or she fulfills their religious obligation, then we are no longer living in a country governed by the U.S. Constitution.”
In his speech from Cairo on June 4, President Obama raised the issue of terrorism finance laws that have an adverse effect on Muslim giving. The ACLU report makes comprehensive recommendations to the Obama administration and Congress that are necessary to ensure terrorism financing policies are consistent with American values of due process and religious freedom.