May 28, 2020

Letter: To ensure safety of food supply, state must protect farmworkers

BY Attorney Leticia Medina-Richman & Attorney Claudia QuinteroMassachusetts Lawyers Weekly

A Version of this letter appeared in Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly.

To the Editor,

Spring is upon us and with it, the farming season. This year’s farming season will be far from normal for the approximately 20,000 farmworkers whose labor brings fresh food to families across the Commonwealth. As essential workers, farmworkers bear a heightened risk of contracting COVID-19. Many live on isolated rural farms in dorm-style housing incompatible with social distancing, work on farms that sometimes that don’t easily lend themselves to social distancing, or that lack Personal Protective Equipment.  Besides living, cooking, and bathing in common facilities, farmworkers are often bussed to and from work daily in school buses or vans and are regularly transported into rural towns to buy groceries and run other errands. Compounding these risks, many farmworkers are overwhelmingly low-income, have limited English proficiency, and lack access to both health insurance and medical care.

Given this reality, we have grave concerns about the health and welfare of the farmworker community and the security of our entire food supply. Through our work as attorneys at the Central West Justice Center we have seen firsthand the conditions under which farmworkers labor. We urge the Commonwealth to enact measures to protect our farmworkers from contracting COVID-19, to safeguard the public health, and to ensure the safety and stability of our food supply.

Basic safety measures should be implemented immediately, including requiring agricultural employers to implement COVID-19 workplace sanitation and disinfection protocols. Employers should also implement regular symptom monitoring of workers throughout the workday and be required to offer emergency paid sick leave if workers are exhibiting symptoms. Designated quarantine housing for workers showing symptoms (separate sleeping quarters, bathrooms, and cooking areas) should be established. Finally, employers should be required to pay farmworkers at least the state minimum wage, rather than the agricultural minimum of $8.00/hour, as farmworkers are subjecting themselves to increased risk of contracting COVID-19 to provide an essential service for the Commonwealth’s food supply.

As COVID-19 continues it assault on the Commonwealth, it is critically important that we ensure the safety and security of our food supply. To do this effectively we must ensure the parallel safety and security of those who bring us that food, and, by extension, the communities they live and do business in. This is an easy call, and one that we need to make immediately.

With sincere appreciation,

Claudia Quintero
Attorney, Migrant and Seasonal Farmworkers Project, Central West Justice Center, an affiliate of Community Legal Aid

Leticia Medina-Richman
Director, Central West Justice Center, an affiliate of Community Legal Aid