C2C demands immediate protection for farmworkers in Washington State
/Dear supporters,
Daily living and working was already dangerous and precarious for hundreds of thousands of farmworkers and immigrants before the onset of COVID-19. ICE has terrorized our communities and powerful growers have suppressed workers' efforts to organize. Generations of environmental racism have contaminated poor neighborhoods and caused lifelong health impacts in communities of color. This pandemic has found a perfect environment to increase our communities' risk of fatality if they contract the virus. The agricultural industry has long refused to implement health and safety protections for farmworkers or worker housing, while state and federal agencies looked the other way. Today, agribusiness is functionally exempt from COVID-19 protocols in Washington State and nationwide.
During times like these, capitalism reveals itself as an economic system that functions only for those that have the financial means to protect themselves. This pandemic is revealing structural racism and its barriers to equity. It is revealing the economic fragility and health disparities our communities live with every day. It is revealing the weaknesses of systemic mechanisms' ability to respond to crisis -- set up by our goverment using our tax dollars, and once again failing us.
The responses to this pandemic are leaving out the working poor, and in general the working class, the vulnerable, and otherwise "expendable" people. Our federal and state governments are acting like there is a certain level of acceptable fatalities of agricultural workers -- deemed "essential workers" according to Governor Inslee's "Stay Home, Stay Healthy" proclamation. The responses, and lack of responses, to our demands and objections to "business as usual" by corporate agriculture show us that to them there is an acceptable price the farmworker community must pay to sustain the current profit margins in the agricultural industry. Government at every level is complicit in every worker's death during this pandemic.
As an ecofeminist, anti-capitalist organization, we know that these deaths are needless and preventable. We also know that agribusiness will not stop their exploitative practices without a fight. As farmworkers join countless other workers on the frontlines of the COVID-19 crisis, workers being laid off, and workers still working for employers not following social distancing and sanitizing practices, we ask you to join us in demanding WA State take immediate action to put in place real protections with accountability and enforcement in the agricultural industry, so that farmworkers can survive this virus and the financial crisis that is already crippling families.
Call Governor Inslee (360) 902-4111 and DEMAND immediate protection for farmworkers in Washington State:
Enact Emergency Orders with funding for staffing to ensure all COVID-19 protocols, including appropriate social distancing guidelines, are being followed in the fields and packing/processing, with enforcement and consequences for noncompliance, such as fines. Provide personal protective clothing and equipment to farmworkers at no cost to them. Pay farmworkers sick leave if they become ill. Establish an incentive for recruitment of needed farmworkers in WA State, including raising wages to work in agriculture.
Ensure there will be no retaliation against workers asking for better protections, or for becoming ill. Ensure the COVID-19 protocols are not used as retaliation in hiring practices.
Require transparent recruitment and hiring information and housing protections for all farmworkers related to COVID-19. In addition to informing workers about the terms and conditions of employment when workers are being hired, all persons who are recruiting for agricultural employment in WA must provide detailed information about the risks of COVID-19, including how employers will protect their safety while transporting and housing them, and in the workplace.
All farmworker housing, tools, and equipment must be fully sanitized before farmworker families move in and use the equipment. There must be proof of that sanitation. There must be designated sanitized quarantine living facilities with access to medical personnel, and COVID-19 plans approved by WA State Department of Health and local Health jurisdictions.
Email Employment Security Department (nick.streuli@gov.wa.gov) and DEMAND they stop processing and approving H2A visa applications immediately for farms in Washington State
The H2A guestworker visa program has a long history of exploitation and abuse. By design, the program makes it almost impossible to regulate the protocols needed to prevent COVID-19 contagion. Farmworkers are forced to work in close proximity and share close living and eating quarters, as well as being transported on a daily basis in vans and buses in large groups. The current protocols are not enforceable and have huge gaps, giving individual corporate farms loopholes. This sets up scenarios with potentially deadly consequences for farmworkers and rural communities that are already under served in healthcare, transportation, and infrastructure.
There is no plan within Governor Inslee's protocols to prepare for the influx of an estimated additional 20,000 H2A workers into the state once the season begins. We estimate over 10,000 H2A workers have already arrived between the months of December and February. Furthermore, there has been no protection for those H2A workers that are already here -- not during their long-distance travel, nor now while they are living in crowded housing and working in close contact in the fields.
Donate to C2C
The C2C promotoras, Lucy, Arely, Australia, Daisy, Cristal, and Norma, are all in communication with our local immigrant and farmworker communties on a daily basis. This communication is essential to bridge information gaps and language barriers, combat dangerous misinformation, and respond to immediate and urgent needs. The promotoras are hearing about how quickly families' economic conditions are becoming dire. To support their organizing, donate here. To support direct organizing in the fields and workplace, donate to Familias Unidas por la Justicia.
*** If you will receive money from the federal stimulus package, we urge you to donate it to our organizations in solidarity. Your donations will allow us to hire more promotoras in rural Whatcom and Skagit Counties. This is a time of need, but we are also preparing for the recovery that farmworker families will need after the pandemic is contained. Additional promotoras will be key to this recovery.
OPPOSE dangerous narratives around the need to 'ease up' guestworker visa regulations! Call Representative Pramila Jayapal (206) 674-0040, and Senator Patty Murray (206) 553-5545 and tell them to OPPOSE HR 5038.
Artificial "worker shortages" are the result of domestic farmworkers being laid off and replaced by H2A workers, and low wages forcing domestic farmworkers into other industries. Increasing the ease of guestworker visas in agriculture is not a sustainable strategy for a healthy, local food system, and during this pandemic it is life-threatening for domestic farmworkers and guestworkers alike, as well as for our broader communities.
We have a vision. We have been building the alternative world that we believe is possible. Since our founding we have been working towards the construction of a solidarity economy, centered on worker-owned cooperatives, as a way to truly liberate our food system and those who labor within it. Worker-owned food and farming cooperatives have the potential to be the safest workplaces in public health crises like this, as workers determine and implement safety protocols, as well as wages and employment plans, with the best interest of themselves and their community in mind.
*Stay tuned for ways to support Cooperativa Tierra y Libertad in the coming months.
INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY AND A JUST RECOVERY
COVID-19 proves that the world cannot weather a pandemic as long as countries like the United States fail to guarantee healthcare and safety, in the community and the workplace, as a human right for all. It's going to take all of us, everywhere, fighting for the end of capitalism and the emergence of local solidarity economies centered on collective well-being.
When the recovery phase of this crisis begins, we must create green jobs and develop worker-owned cooperatives to recapture displaced workers. We will continue to reject false solutions like "cap and trade" that further sacrifice the environment and people for toxic fossil-fuel based industries. We will continue to fight for a resilient, healthy food system free of pesticides and worker-exploitation.
Though we may not see each other in person for a while, you can listen to conversations between leaders and activists in our community and beyond by subscribing to our radio show, Community Voz, hosted by KMRE 102.3 FM in Bellingham.
Ánimo y solidaridad,
Rosalinda, Lucy, Australia, Arely, Brenda, Liz, and Maureen