Gov. Gavin Newsom has vetoed a bill that aimed to make it easier for farmworkers to make a workers’ compensation claim for heat illness.
SB 1299 would have changed the burden of proof in workers’ compensation claims when a farmworker develops a heat-related injury after laboring outdoors for an employer who fails to comply with the state’s heat safety standards. Instead of the farmworker having to prove the injury occurred on the job, as is typical in workers’ compensation cases, it would have been the employer’s responsibility to prove the illness was not work-related.
Under the bill’s provisions, if an employer failed to comply with the rules, any resulting heat-related injury to an employee would be “presumed to arise out of and in the course of employment.” It would have created a “rebuttable presumption,” which is more commonly used for law enforcement officers and firefighters who develop certain injuries that could arise from the risks inherent to their jobs.
In a veto message issued Saturday, Newsom said there is “no doubt” that California farmworkers need strong protections from the risk of heat-related illness, especially as climate change drives an increase in extreme temperatures.
“However, the creation of a heat-illness presumption in the workers’ compensation system is not an effective way to accomplish this goal,” he said. Newsom said heat safety rules are currently enforced by the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health, known as Cal/OSHA, which is better equipped to enforce those worker protections.
Newsom also noted that Cal/OSHA is establishing an agricultural unit that specializes in worker protections and hazards found at agricultural worksites, and opening new district office locations in Fresno, Santa Barbara and Riverside.
“This dedicated unit will increase Cal/OSHA’s reach to farmworker communities throughout the Central Valley, where the largest number of farmworkers and their families reside,” Newsom said.
The legislation came as many farmworkers continue to labor in unsafe conditions and Cal/OSHA confronts a severe staffing shortage that is hampering its ability to enforce heat regulations for outdoor workers.
First enacted in 2005, the state’s heat illness prevention rules require employers to provide outdoor workers with fresh water, access to shade at 80 degrees and warmer, and cool-down breaks whenever a worker requests one. Employers must also maintain a heat illness prevention plan with effective training for supervisors to recognize the signs and symptoms of heat illness.
But nearly two decades after the rules were first enacted, ensuring compliance has remained challenging.
In 2009 and 2012, the United Farm Workers sued Cal/OSHA, accusing the agency of failing to enforce the regulations.
A 2022 study by the UC Merced Community and Labor Center found many farmworkers were still laboring without the protections. Of more than 1,200 workers surveyed, 43% reported their employers had not provided a heat illness prevention plan and 15% said they had not received heat illness prevention training.
The bill’s author, Sen. Dave Cortese (D-San José), previously described SB 1299 as a “creative work-around” that was “taking the tools that we do have available and trying to cobble together an approach that will hopefully spur greater compliance.”
“The employers hate the workers’ comp presumptions so much that it makes me feel like it might actually work,” Cortese previously told The Times. “The avoidance factor is so high with them that they’ll say, ‘My God, it’s actually easier for us to provide shade and water than to have to deal with a proliferation of expedited workers’ comp claims.’”
“We’re trying to take something that they view as kind of a thorn in their side and use it as a disincentive for the kind of behavior we’re seeing,” he said.
The UFW backed SB 1299.
“Despite the Governor’s veto of SB 1299, the UFW will continue to work to save farm worker lives,” UFW President Teresa Romero said in a statement Saturday.
Opponents of the bill, including the California Chamber of Commerce and the California Farm Bureau, acknowledged the importance of protecting farmworkers from heat illness, but had argued the issue should not be addressed through the workers’ compensation system.
This article is part of The Times’ equity reporting initiative,funded by the James Irvine Foundation, exploring the challenges facing low-income workers and the efforts being made to addressCalifornia’s economic divide.
After more than a month of deliberation, a Kern County Superior Court judge has sided with Wonderful Co. and issued a preliminary injunction that will temporarily halt a contentious bargaining process between the agricultural giant and the state’s largest farmworker union.
In a ruling issued Thursday, Judge Bernard C. Barmann said Wonderful “was likely to prevail” in its legal challenge to the state’s relatively new system for organizing farmworkers and faced irreparable harm if the United Farm Workers is allowed to unionize the company’s nursery workers before the case is decided.
“The court finds that the public interest weighs in favor of preliminary injunctive relief given the constitutional rights at stake in this matter,” Barmann wrote in the 21-page decision. Wonderful “has met its burden that a preliminary injunction should issue until the matter may be heard fully on the merits.”
Wonderful, the $6-billion agricultural powerhouse owned by Stewart and Lynda Resnick, sued the state Agricultural Labor Relations Board in May, challenging the constitutionality of the state’s so-called card-check system, which Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law in 2022. Under its provisions, a union can organize farmworkers by inviting them to sign authorization cards at off-site meetings, without notifying an employer, rather than voting by secret ballot at a designated polling place.
Union organizers had pressed for the revised card-check law, contending the secret ballot process left workers fearful of retaliation from their employer.
But Wonderful, whose portfolio includes such well-known brands as FIJI Water and POM Wonderful, alleges in its lawsuit that the law deprives employers of due process on multiple fronts. Among them: forcing a company to enter a collective bargaining agreement even if it has formally appealed the ALRB’s certification of a union vote and presented what it believes is evidence that the voting process was fraudulent.
The temporary injunction marks the latest twist in a tumultuous dispute over the UFW’s unionization campaign at Wonderful Nurseries in Wasco, the nation’s largest grapevine nursery.
In late February, the UFW filed a petition with the labor relations board, asserting that a majority of the 600-plus farmworkers at the nursery had signed authorization cards and asking that the UFW be certified as their union representative.
Within days, Wonderful accused the UFW of having baited farmworkers into signing the authorization cards under the guise of helping them apply for $600 in federal relief for farmworkers who labored during the pandemic. And the company submitted nearly 150 signed declarations from nursery workers saying they had not understood that by signing the cards they were voting to unionize.
The UFW countered that Wonderful had intimidated workers into making false statements and had brought in a labor consultant with a reputation as a union buster to manipulate their emotions in the weeks that followed.
The ALRB acknowledged receiving the worker declarations from Wonderful; nonetheless, the regional director of the labor board moved forward three days later to certify the union’s petition. She has said in subsequent hearings that she felt she had to move quickly under the timeline laid out in the card-check law, and that at the time she did not think the statute authorized her to investigate allegations of misconduct.
Wonderful appealed the ALRB’s certification.
Under the provisions of the card-check law, the UFW’s efforts to bargain with the company on behalf of its nursery workers moved forward, even as Wonderful’s appeal of the certification works its way through the ALRB’s administrative hearing process. The ALRB issued a ruling last week ordering Wonderful to enter into a mandatory mediation process to establish a collective bargaining agreement.
In its lawsuit, filed in May, Wonderful challenges the constitutionality of the card-check system on multiple fronts. Among them: that the company’s due process rights were violated when the labor board moved to certify the UFW’s petition before investigating the company’s allegations that the vote was fraudulent; and more broadly that the card-check system does not have adequate safeguards in place to ensure the veracity of the voting process.
The company asked the judge to halt the unionization effort at its nursery, as well as the ALRB’s administrative hearing process, while the lawsuit moved forward in Kern County court.
In a statement released Thursday evening, Rob Yraceburu, president of Wonderful Nurseries, said the company was “gratified” by the court’s decision to pause the certification process until the constitutionality of the card check law can be “fully and properly considered.”
“In addition,” Yraceburu said, “farmworkers had been wrongly barred from objecting to a union being forced on them, and this ruling states that Wonderful indeed has the standing to fight to ensure those constitutional rights of farmworkers, including their due process and First Amendment rights, are not violated.”
UFW spokesperson Elizabeth Strater countered that the ruling “ignores 89 years of labor law precedent” and indicated the decision to grant the injunction would be appealed.
“There is already a process to address wrongdoing in elections and Wonderful was in the middle of that process. Why does Wonderful want to halt that process and silence workers so their voices are not heard?” Strater said. “It’s very clear Wonderful is determined to use its considerable resources to deny farmworkers their rights.”
In a May 30 filing, the state had urged the court to deny Wonderful’s request for an injunction. California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, arguing on behalf of the ALRB, said Wonderful had failed to demonstrate that the card-check law was causing “irreparable harm or any likelihood of deprivation of its rights.” Bonta also argued that the Superior Court lacked jurisdiction in the case.
Santiago Avila-Gomez, executive secretary with the ALRB, said Thursday evening the agency is “reviewing the ruling carefully and won’t have further comment at this time.”
The UFW, meanwhile, is pursuing its own legal action against Wonderful. The union has filed a formal complaint of unfair labor practices with the ALRB, accusing Wonderful of coercing workers into attending “captive audience” meetings to urge employees to reject UFW representation. ALRB General Counsel Julia Montgomery issued a complaint in April, similar to an indictment, alleging Wonderful committed unfair labor practices by unlawfully assisting them in drafting declarations to revoke their authorization cards.
This article is part of The Times’ equity reporting initiative,funded by the James Irvine Foundation, exploring the challenges facing low-income workers and the efforts being made to addressCalifornia’s economic divide.
As parents hustled to pick up their kids from a school in South Los Angeles, Juana Dominguez greeted one after another with the same question in Spanish: “Do you have Medi-Cal?”
“Don’t be afraid to get it,” she urged mothers pushing strollers in the afternoon sun. She paused to chat up street vendors hawking raspados and hot dogs, encouraging them as well, as she handed out fliers.
Many already knew Dominguez from the brightly painted Paloma Market nearby, where she can regularly be found selling tacos at a table out front. On this stretch of Main Street, she also dishes out health information through a program that turns vendors into “community messengers.”
Dominguez is on a mission to make sure her neighbors know that “papers or no papers, you’re going to get help from Medi-Cal.” That’s because in January, the state will open its Medicaid program to anyone whose income is low enough to qualify, no matter their immigration status.
It’s the culmination of a steady expansion of the California health insurance program, which has already grown to include children, young adults and seniors regardless of their legal status. As of last year, the uninsured rate among immigrants in California without U.S. citizenship was estimated to be 21% — lower than in 36 other states, according to a KFF analysis of data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey.
Next year, California will extend Medi-Cal benefits to the last remaining group of undocumented people — those ages 26 to 49 — in what is expected to be its biggest expansion of coverage since key provisions in the Affordable Care Act were implemented in 2014. State officials have estimated that more than 700,000 people will be eligible to gain “full scope” coverage for the first time, helping them access important services such as preventative care and treatment for chronic conditions.
Juana Dominguez hands out information about Medi-Cal in South Los Angeles. The government health insurance program gears up for an upcoming expansion to serve eligible people of all ages regardless of immigration status.
(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)
Dominguez wants people to be aware of the opportunity, and to make use of their new coverage. In California, people who lack valid visas, green cards or U.S. citizenship have been less likely than other immigrants to go to the doctor, with 29% saying they had never gotten or tried to get medical care in the U.S., a KFF/L.A. Times survey this year found.
Fear is rampant in the community, Dominguez said, as people worry that signing up for or using such benefits could jeopardize their chances of getting a green card or citizenship. Under the “public charge” rule, people can be blocked from legal status if they are likely to become “primarily dependent” on government aid.
Medi-Cal benefits do not factor into those decisions except in cases involving long-term stays in mental health or nursing institutions, advocates said. As Dominguez made her rounds on Main Street, she repeatedly reassured people: “It’s not a public charge for the government.”
Dozens of vendors such as Dominguez have been talking up Medi-Cal as part of an unusual program that mobilizes street vendors around public health issues that are important to them. The program, run by the community health network AltaMed in partnership with the nonprofit Inclusive Action for the City, launched nearly two years ago and provides vendors a quarterly stipend for their efforts.
The street vendors “identified that their community members are undocumented people who have been historically excluded from all healthcare systems,” said Rosa Vazquez, manager for community mobilizing for the AltaMed Institute for Health Equity. Their biggest goal has been ensuring the people they reach get information “so that they can make the best choices for their own health.”
This year, that “has meant a particular focus on Medi-Cal expansion,” Vazquez said.
Rosa Vazquez, right, talks with Aurora Alejo, left, and Juana Dominguez during a training for street vendors by the AltaMed Institute for Health Equity.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
In November, the vendors gathered at a Boyle Heights office to learn about the state effort. Vazquez laid out details about income limits for the program, what it would cover, and how people could apply.
In the KFF/L.A. Times survey, more than a third of California immigrants who are probably undocumented — those who said they did not have valid visas, green cards or citizenship — said they steered clear of public programs that help pay for food, housing or healthcare because they didn’t want to draw attention to their own immigration status or that of a family member.
The survey also found that 70% were unsure if using such programs could decrease their chances of getting a green card, while another 16% believed that it would.
Under the Trump administration, a new rule added Medicaid to the list of assistance programs that could factor into public charge determinations. The rule was challenged in court and President Biden officially removed it shortly after taking office, but apprehension has remained.
Sarah Dar, a policy director with the California Immigrant Policy Center, said that “especially under the previous presidential administration, there was a message being sent to these communities that you’re not deserving of public benefits and you shouldn’t access services.”
In Fresno, those trusted messengers could include Centro La Familia Advocacy Services, a nonprofit founded more than half a century ago to help immigrants apply for government programs that had forms only in English. The nonprofit will be extending its hours on Saturdays to accommodate farmworkers, who often can’t make it to their centers during the week, as well as sharing information on Spanish-language Univision and heading directly to the fields to meet workers.
“It is still difficult” for many immigrants who lack the literacy skills to navigate Medi-Cal paperwork, even when translated into Spanish, said its executive director, Margarita Rocha.
TODEC Legal Center, an immigrant advocacy organization, provides similar outreach in the Inland Empire. Farmworkers there “don’t come to government institutions for aid because of the fear,” said Luz Gallegos, the group’s executive director. “We have to go to them.”
Gallegos said TODEC has been trying to raise awareness about Medi-Cal for years, starting with the first expansion that covered children regardless of immigration status. It has recruited farmworkers who signed up for coverage for themselves or their kids to encourage others to apply. Now these volunteers show off their Medi-Cal cards and share stories about how they benefited from the program.
The group has also brought Riverside and San Bernardino county officials out to work sites to register farmworkers for Medi-Cal, with its own volunteers on hand to help establish trust.
And in Mendocino County, workers at Anderson Valley Health Center in Boonville have been heading out to local vineyards, asking companies to tuck informational fliers alongside pay stubs, and phoning uninsured patients to let them know about the upcoming expansion.
“This group is probably the hardest” to reach compared with those who have gotten Medi-Cal so far, said Chloe Guazzone, executive director of the health center. As patients, “they don’t tend to come to us unless there’s an urgent issue because they’re uninsured,” she said, “so finding them in the first place” can be difficult.
In Los Angeles, Dominguez said she was motivated to bring information to her community by the death of her friend Angel Vasquez, a kindly jokester who lived near Paloma Market.
When Vasquez got COVID-19 the first winter of the pandemic, he held off on calling for an ambulance, Dominguez said. She says she believes he was worried about the cost. His son, also named Angel Vasquez, said family members in Guatemala told the man to go to the hospital, but Vasquez initially insisted it was just a fever.
“He went to the hospital very late — I think too late,” his son said.
Juana Dominguez hands out information about Medi-Cal along Main Street in South Los Angeles.
(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)
Vasquez died in May 2021 at the age of 55, his son said. Dominguez was haunted by the thought that if he had gone to the hospital sooner, her friend might have lived.
“My kids miss him a lot,” she said.
As she finished up her rounds on Main Street, she paused to point out where Vasquez had once lived. When she had the opportunity to reach out to neighbors about Medi-Cal, “I thought, ‘Juana, your community needs this information.’ … This gives me the drive to persist with it.”
California officials have estimated that more than 700,000 people will be able to transition from “restricted scope” to “full scope” Medi-Cal next year. Being in “restricted scope,” which helps reimburse hospitals for emergency care, means “they’re in the system, we know who they are … we know that they’re income-eligible for Medi-Cal,” said Anthony Wright, executive director of the healthcare consumer advocacy group Health Access California.
“It is an incredibly useful way to automatically enroll” people who will now gain coverage for a range of care needed beyond the emergency room, Wright said. “We’re really glad the state has taken efforts to try to do this as automatically and seamlessly as possible.”
California’s Department of Health Care Services said it’s unknown how many people who aren’t already in the “restricted scope” program will be newly eligible for Medi-Cal. The state has budgeted $1.4 billion for the expansion this fiscal year and $3.4 billion annually when it is fully implemented.
Researchers at UC Berkeley and UCLA estimate that among Californians under the age of 65, the Medi-Cal expansion will reduce the uninsured rate among immigrants without legal status from 58.4% to 27.8%. Despite that sharp reduction, it would still remain far higher than the estimated uninsured rate of 7% for all Californians in that age group.
Experts said hundreds of thousands of immigrants will remain uninsured because they make too much money to qualify for Medi-Cal, but don’t have affordable coverage through their employers.
Wright said people in that situation can buy health insurance on their own, “but then the question is, is it accessible? Is it affordable? Is it administratively easy?”
Those without legal status will remain ineligible for financial assistance to buy health coverage through Covered California, the state marketplace for insurance coverage. He and other advocates are now pushing the state to come up with an option to help them as well.
