Cultural Isolation A Health Threat to Punjabi Farm Workers
India West With a NAM Fellowship, News Feature, Ketaki Gokhale, Posted: Jun 14, 2007
Editor's Note: Language and cultural barriers have long isolated Punjabi farm laborers in the Sacramento Valley. Activists stress the need for communication as workers continue to suffer from exposure to toxic chemicals, as well as low wages and little access to health care. India-West was awarded a fellowship from the California Wellness Foundation and NAM to research and report on environmental health issues.
MARYSVILLE, Calif. — As the mild days of spring give way to the blistering heat of summer, hundreds of Indian farm workers will take to the peach orchards here to help with the harvest. Kulwant Johl, a local grower who owns 900 acres of peach, prune and almond trees, says that he prefers Indian workers.
“We can’t do it without the Mexicans, but we always hire Indians first,” said Johl.
This preference, however, is a double-edged sword for farm-working Punjabis in the area, who often endure hazardous working conditions, substandard pay, and little or no access to health care.
According to the 2000 census estimates, there could be as many as 2,000 Punjabi farm laborers living in Sutter and its neighboring Yuba County in the Sacramento River valley, where Punjabis have been farmers since the turn of the century. Most are recent immigrants from remote Punjabi farming communities, who have entered the U.S. legally through family connections. Others are the elderly relatives of established Punjabi American families.
Johl estimates that these Punjabi workers represent approximately 15 percent of the farm labor force in the Yuba-Sutter area. And yet, surprisingly little is known about them.
Part of the problem is that California government agencies designated to protect the rights of farm workers, such as the Employment Development Department and the Agricultural Labor Relations Board, do not have Punjabi-speaking outreach workers.
Omaira Munoz, an outreach coordinator for the agency in Marysville, says another problem is that farm workers are deeply suspicious of government workers. “They don’t want to talk to me, ” said Munoz. “Especially the women. They look at the men and expect them to answer. I think it might be a cultural thing.”
Farm labor rights activists say that there is a pressing need to establish communication with this isolated community. The majority of Punjabi farm laborers work for the 300-plus Indian American growers in Sutter and Yuba counties, where they have built a fruit, nut and berry-growing industry that brings nearly $200 million a year in revenues.
Last year, five Indian American farmers paid fines for failing to provide workers with coveralls when they worked with what the EPA calls “category I and II” pesticides — insecticides and ground fumigants known to be highly toxic. In peach growing, these include diazinon and methidathion — pesticides sprayed in the spring and summer to control the peach twig borer, a moth whose larvae burrow into the fruit’s flesh.
When sprayed by workers not garbed in protective gear, the chemicals can be absorbed into the body through the skin, causing hives, flu-like symptoms, stomach cramps, diarrhea and blurred vision.
Both the chemicals are in a class of insecticides known as organophosphates, which includes some of the deadliest substances used in agriculture. Organophosphates kill insects by disrupting their brain and nervous systems, and can trigger some of the same reactions in humans.
Exposure has also been linked to impaired neurological development in fetuses and in infants, chronic fatigue syndrome and Parkinson’s disease.
Four Indian American growers have paid fines for failing to comply with California Food and Agriculture regulations that require farmers to provide workers with protective equipment, including respirators and goggles when necessary; and decontamination facilities, including eye flushes, soap and towels.
These amenities are of particular importance for workers who mix, load or apply herbicides in the summertime.
Plumes of spray cloud the air, and, in the summer, when temperatures rise into the triple digits, they evaporate, becoming easy to inhale or ingest. Workers who don’t wear goggles and respirators could experience burning eyes, skin and respiratory tracts; fluid-filled lungs; internal tissue lesions and hemorrhaging; lung fibrosis; and, in high-concentration exposures, death.
But the most common and far-reaching violations are the seemingly trivial ones — a failure to post emergency medical care information, or to provide fresh drinking water.
Faith Boucher, a former UC Davis researcher who spent several years administering the university’s Minority Farmers Education program in Sutter County, said dehydration among Punjabi farm workers is of particular concern because of their propensity to develop cardiovascular disease.
“A new Western diet, combined with dehydration from hours of work in a hot field with no water — that can upset your electrolyte balance and lead to heart disease,” said Boucher.
All told, Indian American growers in California have paid more than $15,000 in field violation fines to county agricultural commissioners in the past two years. There’s no way to accurately measure the human cost of their infractions, however.
In Mahal Plaza, a Yuba City housing complex for low-income farm workers, two women in their seventies, white dupattas drawn over their heads, sit in the sun, knitting and chatting. “The work is hard, and we are old, but we keep doing it so we can contribute something to our families,” said one woman. “We have no choice but to do this work — it’s all we know.” The women sort and pick peaches and climb ladders to prune the trees in the winter,
Over 50 families, mostly of Punjabi descent, reside in varying states of prosperity in the drab, gray complex.
Harpreet Kaur (not her real name) has been working in peach orchards and nurseries for several years. She would love to find a full-time job at a factory, because the work is a little safer and is done indoors. But to qualify to live in Mahal Plaza, a majority of one’s income has to come from farm work. If Kaur took a job in a factory, chances are that she, her husband and their two teenage daughters would be without a home.
Like many of the men living in Mahal Plaza, Kaur’s husband doesn’t work. Last spring, while moving irrigation pipes in a Marysville orchard, his foot got stuck under a pipe. In his struggle to extricate it, much of the skin was gouged off his leg. “The foreman followed the rules and took him to the hospital,” said Kaur, “but he wasn’t invited to work again.”
For the past year, the family has been scraping by on income from Kaur’s seasonal farm work and unemployment checks, and her husband’s disability income. Kaur finds farm work physically draining and debilitating, but she has no choice but to continue with it. During the harvest season, she will often work over 10 hours a day without being paid overtime wages. She gets two 10-minute breaks for eight hours of work, and lunches are unpaid.
“I am on my feet all the time,” said Kaur. “My feet and back ache, and I’ve sprained both my ankles.” When asked why she doesn’t collect workman’s compensation for these injuries, she replied, with a meaningful look at her husband, “Because they’ll just not call me back in for work.”
Though there are legal protections in place for employees who fear such discrimination, Kaur remains unconvinced.
“The fear of retaliation is strong among agricultural workers,” said Dean Fryer, a spokesman for the California Department of Industrial Relations. Fryer investigates workman’s compensation claims and overtime payment issues. “Historically, we’ve not had workers come out with complaints — that’s why we target agriculture as a place for enforcement.” However, DIR does not have a Punjabi-speaking outreach coordinator.
Like Harpreet, Kamaljit Kaur doesn’t want her real name used because she is afraid of being blacklisted by farm labor contractors.
She’s been working in peach orchards and with kiwis since May 2002, when her husband stopped working because of a severe injury. They had only been in the U.S. for two years at the time. Kamaljit said he had been walking on the conveyor belt of a walnut harvester, when he slipped and fell, hitting his head on a hard, metal object on his way down. He lost consciousness from the internal bleeding.
The grower refused to cover his medical costs and recorded the incident as a seizure rather than a work-related injury.
“We had to hire a lawyer to fight the case,” said Kamaljit. “In the end, we won and, now, that farmer is paying our medical expenses through his insurance company. But it took four years to resolve.”
During those years, the family didn’t receive any insurance payments; they survived on unemployment and disability checks, and the little bit of income she received from her work in the fields.
While Kamaljit has not faced circumstances as trying as her husband’s, she has her own catalog of grievances. “Small growers are the worst when it comes to providing amenities,” she said. “Some of the farms I’ve worked at provide only a set amount of drinking water. When it runs out, they don’t replace it. Only one farm I know of has safety instructions and signs in Punjabi, and there are lots of places that don’t cover injuries.”
Employers are required by California law to offer workman’s compensation. Johl offers insurance to his laborers, but complains that the rates are exorbitant, and that they increase with the number of injuries that occur on the premises. Fryer, however, points out that the workman’s compensation system rewards “a strong safety culture.”
“If the farmer’s injury rate is low, and he’s putting money into training and safety for his employees, the system rewards it,” he explained. “We would rather they put the money into creating a safer workplace than paying higher premiums. But, unfortunately, cutting corners is not uncommon in agriculture.”
And sometimes, it can be done in ways that the government can’t track. “Indian farmers overwork their people,” said Kamaljit. “For example, for a task that requires four workers, they’ll hire two. That makes the work more unsafe and tiring.” She added that Indian American growers often discriminate against the elderly, because “they think that a younger person can do the work of two older people, even though these old people need the jobs the most.”
Like other farm workers in Mahal Plaza, Kamaljit has never been paid overtime wages by either the growers or labor contractors she has worked with.
Before his injury, her husband would also work 16-hour days routinely though was never paid overtime.
On most days, Kamaljit works about 10 hours, getting just two 15-minute breaks and an unpaid lunch. Between work, caring for her husband, and worrying about money, health benefits are an afterthought. “Farmers should take care of the injured, so they don’t starve,” she added.
The majority of Mahal Plaza’s residents seem to rely on the county’s public health department for basic health services, and on fee-for-service private physicians, for non-primary care.
But what poses the greatest danger to the Punjabi farm-working community, according to Kamaljit, is its cultural isolation. “Most of us don’t speak English, and the people who want to help us don’t speak Punjabi,” she said. “We don’t know what we’re missing out on. Something wrong could be happening, but we would never know it.”
Interviews at Mahal Plaza were conducted with the help of Punjabi translator Jaspreet Gill.
Photography credit: Som Sharma
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