THE DESERT SUN (Palm Springs, California) July 2, 2006
Editorial Migrant workers' living conditions unacceptable in valley
It is distressing that in one of the nation's most affluent areas our seasonal farmworkers must live in the conditions that they do. For six weeks every summer, some 15,000 farmworkers picking grapes at the valley's east end live in appalling conditions. Every night, many of them sleep on the ground in dirt parking lots while others cram into small houses, sometimes up to eight people to a room not much larger than a couple of office cubicles. Many bathe in drainage ditches, using water polluted by pesticides and animal feces, and have the rashes to show for it, the California Water Quality Control Board reports. The odor from piles of trash and the few portable toilets available wafts through some of the camps. Flies and mosquitoes menace workers as they rest in the open. Cardboard boxes often are the only mattresses. In a 1999 visit to Mecca, former federal Housing Secretary Andrew Cuomo called the situation "disgraceful," yet little has changed since then. Obviously, the lack of housing and facilities for proper hygiene is a complex and enormous issue. But this not something that anyone in the valley with a respect for human dignity can feel proud of. Valley growers, the county, the state, farmworker advocacy groups and other involved agencies must come together to find a solution to this problem. Trapped in poverty It is not so simple as "migrant workers can quit if they don't like it." Migrant laborers often find themselves trapped in poverty. The median nationwide annual farmworker income was about $9,000 in 2002, the U.S. Department of Agriculture notes. Like the homeless, migrant labor has difficulty receiving job training, and lack telephones and bath facilities needed to successfully apply for other jobs. Current efforts to help meet migrant workers' housing and hygiene needs, while laudatory, fall short. The Coachella Valley Housing Coalition runs the only subsidized migrant housing in the valley - a 128-bed complex that turns away up to 200 people a day. Though an 88-bed addition is planned, that hardly will meet the needs of 15,000 workers. In addition, the Riverside County and the Desert Alliance for Community Empowerment operate 18 showers near Mecca. But many migrant workers know nothing about the showers. They're hardly enough as it is. If all migrant workers showered there each for a single minute, 14 hours still would be needed for everyone to go through them. Time to find solution Solutions do exist. Sonoma County grape growers have opened nearly 700 beds in new housing for migrant labor. Napa County growers pay a special tax that helps fund housing. Washington state erects dozens of large tents. Locally, we need to find a solution that best works for the valley. The status quo isn't it, though. Indeed, in the 21st century, it is unthinkable that such horrid conditions still exist for our seasonal farmworkers. We can do better in the Coachella Valley. We must.
|