The Desert Sun reports that as essential workers, farmworkers will likely have earlier access than most of the public to the COVID-19 vaccine when it becomes available for distribution. However, a coalition of California farmworker and health advocacy groups including the UFW Foundation (UFWF) say that farmworkers should be prioritized for vaccination at the same time as healthcare workers, who’ll likely be first.
UFWF Executive Director Diana Tellefson Torres told The Desert Sun that farmworkers “are feeding this nation, including all of the other essential workers, and they tend to be the most vulnerable.” Indeed, the virus has harshly impacted agricultural communities feeding America. “What we want to ensure is that farmworkers are seen as a priority,” Tellefson Torres continued, “and they are truly treated as essential in this context as well, given that they are putting their lives at risk on the ground.”
The Covid-19 Farmworker Study (COFS) conducted by the California Institute for Rural Studies (CIRS) earlier this year found “that farmworkers are contracting the virus at much higher rates than people in any other other occupation,” nonprofit environmental journalism organization InsideClimate News said in July.
“The CIRS has found that in Monterey County, farmworkers are three times more likely to contract the coronavirus than the general population,” the report said. “Farm hubs have the highest rates of Covid-19 in the state, and Latinx patients comprise the majority of cases in those hot spots.” Without the labor of farmworkers in the state, “the industry would collapse,” the report said. “California has the largest agricultural industry in the country, a $54 billion economy that is the backbone of the fifth largest national economy on the planet.”
“It is incumbent on California to prioritize farmworkers in vaccine distribution,” groups said in their policy brief according to The Desert Sun, “and to have a specific plan for reaching agricultural workers and their families, to allow them to make informed decisions about vaccines, free of the well-documented barriers to health equity.” Groups in the brief also included California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation, Alianza Coachella Valley, TODEC, the Dolores Huerta Foundation, the Central Valley Immigrant Integration Collaborative, the West Modesto Community Collaborative, Faith in the Valley, Líderes Campesinas, Visión y Compromiso, and Mixteco/Indigena Community Organizing Project, the report said.
Of course, farmworkers should be prioritized for the COVID-19 vaccine not just because they’re essential workers who feed the nation, but also because they’re deserving of rights, of dignity, and should be able to do their jobs safely. But instead, not only were undocumented farmworkers barred from financial relief even though they were deemed essential workers, the outgoing administration has published a rule that would freeze wages for hundreds of thousands of seasonal farmworkers for two years.
Their advocates called the decision, which was published by the Department of Labor (DOL) earlier this month, “unconscionable and utterly devoid of a valid justification.”
“The government has designated farmworkers as essential workers; they’re expected to work during a pandemic,” Farmworker Justice President Bruce Goldstein told HuffPost. “The federal government refused to mandate safety standards to protect farmworkers and others against COVID-19. Now the administration is punishing farmworkers by effectively cutting their wage rates. It’s just cruel and unreasonable.”
According to The Desert Sun, California’s draft vaccination plan prioritizes healthcare workers, followed by other essential workers. But as the report notes, prioritizing farmworkers along with healthcare workers would be just one step. The second would be reaching a community that has been fearful of the government. “As part of the policy brief,” The Desert Sun continued, “the coalition recommends that state officials create a team composed of community-based organizations, as well as experts in community outreach, communications and data, to provide advice on culturally and linguistically appropriate methods of outreach and communication to farmworkers.”