Agricultural Workers face COVID-19

By Emma Savage

June 12, 2020

A tent’s white tarp crinkles in the crisp breeze. Plastic fabric clings to a PVC pipe as it sways in the wind. It’s dark. The tent is illuminated by a single lightbulb dangling from the canopy. A morning dew awaits the scorching, dry heat that will come later in the day. The smell of grass and black coffee looms in the air. Workers rise from their cots to put on layers of scarves, masks and gloves. A bus arrives to pick them up at a migrant camp in Monitor, Washington, where they live in single-room tents shared between six people. The bus brings them to a farm where they work long, labor-intensive hours. The stress of this lifestyle is exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. With the coronavirus spreading among agricultural workers and migrant camps, the industry is struggling to find ways to keep workers safe.

The agriculture industry is a cornerstone of the Wenatchee Valley economy. From the early days, apple and cherry orchards helped fuel the town’s growth. Today, as it has since the beginning, the industry relies on farmworkers to ensure the fruit is picked, sorted and distributed on a massive scale. Migrant farmworkers come from Mexico, among other countries, to work during the harvest season. Now, with the pandemic, farmers and farmworkers struggle to find the balance between keeping the industry humming and maintaining basic protections such as social distancing within farmworkers’ temporary living spaces and workplaces.

Rufus Woods, the former publisher of the Wenatchee World newspaper, said the agriculture industry is vital to the area’s economy. Now, the pandemic highlights the importance of farm labor, according to Woods.

But with that importance has come risk. Stemilt Growers is a massive tree fruit operation that grows, harvests, packs and distributes fruit. During a recent round of testing done by a local healthcare provider, Stemilt found 36 out of 71 total workers tested positive for COVID-19 at one of their sites. In a press release about the recent outbreak, Stemilt stated that they have “proactively followed Center for Disease Control (CDC) recommendations for spacing, hygiene and social distancing in its work processes.” Chelan and Douglas counties had 423 positive cases as of May 30.

Washington state Gov. Jay Inslee has issued regulations aimed at protecting the health and safety of farmworkers. The requirements include the availability of personal protective equipment for all workers, promotion of social distancing and disinfection of workspaces. However, the initial regulations were met with farmworker strikes and disease outbreaks in agricultural businesses. On May 28, Inslee amended the proclamations to clarify the original guidelines and create new guidelines, including greater access to personal protective equipment and spacing between workers on shuttles that bring them between the migrant camps and work.

The Washington State Department of Labor and Industries is also seeking to curb COVID-19 outbreaks with updated guidelines to promote social distancing in food processing warehouses and migrant camps. Warehouse managers are expected to enforce rules including maintaining a six-foot distance between workers, proper hand washing stations, breaks from work for hand washing, sanitizing common-touch surfaces, time off for sick employees, employee reporting of suspected or confirmed coronavirus cases and information about the coronavirus in languages employees understand.

At a May 28 press conference, Joel Sacks, the director of Labor and Industries, said that when it comes to agricultural workplaces “we have a number of inspections that are currently open.” Inspectors are checking for social distancing, adequate hand washing stations and sanitization of workspaces.

It’s one thing to create a list of regulations, but it’s another to enforce them. An orchard worker from Wenatchee who asked to remain anonymous out of fear of losing his job said Labor and Industries isn’t doing their part. “I like to be honest,” he said. “I don’t think Labor and Industries or whoever is giving enough help [to] the essential workers during this pandemic. There’s just not enough help.” The worker said he thinks that Labor and Industries should inspect all the agricultural businesses during this time.

“They haven’t been to the orchard. They just say, ‘Be careful.’” He said that workplace safety would be better if Labor and Industries stepped in, but he isn’t hopeful. “It’s sad, but it is what it is,” he said.

Efforts to protect migrant farmworkers during the pandemic face a number of hurdles. Cultural understanding significantly impacts people’s ability to access health services, said Deb Miller, executive director of Wenatchee-based Action Health Partners, which works to improve healthcare access in the area. When it comes to agricultural workers, many of whom migrate from other countries, health officials need to consider how they give them information, she said. “A lot of privileged leaders spend a lot of time trying to problem solve and come up with solutions for the people we’re trying to serve, but we fail to include them,” she said.

Miller recalled conversations at a dinner with Spanish-speaking families led by the Chelan/Douglas Health District a few years ago. She learned that migrant and Spanish-speaking families primarily get their information by word-of-mouth from coworkers and family. This means fliers, radio ads and newspaper articles may not be the most effective way for health officials to relay information to some communities.

Dawn Thomas, a former outreach specialist for migrant camps, said literacy and language are major barriers to educating farmworkers about slowing the spread of COVID-19. Some agricultural workers are from indigenous regions of Mexico and may not speak Spanish. In recent years, more workers have been coming from Jamaica, where people speak an English-based Creole language called Jamaican Patois. Spanish language signs and diagrams are not effective for the entire agricultural community.

Thomas said that a migrant camp in Monitor, a community just a few miles outside of Wenatchee, houses migrant workers in tents with multiple people. Cooking spaces are often shared. These living conditions led Thomas to believe that “the most easily feasible place to adhere to the distancing is when the farmworkers are working.”

Johanna Ruelas, the outreach coordinator at Columbia Valley Community Health who organizes COVID-19-related healthcare events for migrant camps, said that housing varies from camp to camp. Usually, people live in tents, cabins or a large house with shared sleeping and cooking spaces. Some living spaces have eight beds and others have 30. Typically, the beds are bunk beds with less than two feet of space between them. The camp managers she knows are restricting the number of people who sleep in the same room to 50% of the original capacity. Much of the camp’s facilities are communal and the restrooms are basically public, she said.

Ruelas works with the migrant camp managers to set up testing when they request it. They have tested two camps in Chelan County as of May 5, but so far they have gotten all negative results. Columbia Valley Community Health is working to educate migrant workers about proper hand washing techniques, how to wear a mask and how to stop the spread of COVID-19. They also provide medical services to camp residents and have given out masks to prevent the spread.

There were health and safety concerns about migrant worker housing even before the COVID-19 pandemic. In a 2015 study of living conditions, migrant workers expressed concern about exposure to pesticides, access to clean water, air quality and reliable electricity. Living conditions in migrant camps are regulated by the Migrant and Seasonal Farmworker Act, but many code violations still occur. Of the workers surveyed, 47% said their living conditions were average and 30% said their living conditions were poor.

Woods said that it’s not fair or humane to just say “That’s your problem.” Instead, he said people need to be asking, “How do I look after the whole community rather than just myself?”