The Heat Is On To Protect Workers

Asuncion Valdivia died in his son's car, on the way to a hospital, after he collapsed beside him in field during a 10-hour shift of grape picking in triple-digit heat.

Now his son, Luis Angel Valdivia, and union representatives are appealing to companies to take the commonsense measures that could have saved his life.

"There isn't much I can do now, but I don't want other workers to go through what I'm going through now," said Valdivia, who watched his 53-year-old father faint among the grapevines in a field outside Bakersfield, and die in his car last Wednesday, as he sped toward the hospital seeking medical help.

California's grape harvest happens in the middle of summer, when temperatures in the state's fertile Central Valley often soar past 100, and lead to frequent complaints of dizziness and nausea among workers- the symptoms of heat stroke, said Arturo Rodriguez, president of the United Farm Workers.

"There is not a whole lot we can do, except put pressure on the growers to give them what they need to take care of their bodies," said Rodriguez. "They just need to use common sense. If it's 100 degrees out, workers need more breaks, and more water, than the minimum required."

The state's Division of Occupational Health and Safety requires employers to give workers two 10-minute breaks in one day, plus a half-hour lunch. Cool water should also be provided. Workers confirmed there was enough water for them last Wednesday.

But there are no additional safety measures required — longer breaks, shade, salt tablets — to help workers stay hydrated when the heat reaches into the 90s and past 100, said Susan Gard, a spokeswoman for the state occupational safety program.

Employers are only required to report cases of heat stroke or other illnesses if the worker requires more than first-aid care, Gard said.

"Unfortunately, we only hear about it when it becomes a tragedy, if there is a 24-hour hospitalization or a death," she said.

The state database with numbers of heat stroke victims was not immediately accessible, Gard said.

The agency targets agriculture for additional enforcement because it recognizes the industry is dangerous, Gard said. It publishes an employers' guide on agricultural safety that mentions heat stroke as a cause for concern, and holds farm worker forums to educate them on their rights on the job, she said.

When temperatures soar and the men and women who pick produce work more than 10 hours a day to keep up with the season's peak workload, the minimum might not be enough, said Keith Jilmetti, a workers' compensation lawyer who is helping the family.

"The California labor code says it's the duty of employers to provide a safe and healthful work environment," said Jilmetti. "If they have to go above the minimum (to provide for a safe working environment) so be it."

The Giumarra Companies, which employed the Valdivias, started when the family patriarch, Joe Giumarra, set up a small fruit stand in downtown Los Angeles the early 1900s. What began as an immigrant family's small business has grown to a multinational conglomerate that works with growers in California and around the world, from Chile and Mexico to New Zealand and China.

"We have a great relationship with our people, and they come back year after year," the company's president, Joe Giumarra, said Monday. "We did the best we could to respond adequately."

He said heat stroke had not yet been determined as the cause of death in Valdivia's case, and autopsy results were expected in four to six weeks.

The foreman supervising the field where the father and son had been working initially called for medical help, but then canceled the call when the older worker regained consciousness, although he was never able to talk or walk on his own, his son said.

Giumarra said he knew the foreman called 911, but he said he's not sure what happened after that.

With medical help, his father might have survived, Valdivia said.

"I gave him the only thing I had — water," he said, adding that his father had only been in the United States for one month.

Workers' compensation insurance will cover the cost of sending Asuncion Valdivia's body back to Jalisco, where he has three other sons in the town of San Juan de los Lagos. But Luis Angel Valdivia, the 21-year-old son who was working alongside his father, will have to stay here. His mother died three years ago.

"I can't afford to go back," he said. "This is terrible, but I have to stay here and work. I have to help the family."

By Juliana Barbassa