Bay City News: New Bill Would Provide Disaster Relief Support For Farm Workers
By Sarah Stierch
A bill to provide disaster relief to hundreds of thousands of farm workers was introduced by U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla.
If signed into law, the Disaster Relief for Farm Workers Act will provide compensation to farm workers who lose wages due to emergencies beyond their control. This includes extreme weather and public health emergencies, Padilla’s office said Wednesday.
According to Padilla (D-Calif.), an estimated 800,000 farm workers labor in fields, hothouses, orchards and ranches in California. The seasonal and year-round workers are essential to California’s $59 billion agricultural industry, helping to produce everything from strawberries to milk.
“California’s farm workers often work under extreme conditions to help put food on the table for hundreds of millions of Americans,” said Padilla.
However, few protections are available to most farm workers, including through existing federal disaster relief programs that help workers.
The bill is co-sponsored by Padilla and Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo. A companion bill is being introduced in Congress by Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-San Jose, and Rep. Andrea Salinas, D-Tigard, Ore.
It’s also been endorsed by over 80 organizations from across the country, including the United Farm Workers, an agricultural worker labor union that represents many California farm workers.
“Farm workers are always on the front lines of fires, floods, and storms — yet are too often excluded from federal disaster relief programs,” said Teresa Romero, president of UFW.
Romero believes that if the federal government can provide disaster relief support to farmers who lose crops during a disaster, they can provide support to the farm workers that would be picking those crops if it wasn’t for a disaster.
For Padilla and Lofgren, the 2023 flood in Pajaro, an unincorporated community in Monterey County, was the catalyst to create the legislation.
In March 2023, a 400-foot breach on the Pajaro River resulted in the flooding of the town, which displaced an estimated 3,500 individuals, mostly farmworkers, according to the Pajaro Flood Management Agency.
“Increasingly frequent natural disasters, including historic flooding in Pajaro, have devastated California’s agricultural communities,” Padilla said, “We must protect the heart of our nation’s food supply by providing critical emergency assistance to these essential workers.”
The bill includes the creation of a disaster assistance program managed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The program will include grants for farm worker organizations to directly distribute emergency relief and require the creation of an awareness campaign to inform workers of the program’s availability.
“The Disaster Relief for Farm Workers Act will ensure that farm workers who put food on all our tables can continue to put food on their family’s table when disaster strikes,” said Romero.
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