UFW turns up the heat (last year 12 died during the "BLACK SUMMER)

http://www.capitalpress.info/main.asp?SectionID=67&SubSectionID=616&ArticleID=51066&TM=56986.45

Union uses deaths to gain support for ‘card-check’ bill

Wes Sander
Capital Press

Reports of heat-related deaths among California's farmworkers in recent years - anywhere from a small handful to a dozen - have resulted mostly from new heat-stress rules, which include reporting requirements.

The state's enforcement agency holds that fact, among others, as evidence that its new rules are working. But United Farm Workers, which claims to represent some 27,000 farmworkers throughout the year, cites those deaths as reason for making it easier to unionize workers.


Workers in this Jackson and Perkins rose operation have umbrellas to shade them while they tie rose plants to stakes. - Cecilia Parsons, Capital Press


Union head Arturo Rodriguez, arguing for a bill that would allow greater leeway in how the union obtains workers' votes, claims the state is unable to enforce its own rules.

"There has been a regulation in existence now for several years, and the reality has been (that) the state of California is not in a position to enforce that regulation," Rodriguez said at a press conference in support of SB789, a bill approved by the Senate on April 23 that would allow the "card-check" form of union voting, in addition to the secret-ballot process currently required.

But Len Welsh, chief of California's Division of Occupational Safety and Health (Cal-OSHA), the enforcement arm of the Department of Industrial Relations, argues that the state has only just gotten started. And the efforts of his department, Welsh says, are already showing effects.

"We're getting reports because people are aware of (heat dangers) now, because we've made them aware," Welsh said. "In 2005 we started seeing a degree of reporting that we hadn't seen."

FULL story at link.