Why are people dying to bring you dinner? America's sweatshop farm workers...

Cesar Chavez, the champion of farmworkers' rights who gets his annual day of state recognition this Saturday, must be rolling in his grave. It's been 37 years since Governor Jerry Brown, in an earlier life, signed the landmark agricultural labor relations act--and soon California legislators will debate whether to enforce rules to provide water and shade to the 400,000 farmworkers who harvest our food.

According to Assemblymember Betsy Butler, D-Los Angeles, author of the Farmworker Safety Act of 2012, "At least 16 farm workers have died since the state issued emergency regulations related to heat illness in 2005. Since all of the deaths were preventable, it's clear that the regulations and their enforcement are ineffective."

Let's replay that: every year farmworkers are dying from thirst and heat exposure due to inadequate water and shade.

In announcing AB 2346, Butler added: "It is absolutely abhorrent to think that in this day and age, farm workers are not regularly provided with shade and water. These two commodities are essentially free and we all know that no grower would let their crops go without water." Full story...

Related posts:

1. Scathing report about working conditions in Apple's Foxconn...
2. New Zealand's sweat-shop slaves...
3. The slave children of Bangladesh (Photostory)
4. Monsanto abusing illegal workers in "slave-like" conditions...
5. Waves of suicides among Indian famers...
6. 23 farmers slaughtered in Honduras in the name of global warming...
7. Chinese farmers protest land seizures...