Already trying to manage harvests amid a pandemic, Southern Oregon farmworkers are further set back by wildfires
Erica Sanchez spent the end of her first season as a farmworker in Southern Oregon dodging historic blazes, bouncing from hotels and overcrowded labor camps and enduring a global pandemic. But she said what she really wants the world to know is that her life is boring.
“When I open my eyes, I see pears. When I close my eyes, I see pears,” Sanchez said while sitting on the porch of a house with no kitchen and peeling paint, surrounded by apple orchards.
This house in the suburbs of Medford is her fourth temporary home since evacuating the nearby town of Talent a week earlier, where the Almeda wildfire devastated the small community and reduced homes to ash.
The fire also contributed to unhealthy levels of smoke and airborne particulate matter, prompting state workplace and health officials to urge employers to stop or delay outdoor work activity when air quality levels exceed an Air Quality Index of 150.
Sanchez’s job is to fill half-ton bins with pears for Harry & David, one of the Rogue Valley’s largest employers and a Medford institution known for its fruited gift baskets. She and other workers who spoke to Street Roots said they continued to work during a week that saw Air Quality Index levels break 300 and later hover around 250.
State epidemiologist Dean Sidelinger warned that the heightened risk of respiratory infections associated with increased pollution could have “serious implications” during the COVID-19 pandemic — particularly for Hispanic people who continue to be disproportionately affected by the coronavirus.
STREET ROOTS NEWS: Oregon farmworkers lack safety net as pandemic threatens jobs, health
Kathy Keesee-Morales, program director for the farmworker and immigrant advocacy group UNETE, has been helping coordinate outreach efforts and distributions of personal protective equipment to farm labor camps after Gov. Kate Brown announced $30 million in COVID-19 relief funding for essential farmworkers.
But despite the outreach and new temporary housing rules from Oregon Occupational Safety and Health Division that are in effect until October, Keesee-Morales said the public health taskforce she belongs to estimates around 48% of Jackson County’s positive coronavirus cases have occurred in the Hispanic community.
“Unfortunately, we saw a lot of COVID outbreaks in the smaller farms where people said that they weren’t allowed to socially distance,” Keesee-Morales said. “And when someone said they didn’t feel well, they were still basically being forced to come back into work.”
Keesee-Morales’ husband, Dagoberto Morales, also with UNETE, said he has heard multiple accounts of workers in the Rogue Valley’s burgeoning hemp and marijuana industries being denied pay, a trend confirmed by Oregon’s Bureau of Labor and Industries (BOLI).
“The two main employment issues we are seeing in the hemp and marijuana industry in Southern Oregon are the use of unlicensed farm labor contractors and wage theft,” said BOLI spokesperson Jenny Smith.
Smith said workers often get paychecks for less than they’re owed, or are not paid at all. “We’ve received numerous claims against unlicensed labor contractors who have not paid their workers in full.”
Sanchez said her father is currently living in the county’s largest registered labor camp, the same camp where Morales worked before Sanchez was born.
“My father has been doing this for 20 years,” Sanchez said. “I thought it would be fun to try it and make some money, but now I’m just exhausted, and I want to go home.”
Sanchez’s first home is 970 miles away, on the Mexico side of twin border cities hugging the Colorado river as it flows from Arizona into the Mexican state of Sonora. It’s a politically charged area associated with the controversial border wall and the anti-immigrant rhetoric surrounding it. Sanchez said racism and discrimination are something she has gotten used to. But lately she doesn’t spend too much time thinking about politics.
“You just have to keep going,” she said.
Ron Meyer, a third-generation pear farmer from Talent, said he has increasingly had to rely on migrant labor to keep his farm going. But international competition, rising labor costs, and the consolidation of grocery stores and the agricultural sector have all contributed to decades where he was lucky to break even.
“Those of us who chose to continue with pear farming, or farming in general, feel that we probably made a mistake,” Meyer said. “At the time, it looked like a good way to make a living and be your own boss and all that.”
At the same time Meyer appeared in a local news segment alongside clips of heavy machinery uprooting pear orchards alongside the highway, Harry & David’s parent company, 1-800-FLOWERS.COM, courted investors with reports of $1.5 billion in revenue for fiscal year 2020.
“Farmers and ranchers are already under tremendous economic pressure after years of lower prices received, and now they are facing additional hardship from the pandemic,” said Anne Marie Moss, spokeswoman for the Oregon Farm Bureau, which represents approximately 6,600 farmers and ranchers.“We’re calling people essential, but yet we’re not willing to provide them the benefits or the protections that they need so that they can continue to work,” said Eva Galvez, who pushed for improved living and working standards for farmworkers. Galvez acknowledged the difficult position of employers who need harvests to pay their workers but said climate change is prompting the need for “a conversation that is happening outside and within the community about what we value.”
“Farmers are still going to be out there every year,” she said. “They have to be — that’s how we supply our food. Some of us are just sort of saying, OK, we’ll get through this and in a few more days the air quality will be better. But is this going to happen next year as well?”
Street Roots is an award-winning, weekly publication focusing on economic, environmental and social justice issues. The newspaper is sold in Portland, Oregon, by people experiencing homelessness and/or extreme poverty as means of earning an income with dignity. Street Roots newspaper operates independently of Street Roots advocacy and is a part of the Street Roots organization. Learn more about Street Roots. Support your community newspaper by making a one-time or recurring gift today.
© 2020 Street Roots. All rights reserved. | To request permission to reuse content, email editor@streetroots.org or call 503-228-5657, ext. 404.
