Farmworkers against California water bond
Published 4:00 am, Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Expensive water: $11 billion, or $800 million in annual debt payments for the next 30 years. That's how much Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's water bond will cost California's taxpayers and their children to subsidize the agricultural industry for decades to come.
Gov. Schwarzenegger obviously agrees that water is valuable and essential to human life. Yet, every time a farmworker dies from heat-related illness or dehydration, we're told that the state can't afford the cost of enforcing the laws to protect him or her.
The water bond that was recently approved by our lawmakers will give agricultural companies billions more in subsidized water. The state treasurer has asked the right question: Why aren't these giant ag industry operators paying for their water like everyone else?
The $800 million per year in annual bond payments required under the new water bond is more than California spends on health care for farmworkers and their children, more than the entire worker-safety budget, more than on farmworker housing, more than on pesticide regulations and food safety. In fact, it's more than all those things added together.
Two years ago, the United Farm Workers met with the governor to make our case for a solution for farmworker safety issues. We showed the governor that farmworkers who had a union contract were able to protect themselves and enforce the laws without fear of getting fired or blacklisted.
We showed the governor how the laws that allowed farmworkers the right to organize a union weren't working. But in 2007, the governor vetoed our legislation that would have allowed farmworkers a secure way to choose a union and protect themselves from threats if they demanded that laws be enforced. For the record, farmworkers with a union contract did not die from heat exhaustion or a lack of cool drinking water.
By our count, six farmworkers died of heat-related illness in 2008 - a clear indication that unrepresented agricultural workers were not receiving the full protection of the law. Once again, the governor vetoed the legislation.
When then-Speaker Fabian Núñez carried our legislation, he told us that the governor might see the logic of signing our bill if he could also deliver water to farmers.
This year, when Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg simultaneously authored our legislation and quarterbacked the water bond, the governor had the opportunity to do both. But the governor chose to sign the growers' water bond subsidy yet veto our legislation to protect farmworkers. Subsidized water for growers. No drinking water protections for farmworkers.
We see a clear and ironic link between a state government unwilling to enforce its own laws protecting farmworkers, a governor vetoing legislation to allow farmworkers to protect themselves, and a Legislature that bemoans budget cuts while giving the agriculture industry water subsidies at a cost of $800 million every year.
There are many good people with good reasons to oppose the bond.
Environmentalists oppose its weak delta protections. Northern Californians see it opening the way for a peripheral canal to send more water south. Educators see the drain on schools.
The UFW's reason for opposing the bond: We don't believe that the giant agriculture corporations should get more subsidized water until farmworkers get the right to protect themselves, including the right to clean and fresh drinking water.