To the editor: In 1973, I set out from UC Berkeley, new educating credential in hand, to my first job in Indio, within the Coachella Valley. My husband was to show in close by Thermal. We had been shocked on the waste of water and electrical energy — sprinklers going noon and air conditioners turned up so chilly that I might take a sweater to buy groceries. (“113 levels at work, failing AC at house: Farmworkers can’t escape life-threatening warmth,” Aug. 16)
Many college students had been the kids of farmworkers, and the situations described in your article on the dearth of dependable air-con of their houses had been virtually precisely the identical then as now.
Oh, however wait — now Thermal has a non-public group, The Thermal Membership, with a world-class race monitor for folk who want such a factor. The place does the water come from for his or her customized automotive wash station? Why is their water protected to drink out of the tap? How typically does their air-con exit? Do they get pleasure from chilly melon and strawberries by their swimming pools?
Who permitted all this high-end development with out constructing in concerns for the encircling group of people that decide our meals?
After I was within the Coachella Valley, representatives from the United Farm Employees had been on the market urging farmworkers to affix, they usually had been profitable in getting larger wages. However in spite of everything these years, they nonetheless earn solely $15.50 an hour for backbreaking work within the warmth. The inequity remains to be stunning.
Janice Segall, Pasadena
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To the editor: Many issues are unjust in our society, however our therapy of farmworkers is off the chart.
Those that put meals on our desk, the folks whom we acknowledged throughout the pandemic as a few of our actually important staff, earn round $15 per hour. For this miserly wage, they’re requested to toil and reside in probably the most inhumane situations possible.
That their employers resist offering the barest minimal of reduction within the searing solar — clear water, some shade and work breaks — is past comprehension. That minimally acceptable housing isn’t out there to them is grotesque.
Farm labor, based on the U.S. Division of Agriculture, accounts for under 7.4 cents of our meals greenback. Farmworkers have been underpaid and mistreated for a lot too lengthy. State and native officers, are you listening?
Grace Bertalot, Anaheim
