Sonoma County panel to examine farmworker safety

The Sonoma County Latino leadership group Los Cien will revisit the topic of farmworker safety during a panel discussion Friday, a conversation that follows a year of mounting concerns surrounding the issue.

The panel, which is scheduled for 12:30 p.m. at Epicenter in Santa Rosa, will take place as California dives deeper into wildfire season, which so far has included massive blazes in Siskiyou County’s Klamath River and in and around Yosemite National Park.

Titled “Behind the Lines Part 2 - Moving Toward Farmworker Safety,” the discussion will explore the negative impacts intensifying climate change has on farmworkers in Sonoma County, and how institutions and government policies can adapt to meet those challenges, Los Cien program committee member Kerry Fugett said.

The speakers include two members of the local wine industry: Rob Izzo, a general manager at Sonoma’s Eco Terreno Wines & Vineyards; and Mike Martini, a former Santa Rosa mayor and the owner of Taft Street Winery in Sebastopol.

Anayeli Guzman, a farmworker aligned with North Bay Jobs with Justice, a nonprofit that has advocated for more protections for farmworkers during emergencies, will also sit on the panel.

Sonoma County Supervisor Chris Coursey was scheduled to be part of Friday’s panel but was unable to due to a scheduling conflict, he said.

Fugett said Los Cien’s program committee chose to revisit the topic of farmworker safety, following an initial panel in September, in part because of the local advocacy groups’ and county leaders’ interests in the issue.

“We’re framing (Friday’s panel) at the high level of, ‘What has been done in the last year, what progress has been made since we last held this conversation and what are the immediate needs for farmworkers,’” Fugett said.

The panel will take place about two weeks before county staff are expected to present the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors with a comprehensive plan for granting farmers and their employees access to their lands and crops during mandatory evacuations.

North Bay Jobs with Justice, joined by local farmworkers, has asked county leaders to make certain worker protections such as hazard pay and access to safety information in workers’ native language a condition for farmers who receive special access to their properties during mandatory evacuations.

Representatives of the local agriculture and wine industry, including the Sonoma County Farm Bureau and Sonoma Wine Industry for Safe Employees, a new wine industry group, contend farmworkers are already kept safe.

They’ve instead asked for the issue of evacuation access to be overseen by the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office. The agency would determine who should be allowed to access property depending on the risk.

After a public county board meeting about the evacuation access issue last month, supervisors directed county staff to present on Aug. 30 a policy draft that could fill in the key specifics about who should be let into evacuation zones and how.

Coursey said that presentation is still expected to happen at the specified time.

“What that looks like, I don’t know,” Coursey said, referring to the policy draft staff will present. “We had a pretty wide ranging discussion on that. I think that I was pretty clear about what I thought it should be but I’m not sure if we as a group gave clear direction.”

Los Cien’s first panel on the topic of farmworker safety last year included a presentation from representatives from Cal/OSHA, the state’s workplace safety agency, and North Bay Jobs with Justice.

At that time, North Bay Jobs with Justice had recently launched a campaign to secure farmworker safety and wage protections through voluntary agreements with local winery and vineyard owners.

The effort failed to get off the ground, prompting the group to ask county leaders to step in instead.

You can reach Staff Writer Nashelly Chavez at 707-521-5203 or nashelly.chavez@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @nashellytweets.