State mandates emergency workplace COVID-19 protections, less crowding for guest farmworkers | Local News
“California should have done this six months ago. They didn’t,” said Berkowitz. “I’m glad they’re doing it now.”
Business advocates lined up to argue that the process for developing the rules was dangerously hasty and lacked public input. They pleaded for more revision and participation before it goes into effect.
Matt Rogers, general manager of AgSocio, a labor contractor that was certified to employ 72 H-2A workers in Salinas this year, said his company has taken extensive safety precautions and successfully contained two positive cases. But, he said, the standard would hurt his business by cutting in half the number of workers they could house.
“Six feet between beds is rigid and seems arbitrary,” Roger said. “I really don’t think there’s any difference between six feet between beds and five when these folks are sharing a living space.”
Rob Moutrie, a lobbyist for the California Chamber of Commerce, said the new rules may be too cumbersome for businesses to implement within a few weeks. He pointed to the requirement for employers to pay employees the entire time they are quarantined — a big labor law change that would usually be hammered out in the legislative process, not by a state agency.
Maggie Robbins, an occupational and environmental health specialist at Worksafe, which first called for the emergency standard in May, had a different take: “This is a really important way to provide workers the ability to say, ‘No I really can’t come in to work, I’m sick.’”
