Despite their status as essential workers, many farm workers say their safety is not being taken seriously by the very people who wrote the new emergency regulations intended to keep them safe. A study released recently, by the California Institute For Rural Studies shows that while farm workers have been lauded as essential and heroic by some, many would happily trade that praise for better protections from Covid-19….such as readily accessible masks and hand sanitizer at their worksites, the ability to socially distance from their co-workers (especially when being transported to and from the fields), and paid sick leave.
Farm workers also said that in many rural areas it can be very difficult to even find masks they can buy, much less get the ones they are supposed to be given for free.
