Agricultural work is physically demanding, and that work gets even more exhausting during the summer months, which are getting hotter and hotter each year due to climate change. As a country, we depend on farm workers to keep us fed and nourished, but how they do that is often invisible to consumers. We’ll hear from a farm worker about her experiences in the field under the hot sun, and from an organization taking steps to guarantee better protections for farm workers like her. In this episode, we’re talking about building change for farm workers. Learn more about how you can build change at actblue.com/buildthechange or follow us on Instagram and TikTok.
Agricultural work is physically demanding, and that work gets even more exhausting during the summer months, which are getting hotter and hotter each year due to climate change. As a country, we depend on farm workers to keep us fed and nourished, but how they do that is often invisible to consumers. We’ll hear from a farm worker about her experiences in the field under the hot sun, and from an organization taking steps to guarantee better protections for farm workers like her.
In this episode, we’re talking about building change for farm workers.
Learn more about how you can build change at actblue.com/buildthechange or follow us on Instagram and TikTok.
BUILD THE CHANGE
Ep 5 - Transcript
ALOK
Just a note before we get started that this episode contains an interview done entirely in Spanish. I want our non-Spanish speaking listeners to rest assured that you’ll still be able to follow along. If you do speak Spanish, you’ll just get a little bit more out of this episode!
Depending on the day, Esther Ruiz wakes up as early as 3 am. She has to go to the bus stop in time for the 2-hour bus ride to the fields, where she helps grow broccoli, lettuce, and asparagus.
In May, June, July, August… it gets hot in Yuma, Arizona, where she works.
ESTHER
Cuando te toca trabajar en los meses Mayo, Junio, o Julio que se viene el calor – que estamos próximos ya – es de alguna manera tenso. Bastante porque las corrientes de calor son tensiones.
ALOK
Sometimes, by 6 am — when the sun is barely even up — Esther can already feel the temperature climbing.
ESTHER
Estamos hablando de 75 grados cuando el calor está tormentoso y más, sin embargo, pues te toca trabajar a esas, a esas altas temperaturas. ¿No? Casi, eh, a veces entramos a las cuatro de la mañana. Ya para las cinco o seis ya estás sintiendo el rigor, lo que es el calor.
ALOK
The vegetables Esther works with are all small plants that grow close to the ground. They don’t provide any natural shade like citrus trees do. So, it doesn’t take much more than an hour of work for sweat to start running down her skin, and she has to ask for water. To get through the intense heat, she breathes deep and concentrates on her work.
ESTHER
Y mientras tú te cons, te con, te concentras estar haciendo tu trabajo, vas ya meditando y tu cuerpo ya va respirando ese calor intenso. Desde que empiezas, a la primera hora. Ya va tu cuerpo, eh, sudando. Tu, tu sudor corre por toda la piel. Es un, es desgaste. ¿Verdad? Entonces, ya a la hora o dos horas, ya vas pidiendo una botella de agua.
ALOK
Esther says they aren’t offered any shelter to offer respite from the sun. The only solace in terms of shade is the clothing Esther and her coworkers bring themselves: a hat to cover their heads, a bandana to cover their faces, and a long-sleeve shirt to cover their arms.
ESTHER
Mira, aquí la única protección que tenemos es el sombrero, el paño que llevas en tu cara, o el pasamontañas que te pones para prevenir los rayos solares. De allí en fuera — no brazos — nada, absolutamente nada. Los lados tu volteas, no tienes ni una sombra.
ALOK
Esther remembers when she first started working in Arizona ten years ago, when 115 degree days were rare. Now, they’re the new normal.
[music]
Agricultural work is physically demanding. And that work gets even more exhausting during the summer months, which are getting hotter and hotter each year due to climate change.
Yet only five states have standards in place that protect outdoor workers from the heat and sun: California, Oregon, Washington, Colorado, and Minnesota. The rest don’t have any laws in place. It’s up to local governments, or the growers, to provide basic heat protections.
As a country, we depend on farm workers to keep us fed and nourished. But how they do that is often invisible to consumers. That’s why organizations like United Farm Workers Foundation are providing a path for farm workers to share their experiences, and hopefully, work toward safer conditions.
[THEME MUSIC STARTS]
ALOK
In partnership with ActBlue, this is Build the Change, a show about the people at the center of progress. I’m your host, Alok Vaid-Menon. I’m an author, poet, actor, advocate… And your companion for this trip around the country. We’re in search of the most compelling causes, and stories from the candidates, activists, and everyday people driving them forward.
This episode, we’re looking at how workers speaking out can create lasting change. And how one organization is working to uplift and amplify those workers’ voices to raise awareness and pass better, more protective legislation.
[THEME MUSIC ENDS]
ALOK
Arizona, where Esther Ruiz lives and works, is one of the majority of states with no heat regulations in place. She’s been a farm worker in the United States for about 10 years now.
ESTHER
Soy campesina hace 10 años. Eh, bueno — ya trabajaba en el cultivo, pero en México. Siempre he trabajado campo, pero aquí en los Estados Unidos, tengo 10 años para el campo…
ALOK
Esther immigrated to the United States from Mexico ten years ago and quickly got a job as a farmer in Arizona. She says farm work is the fastest job you can secure, but it’s also the most laborious one.
To Esther, the job has its pros and cons. For one, working in the field can be beautiful.
ESTHER
Los cuales he disfrutado, de una a otra forma, porque es, es bello trabajar en el campo. ¿Verdad? Tiene sus pros y sus contras. ¿A qué me refiero?
ALOK
And it can be gratifying to be the one who brings food to people’s kitchen tables. But the work is physically demanding, and the hours are long. The job brings a mix of tears, fatigue, and satisfaction.
ESTHER
Bueno, pues, que es el trabajo más, más pesado. Por supuesto que el campo es una de las, de los trabajos bastante pesados – pero productivos. ¿No? Productivos, porque tienes el placer de llevar el alimento. Lo que uno cosecha, lo pone en la mesa para los nuestros. Y por lo tanto, trae de todo. Trae lágrimas, cansancio, a veces satisfacciones. ¿Verdad?
ALOK
On an average work day, Esther gets a ten minute break and a 30-minute break for lunch.
ESTHER
Tenemos los 10 minutos, y, y tu media hora.Y ya no pasa más.
ALOK
They can ask for longer breaks, but they aren’t always given, and they have to find someone to cover for them. She says that’s because the biggest priority is often the pace of production. She says bosses don’t care if their bodies are suffering after effects, or if the sun is burning their skin.
ESTHER
¿Por qué? Porque a ellos les importa la producción. Les importa que la máquina vaya corriendo, pero no les importa si tú sufres secuelas en tu cuerpo, si tus quemaduras van ya marcando.
ALOK
This is the side that many people don’t see. Every day, consumers go to the market, and get their beautiful fruits and vegetables.
ESTHER
Cuando esa fruta, esa lechuga llega a su mesa, creo que ellos no tienen ni la remota idea cómo llega.
ALOK
But in order to get the crops there, it takes a lot of dangerous work.
ESTHER
Se ve bonita en el mercado, pero vuelvo y yo lo digo, que ya lleva lágrimas. Lleva cansancio, lleva estragos y secuelas en nuestra piel.
ALOK
The United Farm Workers Foundation, a nonprofit that offers legal services, educational resources, and empowerment tools to farm workers, is fighting to make these experiences more visible.
NANCY
just by sharing how a day of a farm worker looks like, um, the audience of the public or any representative can capture easily the struggle of a farm worker, not just the, the labor part, but the impact also physically, you know, their bodies, how it's working, how it is working on their hot temperatures.
ALOK
That’s Nancy Orapeza. She’s a systemic change coordinator for the UFW Foundation. Basically, Nancy’s job is to help farm workers tell their stories, so they can inspire change.
In addition to encouraging farm workers to share their testimonies, Nancy and the UFW Foundation are calling on the Department of Labor and OSHA to immediately issue a nationwide permanent rule on heat protection standards for outdoor workers.
What exactly would a rule like that do? It would ensure farm workers are provided four basic things. Here’s Nancy:
NANCY
We always start with water. Water must be free, drinkable, fresh, and located close to where they're working.
ALOK
Next, there’s employer-provided emergency training.
NANCY
If I talk to 10 farm workers, for sure, eight of of 10 phone workers are gonna tell me that they have not been trained on what to do in case of an emergency. Then restrooms. There must be restrooms, uh, for men and women. And then shade. Shade needs to be provided when the temperature reaches to 80, 80 degrees there. When reach 95 degrees and up the, the employer must provide a 10 minute break.
ALOK
Things as simple as shade, water, and sunscreen would help farm workers like Esther do their jobs more safely.
ESTHER
Necesitamos, que no es tanto pedir una sombra, cajas de suero, cajas de agua, tu, tu protección de mangas. Que esos rayos solares no quemen tu piel.
ALOK
Last summer, one of Esther’s coworkers passed away after collapsing in the field. It was amidst a stretch of 10 days with weather above 110 degrees in Yuma Valley.
Esther didn’t understand how it could happen. She wondered: Why wasn’t he allowed to stop working? When he complained about being dehydrated, why didn’t someone bring him some ice water? She can’t stand the cruelty.
ESTHER
Esa crueldad, nadie la aguanta. ¿Cómo crees que un cuerpo que se está deshidratando y tienes la opción de sacarlo y llevarlo? Ya si está muy grave sacalo, llévatelo, llama la ambulancia. O cuando empieza él, que se empezó a quejar, que tenía mucha sed, que el calor le estaba llegando — pues, dale su agua helada.
ALOK
It didn’t have to happen, Esther says. It’s something that she carries in her heart, and it hurts every time she talks about it.
ESTHER
No tenía por qué pasarles. Es algo que aquí lo llevo en mi corazón y me duele cada vez que lo menciono.
ALOK
Heat-related deaths aren’t an uncommon occurrence. But since the heat-related deaths of farm workers often go unreported or are attributed to other medical conditions, a full accounting of farm workers killed by heat is impossible.
Average annual heat-related deaths went up 95% in the US from 2010 to 2022. That’s across the board, not just for farm workers. But when you spend all day outside, you’re particularly at risk.
Despite this, there have been Republican-led attempts to reduce protections for farm workers, not create more. Last summer, the Texas Legislature passed a law that eliminated local rules requiring water breaks for outdoor workers. And in March, the Florida Legislature passed a bill that prevents any city, county, or municipality in the state from adopting legislation aimed at protecting outdoor workers from extreme heat.
In states that do have heat regulations, there’s still the question of enforcement. Esther’s son, for example, is a farm worker in California, where employers are required to provide training, water, shade, and emergency plans for heat exposure. Esther’s son loads lettuce onto trucks. It’s a job with long hours, outside, in direct sunlight. That constant direct sunlight led to inflammation, and that inflammation led to skin cancer.
ESTHER
A mi hijo le dio cáncer de piel. Él era como cargador. Él trabaja en la lechuga y era cargador. Le pegaron los rayos solares en su cara directamente que se le hizo una inflamación. Y posteriormente a esa inflamación perdió su rostro.
ALOK
Esther’s son ended up in the hospital for eight months, and had to undergo an operation.
ESTHER
A él me lo operaron. Por ocho meses hospitalizado. Grave, grave y grave. Le tuvieron que hacer injerto de piel porque el sol le comió su cara. Y es mi hijo, el mayor. Eso fue devastador para mí.
ALOK
It was agonizing. But thankfully, he survived.
ESTHER
Mi hijo vive porque Dios es grande. Pero también estuve a punto, y viví esta agonía por ocho meses que mi hijo duró hospitalizado. A él le dio cáncer de piel.
ALOK
It can often be difficult for workers to speak up and ask for what they need from their employers — even when the protections are mandated by law. Which is exactly why Nancy and the UFW Foundation have also created the heat hotline.
NANCY
We started last year during the summer, thanks to our funders, to our granters. This, this was super big and I was so excited to work on this project.
ALOK
The hotline is currently available in California — one of the five states that does have heat protection laws — to help ensure those laws are being followed. It’s available in English or Spanish and confidential. Workers in California can call in when their workplace isn’t offering the breaks, water, shade, or training that they are legally required to.
A call goes something like this:
NANCY
The first thing is to let them know that they have been connected to the hotline of UFW Foundation.
ALOK
The caller then provides their name, and where they’re working.
NANCY
The second question is like, are you calling to report a heat violation? And if they said yes, then we move to the next following questions.
ALOK
Then the hotline worker asks what the violation is — lack of water, shade, restroom access, or training. The caller is asked to be as detailed as possible. The hotline worker also asks for the time of day, the temperature outside, and the number of people working who are impacted by this hazard.
NANCY
At the end of this call, through that questionnaire that we made, our violation complaint form gets completed. So right away when this call ends, we review that complaint form, and, you know, we double check that it's all the information that Cal-OSHA needs to know, and we send it over.
ALOK
The heat hotline has been gaining traction since it started last summer. In February of this year, they received nearly 300 calls, and those calls are sure to increase when temperatures get hotter.
Nancy says sometimes, farm workers are hesitant to call in. So it’s been a mission to get the message out: this hotline is here to protect farm workers.
NANCY
Sometimes they express that they don't wanna have any problems, that they don't wanna lose their jobs. And that's when we share to them like, no, this is a right that you have, this is to protect yourself and your coworkers. But, um, but we're not gonna, we're protecting you as well.
ALOK
A lot of Nancy’s job is driving to farm worker’s communities and making house visits. There, she can learn firsthand what issues are most important to them, and connect them with services that the UFW Foundation offers, such as immigration services, a farm worker relief program, and the heat hotline.
Sometimes, the issues are something as simple as pieces of paper. Nancy says a lot of the time, in lieu of emergency trainings, workers are simply given a pamphlet or flyer. The thing is, those flyers can be filled with technical jargon that make them hard to understand. That’s where Nancy and her team come in. They created a flyer specifically designed for the farm workers, to ensure they can understand their rights.
NANCY
Sometimes we share these flyers to farm workers, and they will give us the green light. Like, okay, this looks good for us, we understand it. Or, or sometimes we will get a feedback like, oh, why you don't add like a picture or something.
ALOK
Then, Nancy and her fellow organizers enlist some workers to pass out flyers at their workplaces.
NANCY
So we are connecting with workers. Would you like to be our volunteer to take some flyers to your [tk], to your crews, to your workplace? Will you be our volunteer to take some flyers to the laundromats to, to your trailer park? Now, they're gonna be able to share to other colleagues, like, oh, there's this heat hotline. Whenever something, you know, you see that it's not right in your workplace, or you're not getting trained for this, or you're not having water at your workplace, or there's not clean restrooms.
ALOK
In the end, these efforts are all working toward the same goal: Ensuring that the people who do the hard, dangerous work of getting food from the fields to our tables are safe.
NANCY
I think companies or employers, they are responsible. They are responsible for anything that happens to, to a worker in their workplace. Um, so I hope, you know, employers are more conscious about, about this specific topic
ALOK
The UFW Foundation is doing that by holding growers in California accountable with the heat hotline. And trying to expand protections to workers in every state.
NANCY
This is about farm workers’ lives. We need to prevent those heat deaths. We need to do something, but we need to take action. We need to continue protecting these farm workers. They're not just out there harvesting, harvesting fruits and vegetables, but they're also thanks to their labor, they're feeding, they're feeding the entire nation. So I wanna say that we're gonna continue working hard on this topic to make sure that every single farm worker in the United States is protected.
ALOK
Esther Ruiz is part of that fight, sharing her son’s story, and her own. She says she and her fellow farm workers shout and raise their voices to get what they need, what they deserve. And really, it’s not too much to ask for.
ESTHER
Gritamos y alzamos la voz — que se nos cumpla, que se nos respete, que nos den lo que, lo que necesitamos. Que no es tanto pedir una sombra, unas cajas de suero, cajas de agua, tu, tu protección de mangas. Que esos rayos solares no quemen tu piel.
ALOK
She wants to see change. Better protections for her and her fellow farm workers.
So what’s next? The UFW Foundation will keep petitioning, will keep bringing farm workers like Esther to Washington D.C. so they can tell their story. Another hot summer is almost here, and if they succeed, maybe it will be the last summer without a federal heat regulation.
Esther, her fellow farm workers, the UFW Foundation — they can’t do it alone. Change takes a community. Contact your local legislators, donate to organizations you’re passionate about, and learn more about places like the UFW Foundation working to build a better future. You can do all of that — and more — at actblue.com/buildthechange.
Build the Change is created in partnership with ActBlue, produced by Wonder Media Network, and hosted by me, Alok Vaid-Menon.
Our production team includes Edie Allard, Lindsey Kratochwill, Sara Schleede, Abbey Delk, Hannah Bottum, and Paloma Moreno Jimenez. Our executive producer is Jenny Kaplan. Our showrunners are Rohita Javangula and Maria Jose Hurtado.