‘Inexcusable,’ Governor Says of Some Farm Workers’ Plight

Gov. George Deukmejian said Monday that it is “totally inexcusable” for farm workers to live in cardboard shelters or holes in the ground and that farmers who permit such conditions should be prosecuted.

“If any owners of farms are aware that there are employees of theirs who are living in those conditions on their land, they should not only be stopped but certainly all of the relevant laws dealing with health and safety should be fully enforced,” Deukmejian said.

The governor’s remarks to reporters on the living conditions of farm workers were made after an address to the California Farm Bureau in which he laid out a campaign platform designed to woo the politically important agricultural industry, a source of strong support for him in the past.

Deukmejian, taking his “rural renaissance” program to suburban San Diego, renewed his call for economic aid to farmers, increasing the flow of water to Southern California and expanding foreign markets for farm products.

“The last thing farmers need right now is an adversary in the governor’s office,” Deukmejian told about 800 farming representatives at the Town and Country resort hotel. “With me, you do have a friend.”

Asked by reporters later about the deplorable living conditions of some farm workers, the governor replied, “That is totally inexcusable.”

The questions, and the governor’s response, alluded to a well-publicized case in Salinas in which, according to a lawsuit, field workers were forced to live in cardboard shelters and man-made caves.

He cautioned, however, that in some cases, farmers who employ migrant workers are not directly responsible for their living conditions because workers do not live on the farm owners’ land.

In his remarks to reporters, the governor also renewed his attack on United Farm Workers leader Cesar Chavez, accusing him of “misrepresentation” in his campaign against the state Agricultural Labor Relations Board.

Chavez has called for a boycott of table grapes grown in California to protest alleged unfairness by the board. Last month, he was joined by a group of Southern California religious leaders, who wrote Deukmejian urging him to fire the board’s general counsel, David Stirling. Among the signers was Catholic Archbishop Roger Mahony of Los Angeles, who served as the labor board’s first chairman under former Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr. Mahony was then bishop of Stockton.

Raising the sensitive issues of pesticides and toxic waste, the governor in his speech invited farmers to help the state in its effort to find safe ways of disposing of hazardous chemicals.

“We cannot and will not tolerate the illegal use of these substances by anyone,” he said. “Irresponsible actions by a small number of farmers not only jeopardize the public health, they threaten the crops and the livelihoods of the responsible growers.”