DEADLY CRASH PROMPTS CALL FOR SEAT BELTS; NONE PROVIDED FOR KILLED FARM WORKERS.

Byline: Associated Press 

Back in the early 1990s, then-Assemblyman Phil Isenberg pushed for a bill that would hold farmers directly accountable for the wages, working conditions and safe transportation of the men and women they employ.

The measure never had a chance. The farming industry opposed it, and the bill was crushed on the Assembly floor.

In the wake of the recent deadly crash of a van full of tomato pickers, lawmakers are scrambling to introduce bills aimed at providing safe transportation for farm workers and funds for enforcing the regulations. Seat belts would be required.

But some labor advocates and skeptics say the only way to guarantee safety is to revive legislation making farmers ultimately or at least partly responsible for violations of workplace protection.

The idea strikes at the heart of a long debate about the labor contractors and other intermediaries who line up jobs and supply rides for farm workers but often are not licensed and hard to police or hold liable.

``There are thousands of them out there, and they're almost completely impossible to regulate,'' said Mark Schacht, deputy director of the California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation, which lobbies on behalf of farm workers.

The contractors have been used ``by generations of growers to evade legal and moral duties as employers,'' said Marc Grossman, a spokesman for the United Farmworkers Federation. ``Many of the horror stories you hear are laid at the feet of labor contractors, but many of them are fly-by-night and have few assets.''

An unlicensed driver was at the wheel when a van carrying 15 people from an overnight shift at Terra Linda farms crashed into a tractor-trailer. Only two passengers survived. They remain hospitalized.

The 1983 Dodge Ram was last certified in 1997 and did not have seat belts, but seat belts were not required under a code that allows vehicles carrying more than 10 farm workers to be classified as buses, which are exempt from seat belt laws.

The van was owned by Jose Rosas. It was unclear whether he was acting as a labor contractor or working for one.

Assemblyman Dean Florez and Assemblywoman Sarah Reyes, both Democrats from the Central Valley, proposed a package of bills this week that they say would require better regulation of farm worker transportation.

These measures would:

Require vehicles to be equipped with seat belts.

At a cost of about $4.5 million a year, increase the number of California Highway Patrol officers from six to about 55 for enforcing laws against illegal transportation of farm workers.

Prohibit replacing the manufacturer's seats in vans with benches, like the ones in the van that crashed.

Create a mandatory system for safety certification of such vehicles by the CHP. Van operators are not compelled by law to have vehicles inspected.

Even though lawmakers estimate 100 farm workers have been killed in the past decade in Central Valley crashes, the issue of requiring seat belts for farm worker vehicles has escaped legislative scrutiny.

``The attention was always on passenger cars,'' said John F. Foran, a former chairman of the Assembly Transportation Committee and later of its counterpart in the state Senate.

With less than a month before the Legislature's Sept. 10 adjournment, the likelihood of passage is a long shot, unless the new bills are piggybacked onto pending legislation or the rules suspended to allow for their introduction.

``It's not an easy thing to do. But if we're determined enough, I'm hopeful it can actually happen,'' Reyes said Wednesday.

Gov. Gray Davis ``wants to make sure we take a close look at this and see how it can be addressed,'' said his deputy press secretary, Jose Moreno.

Even if new standards pass, some labor activists and others say compliance will not improve unless independent labor contractors are better regulated.

There are 1,198 licensed labor contractors in California, according to officials in the Office of Industrial Relations, who oversee the contractors and admit there are probably many they don't know about.

``The reality is . . . enforcement hasn't been as strong as it should have been,'' said Stephen Smith, calling the office seriously understaffed. But he said the budget for the fiscal year that started in July gave him money to add about 75 field inspectors to the 200 or so already working.

Isenberg, who now works as a lobbyist, and other farm labor advocates said it is ludicrous that farmers have been able to deflect liability by saying workers are employed by the independent contractors, although the contractors are not considered employers under the state's legal definition.