Word: shaded
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Emerging from behind the cover of a tree and thick bushes, the blunt nose of a Russian eight-wheeled armored personnel carrier juts into the dirt road. In the shade, five soldiers - Special Forces and border guards - sit bored, smoking cigarettes near a burned-out campfire. A sixth lulls in the vehicle, blasting techno dance music. "We are prepared for the Georgians if they come. We don't think they'll start anything, but if they do, we're ready for them," says a border guard, standing in grimy fatigues with a worn Kalashnikov over his shoulder...
...California implemented the nation's first heat-illness standard, requiring farms and contractors to provide water and shade to the state's 650,000 farm workers who help supply 44% of the nation's fruits and vegetables. The lawsuit claims the enforcement agency, the State's Division of Occupational Health and Safety (Cal-OSHA) is woefully understaffed (only 198 inspectors for 17 million state workers including the 650,000 farm workers) and that since California enacted its Heat Illness Prevention regulation, "the number of farm-worker heat-related deaths has increased." Catherine Lhamon, assistant legal director for the ACLU...
Lawyers for the farm workers say that the big growers, who own the land and who most profit by the workers' labors, have little incentive to ensure adequate water and shade because farm-labor contractors employ the farm workers. In addition, says the lawsuit, employers see little reason to comply with the regulation because "those few violators who are occasionally identified generally escape with little or no punishment." Attorney Bradley Phillips of Munger, Tolles & Olson says the way to improve worker safety is to "create the maximum economic incentive" for the large growers. Under the current system, labor contractors...
...Igloo water containers that spell out heat-safety precautions in use on farms across the state. "The growers have responded in the most positive and honest way," says Cunha. "We are getting the message to workers that they need to drink cool water, to rest in the shade and to watch for heat-illness symptoms in their co-workers...
Reacting to the lawsuit, Cal-OSHA filed a proposal with the Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board to amend the regulation to require that shade be present at all times. Agency official John C. Duncan said the proposed revision "will make it clear that employees have the right to take a rest in the shade whenever they feel the need to do so to prevent overheating." In the past two months, however, the board has twice failed to adopt emergency proposals to strengthen the heat regulation. After the second rejection, Schwarzenegger issued a statement saying that the board "has failed...