Flames, smoke and heat: California grape workers push for change
Al Jazeera
Workers say they need better protections and support as ferocious wildfires become more frequent in California’s wine region.
Santa Rosa, California – In late September, residents of Sonoma County, one of northern California’s famous wine-making regions, received emergency alerts: the Fremont Fire had ignited, sending plumes of smoke over the dry, brown landscape and threatening nearby vineyards at peak grape harvest time.
When he heard about the blaze, Sebastian Alavez Gaspar, who picks grapes at harvest time, feared losing work. “If the boss loses his harvest, we won’t eat because we won’t have money,” he told Al Jazeera in Spanish over WhatsApp.
Firefighters contained the fire the next day, however, and the following week Gaspar was called to harvest grapes. But the wildfire highlighted the precarity of the 41-year-old’s job, along with the jobs of some 11,000 grape workers in Sonoma County, and, amid record heat waves and climate-change fuelled blazes, systemic change is needed to better protect workers according to workers’ advocates.
