Farmworkers Remain in the Fields During Wildfires. Now, They're Marching for Hazard Pay

Sandra De León remembers the color of the sky when she and the rest of her work crew were out in the fields harvesting grapes in October 2017 during the Tubbs Fire.

“The sky was all black and red,” she said in Spanish. De León and her crew were only a few miles away from the flames. “The smoke from the wildfires covered everything,” she recalls. “And we still had to work.”

De León has worked as a farmworker in Sonoma County for eight years. An immigrant from Mexico, she has had to go out to the fields in almost every type of weather — smoke-filled skies, extreme heat, even floods — to work and make enough to support her family.

“If I don’t go to work, how are we going to live?” she asked. “When you look up at the sky, all black, covered in smoke, all you can think of is your family.”

“But what we get paid is not enough for us having to put our lives at risk.”

On Sunday, De León was one of hundreds of farmworkers who marched through the streets of Healdsburg in the heart of Sonoma County alongside organizers from multiple labor rights groups, including North Bay Jobs With Justice. Their demand: higher wages that take into account the risks farmworkers take.

With banners that read, “Pago por desastre y sueldo digno ya” — “Disaster pay and dignified wages now” and singing chants like “¡Cuando no se puede trabajar, los rancheros tienen que pagar!” (“When it’s not possible to work, the growers must pay!”) As the march moved through the town center, protesters momentarily took over the Healdsburg Memorial Bridge, blocking traffic.

Protest organizers say they chose Healdsburg as the location for the action as the town is a popular destination for wine enthusiasts — where wineries and vineyards headquartered see millions of dollars in revenue.

Under the hot Sonoma sun, protesters also handed out flyers to patrons dining out at restaurants and wine shops, which detailed the movement’s demands. Among them: a new minimum wage in the county for farmworkers at $25 per hour or $250 per ton of grapes picked; for growers to provide workers with additional “disaster pay” for work done during dangerous conditions like wildfires; and compensation for lost wages when it’s too dangerous for workers to be out in the fields.

In Sonoma County, the minimum wage is currently $16.56 an hour for small employers and $17.60 an hour for larger employers. In many vineyards, farmworkers can also get a small bonus based on how many boxes of grapes they pick.

However, workers have been pushing growers and the county for years for higher pay, which takes into account the many risks that come with the job — risks that will continue to grow as wildfires intensify due to climate change.

The movement has already seen some wins. In 2022, the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors approved a $3 million fund to compensate farmworkers who can’t work during dangerous weather. A third of that was used during last year’s heavy winter storms to provide one-time $600 payments to affected families.

Some vineyards are also implementing their own responses, too: Boeschen Vineyards, over in neighboring Napa County, announced last year that it will provide workers with time-and-a-half pay or paid time off when the Air Quality Index is above 150.

But as climate change intensifies, there’s a lot of work still left, De León said.

“We’re not asking for something we don’t deserve,” she said, “What we are asking for is respect. Dignity. That our work be valued.”