“We can’t waste time on this. Field work is hard, but when you’re just starting in the States, we have no other choice.”
Alejandrina, Georgia
Alejandrina has lived a long and fruitful life as a farm worker helping to feed our country. She has worked 37 years as a farm worker in the United States, working in the east coast states of South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Virginia, Delaware, Maryland, and Pennsylvania. Throughout the years as a farm worker, she worked picking peppers, cucumbers, eggplants, tomatoes, squash, blueberries, blackberries, green beans, oranges, apples, as well as removing the topping off of tobacco plants and bailing pine straw.
Alejandrina struggles with her eye sight and has to use special sunglasses when working because the sun’s brightness has significantly damaged her eyes. The brightness of the sun didn’t just affect her eyesight. Due to extreme heat, she has gotten sick, suffering from dizziness, nausea, and tiredness. As a farm worker, Alejandrina has to push through all of these in order to not get left behind by the rest of her coworkers, often suffering from cramps mostly in her legs.
“If I am not working then they are not making money, which causes them to yell at us to continue working. There have been times that people will carpool with drivers and those drivers will make deals with the crew leaders on how much the car drivers will get paid per person they bring. This makes there be more people that are yelling and rushing us, because they are all trying to make money. The Crew leaders are rushing us to work harder and move quicker and so are the drivers that bring us to work. They tell us not to stop, quit standing, continue moving, and don’t take breaks. There are also times when the pay isn’t enough, so that leads us to working more hours so we can’t make a decent income. This is why we decide not to take rest breaks, time to eat, or stop working, or go to restrooms because of how far away they are from where I am working. We can’t waste time on this. Field work is hard, but when you’re just starting in the States, we have no other choice.”
In addition to the dangers of heat, Alejandrina often had to face the dangers of pesticides being sprayed on the produce. She suspects that the reason her fourth daughter developed asthma was from exposure to pesticides when she was working while pregnant.
Despite all the dangers she faces out in the fields, Alejandrina persists and continues to work to support her family and advocate for farm workers. She lends her voice to the farm worker movement, advocating for a national heat standard that would keep millions of farm workers safe from the dangers of extreme heat. She calls for mandatory breaks during times of extreme heat, access to cool drinking water, and for supervisors to care about the wellbeing of their workers. Her hope is that her voice and her story will help raise up the importance of heat protections.
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