Opinion: Farmworker victory ending use of “El Cortito” 50 years in the past offers empowering lesson

For many years within the Salinas Valley, the short-handle hoe, referred to as “El Cortito,” was used for weeding and thinning rows of crops that stored farmworkers stooped over for lengthy hours every day. Staff have been solely in a position to stand and stretch after they reached the top of a row, ending every workday with confused and strained spines. Over a few years, the stoop labor was not solely bodily debilitating, usually leading to everlasting again accidents, but additionally mirrored a systemic disregard for the well being of our farmworkers.

On June 10, the Monterey County Board of Supervisors will likely be commemorating the fiftieth Anniversary of the landmark authorized case that ended using El Cortito and improved the well being and security of so many farmworkers throughout California. It stays a strong reminder of what occurs when farmworkers, attorneys and native leaders unite to problem hostile working circumstances which have dire well being penalties. We additionally hope it empowers the following era of Californians to acknowledge that they too have the facility to alter the course of historical past and confront injustice.

The short-handle hoe, referred to as “El Cortito,” was used for weeding and thinning rows of crops that stored farmworkers stooped over for lengthy hours every day. (Courtesy of Bob Fitch Pictures Archive, Division of Particular Collections, Stanford College Libraries)

The employees referred to El Cortito as “the devil’s arm” in Spanish and its use was not about effectivity or productiveness. It was about management. Maintaining employees stooped meant conserving them beneath fixed supervision, a silent assertion of dominance embedded within the fields.

For years, farmworkers protested its use. However their cries went ignored. However in 1969, a gaggle of agricultural employees in Soledad, together with Sebastian Carmona, complained to a younger lawyer named Maurice “Mo” Jourdane of the California Rural Authorized Help workplace in Salinas. They wished justice. Labor chief Cesar Chavez, who attributed his personal power again ache to the instrument, additionally urged Jourdane to take the case.

At first, Jourdane was skeptical about whether or not the courts would outlaw the instrument whose widespread use dated to the Melancholy Period. It was not till authorized help workplace neighborhood employee and former farmworker Hector De La Rosa challenged Jourdane to try working with the instrument for a single day. After simply a few hours, Jourdane felt sharp excruciating ache down his backbone and his shoulder grew to become numb from the difficult, repetitive motion. What had as soon as been a authorized query grew to become an ethical obligation.

With Salinas CRLA’s Director Marty Glick, Jourdane would start a six-year authorized combat. Their first step was to petition the California Industrial Security Board. Eleven physicians testified that the instrument aged employees’ our bodies prematurely: Males of their 30s and 40s resembled 70-year-olds with superior arthritis. However in 1973, the Gov. Ronald Reagan-appointed board rejected their petition writing, “…the hoe is not an unsafe hand tool and the cost in discarding hundreds of thousands of hoes outweighs the harm resulting from their use.”

Undeterred, CRLA took the combat to the California Supreme Court docket with a writ difficult the hostile administrative company determination. They needed to not solely show El Cortito was an unsafe hand instrument, however that there have been viable alternate options, akin to utilizing an extended deal with as a substitute. Sebastian Carmona grew to become the lead plaintiff and was joined by different brave Salinas Valley farmworkers.

The authorized battle to outlaw using El Cortito lastly got here to an finish on April 7, 1975, after the California Supreme Court docket dominated in favor of CRLA and the farmworkers, stating that the Industrial Security Board had given “an unduly narrow interpretation” of state laws. The board subsequently issued a brand new Administrative Interpretation Quantity 62 stating “the use of the short handle hoe shall be deemed a violation of safety order Section 8 CAC 3316.” A newly inaugurated Gov. Jerry Brown had simply assumed workplace in January 1975 and the board acknowledged the political local weather had simply shifted considerably in Sacramento.

However the victory represented greater than only a ban on an unsafe instrument. It was a breakthrough and represented a brand new period within the farmworker rights motion. It proved the courts might be an ally when lawmakers and regulators refused to behave. For CRLA, it was a turning level of their authorized advocacy. For the employees, whereas justice was delayed, justice was in the end not denied.

Reflecting on the case, Glick stated, “We just told their story to the court. When people are suffering as much as the workers have been with the short hoe, you don’t need much law to have a court of honest men, like our Supreme Court, to say ‘we will not permit the injustice to continue.’ All it took was a little persistence on our part to get someone to listen to what the farmworkers were saying.”

Ignacio Ornelas Rodriguez is a historian and works within the Division of Particular Collections and College Archives at Stanford College. Luis Alejo is a former state Assemblymember and serves as a Monterey County supervisor, representing Salinas.