TAMPA, Fla. — The heat of the summer months can be pretty tough, especially for those who work outdoors. Over the last several years the nonprofit Farmworker’s Self-Help Inc. has lobbied for a law to help provide aide to farmworkers during the summer months, and this year is no exception.
What You Need To Know
- Farmworkers Self-Help Inc. is a nonprofit organization in Pasco County aimed at helping provide resources to farmworkers
- Over the past several years, the organization has lobbied to protect farmworkers during the summer months
- Margarita Romo is the executive director of the organization, and says her goal is to fight to give farmworkers breaks and water while their working
Margarita Romo comes from a family that worked the fields.
“My dad picked cotton, and can you imagine picking 100 pounds of cotton a day,” she said. “That’s amazing to me.”
Early on, farm life was all Romo knew, picking crops with her family. She said it wasn’t a job she enjoyed, but a job that she had to do to provide for her family.
Romo says she saw the struggle her family went through.
“My dad saw we went, we went broke and we came back broke, and it seems to be the story of the life of a farmworker,” she said.
Her own experiences growing up in the farming world are what fed her desire to help others.
Through her nonprofit, Farmworker’s Self-Help, she serves and advocates for agricultural workers. For the past two years, the nonprofit’s main mission has been to push for a bill focusing on the impact heat has on people who work outdoors.
“It’s not about causing any real problem to the employer, but to just give us a chance to educate people so that they will know what to do in case they should get to [a] place where they might die,” Romo said.
According to Romo, many farmworkers she’s talked to are afraid to take breaks and may even ignore the heat-related symptoms they experience. That’s why she feels this bill is crucial to help intervene in critical situations.
But it’s not the only way she’s working to shed light on the issue. She speaks to every farmworker that walks into her building about the heat and safety precautions.
“We have to educate our churches, our communities that don’t necessarily think about farmworkers, construction workers or landscaping,” she said. “But I think when you walk out that door and feel the heat you should think.”
Romo says the bill would include breaks for farmworkers, water stations, and even allow organizations like hers to provide heat-related education on site.
She says resources like this could help people who work outdoors.
“I’ll never forget that hopelessness, and, I was 9 years old, that hopelessness of, ‘oh my gosh I’m just going to get to the other end and turn around and go back,’ and the heat and the heat and the heat,” she said.
It’s that same determination she had at 9 years old that Romo is using now as she hopes to make this bill a hot topic for state lawmakers. She says she’s already written to state leaders about the issue.
Farmworker’s Self-Help Inc. even provides farmworkers with clothes that will help protect them from the sun.
