Salud Zamudio-Rodriguez was stricken while laboring in the pepper fields near Arvin, CA on July 13, 2005 as he tried to keep pace with a work speed-up in 105 degree heat. In the 24 years that Salud had worked in the fields, he was often compared to a machine, moving efficiently up and down the rows.
Tractors pull conveyor belts through the fields and workers dump the buckets of peppers they’ve picked onto the conveyor. Usually the tractor driver sets a speed that enables workers to drink water and still be able to harvest 3 buckets of peppers in a 15 minute period. But on this day, the grower’s foreman set a pace that required them to pick six buckets in the same amount of time.
Co-workers said that for more than 2 hours, the tractor doubled its speed in an effort to finish the last pick of one field in order for the grower to begin a fresh field the next day. A few minutes before his shift ended, Salud became delirious, began to shake violently and then walked up to his boss and collapsed. The boss tried to bring him around by fanning him with his hat. Salud was subsequently moved to some shade under an almond tree and workers insisted that an ambulance be called.
“It took 30 minutes for help to arrive but by then it was too late. We watched him die in the field,” said one of the workers who was there that day. Salud was the 4th farm worker to die from the heat that week.
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