05/12/08 Looking at the Heat Stress Rule

Looking at the Heat Stress Rule. I'm Greg Martin with today's Fruit Grower Report. Labor and Industries has released a new ruling regarding heat stress and while if you didn't know any better that would sound fine. But according to Washington Farm Bureau's Dan Fazio, it's a big problem. FAZIO: There's really no need for the new rule. We've got a rule in place that's working fine. There's no evidence that farmers aren't complying with it. There's no evidence that L&I is giving citations on the old rule and there's no evidence that workers are being hurt or that we need a new rule. On top of that according to Fazio, the rule is illegal. FAZIO: These accumulations of regulations is causing the demise of labor intensive agriculture, particularly small operations. They just can't keep up with all these new regulations and so the legislature recognized that and they said look, what we want you to do L&I is two things. We want you to first put all of the regulations farmers need to comply with in one chapter and then we want you to exempt farmers from all of the other regulations that are floating out there. That includes a heat stress rule that is working but Fazio says: FAZIO: So they put a new rule in place that is different from the old rule so you can be complying with the one that you are using now and then you have to comply with a different rule as well. So they put that of course in a different chapter and we're telling them not only are you having farmers look to different chapters, you are putting two regulations on the same subject; that's exactly what the legislature told them not to do. More tomorrow. That's today's Fruit Grower Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.