Housing Standards A Concern State Helping Cherry Growers Provide Workers Safe Quarters

They’re hardly vacation cabanas.

But the shacks and cabins that house thousands of migrant workers moving through Central Washington during the cherry harvest do have to meet minimum health standards.

Few cherry orchards offer housing and there is no requirement to do so. But those orchards that do are struggling to meet state Board of Health requirements. To help, the board is creating a series of steps to bring the orchards closer to meeting the standards.

“It’s a little more restrictive than last year, but the growers are pretty satisfied,” said Mike Gempler of the Washington Growers League.

This year, to obtain a temporary provisional license, cherry growers must supply ice at the farm for coolers, provide stoves and coolers, and offer clean, well-lit food preparation areas.

These are emergency rules, said David Albert, senior health planner with the state Board of Health. Eventually, orchardists will be required to comply with the more stringent standards set in 1992.

This spring the board voted to uphold those standards, but also to provide orchardists with time to meet the requirements.

Board representatives will visit orchard camps this summer to decide the time frame and schedule growers need to meet to reach the permanent standards. The visits will begin in June in the Tri-Cities area and move north to Wenatchee in July.

Farm worker advocates are asking the standards be met in three years, the growers want five. “The difference is not very large,” Albert said.

The Board of Health estimates that more than 16,000 migrant workers come to Washington for the cherry harvest each year. While there are about 300 cherry orchards, only 26 obtained provisional state licenses to have housing last year.

Cherry harvesting is labor intensive and rapid. Workers move from orchard to orchard frequently, and short-term housing is not always available.

Without housing at the orchards, workers sometimes resort to living in campsites along rivers where they have no amenities.

For those farms that seek licensing and are trying to comply with state standards, the road may not be too long.

“We heard testimony at our March meeting that there are farms that are not very far from being in full compliance,” Albert said. “We don’t think the standards are unreasonable.”