Migrant Housing Plan Outlawed Court Rules State Erred By Relaxing Health Codes For Cherry Pickers’ Tents

The state Department of Health’s controversial plan to house migrant cherry pickers in primitive camps has been outlawed by a Thurston County judge.

Superior Court Judge Gary Tabor decided the state overstepped its authority when it eased health codes for the tent camps that sprout during the cherry harvest.

The ruling was a victory for advocates of migrant workers, who are often at odds with the industry and state officials.

But it’s unclear what impact the ruling, announced Friday, will have on the 2,000 workers represented in a class-action lawsuit.

The state will continue to license camps, as long as growers agree to improve conditions over time.

Growers like the program, which costs them less than previous rules requiring expensive dorm-style buildings.

And Secretary of Health Bruce Miyahara plans to iron out the procedural problems which toppled the program.

The suit, filed last April by Seattle attorney Nancy Pacharzina, accused the state of ignoring its own health regulations on migrant worker housing, which require sturdy structures.

“The clients recognize that this victory in court is not the end of the problem, but as the beginning of the solution,” Pacharzina said.

In camps visited last summer by The Spokesman-Review, workers ate out of fly-infested Styrofoam coolers and cooked over campfires.

Pacharzina filed the suit after being outraged by a visit to workers living in squalor.

“It should be difficult for any of us sleeping at night knowing that children sleep on a carpet remnant in Eastern Washington while their parents are picking the food we eat,” she said.

But health officials say the program is a unique answer to a difficult problem.

Growers are not required to provide room for tent camps, doing so only out of a sense of duty to their low-income employees.

State health inspectors allowed cherry workers to live in orchard tents as long as growers provided running water and electricity.

Licensing such encampments improved the living conditions for up to 2,000 workers in 1996, officials said. But growers spooked by the lawsuit refused to allow the tent camps last year, Miyahara said.

He also noted that Tabor’s decision addressed department protocol, not the ethics of the agency’s strategy.

“The way we’ve been looking at this, a controlled on-farm structure … is better than nothing available at all,” Miyahara said. “We’ve never said this is the ultimate solution, but we are looking at this from the health and safety perspective of the community.”

Without the licensed camps, workers often flee to riverside camps that are unhealthy and unsafe.

Both sides remain optimistic of improving migrant worker housing. The Legislature will take up the issue today, hearing a bill that would ease some building codes for fruit pickers.

The bill is supported by Republicans, Democrats and, most importantly, Gov. Gary Locke, who vetoed a similar housing bill last year.

Locke has proposed a $2 million trust fund, which could be added to a $30 million pool to increase the quality and quantity of migrant worker housing.

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