‘Brutal’ trade-offs keep some South Bay farmworkers laboring in dangerous heat

As Cesilia Perez Lopez harvested cherries on the outskirts of Gilroy early this summer, the temperature in the field crawled into the 90s. She and her co-workers desperately needed water. But a jug carrying their supply had spilled earlier that day, and when she asked the foreman to replace the water he was supposed to provide, he ignored her, even as the farmworkers toiled through the mounting heat.

“We suffered that day because of the heat,” said Perez Lopez in Spanish. “It felt so terrible...