Last week, the mask mandate in Washington state was dropped for anyone who is fully vaccinated. Unless you’re a farmworker.

State temporary worker housing rules require farmworkers, even those who have been vaccinated against COVID, to wear a mask, socially distance, and live in assigned working and housing groups for the duration of the working season in Washington state. 

When the pandemic began more than a year ago, the Washington State Departments of Health and Labor & Industries set forth several emergency rules for temporary farmworker housing. Some of the rules made sense given what we didn’t know about COVID. Other rules within the confines of assigned working groups – barriers between close-quarters spaces in kitchens, bathrooms, and sleeping areas, twice-daily in-person medical checks, access to a hospital with a ventilator on site within one hour of all worksites – caused real problems, given the rural nature of most farmworker dwelling units.

Now that mask mandates have been lifted for vaccinated people throughout the state, it is time to give the same freedom to the people who spend their working days providing us all with food security.

Nearly all workers living in temporary worker housing have been vaccinated. We recently had a preview of the summer heat to come and it reinforced the truth that no one wants to wear a mask in warm weather, let alone while at the same time working in an orchard, field or vineyard under a hot sun.

The state’s emergency rules for temporary worker housing govern what they are allowed to do during their leisure hours as well. Workers were told to spend their social time only with the people with whom they were assigned to work and live; designate one or two people to make trips to town for grocery and personal necessities; and minimize contact from outside the approved group. Caught in the middle are agricultural employers who must choose between enforcing these unfair rules or risk the wrath of state officials. 

Some farmworkers travel from halfway across the globe, adjusting to different cultural norms, our state’s climate, and meeting people they’ve never met before to help provide food to an ever-growing population while earning a good living for their families. They deserve the courtesy of being able to forge relationships outside the bounds of the working group to which they are assigned for the duration of their contract. They also deserve the right to govern their own time in whatever manner they deem fit.

It is time for farmworkers to be treated with the same dignity and respect as the general populace of our state, and for the governor and other state officials allow vaccinated farmworkers to live and work without a mask mandate.