Introduction
Olga Velarde is a farmworker in the Salinas Valley and the mother of three sons. In her 30 years of work for the same company, she has never been allowed to apply for a higher position and has only received wage increases when the state minimum wage goes up. She can barely afford the most essential needs such as rent and food.
Ramon Mendoza of Lost Hills, California, started working in 1996. His foreman never provided the farmworkers with clean water. The water jugs were never cleaned and the water had a mossy smell and bitter taste. The foreman failed to provide safety gear, such as gloves and safety glasses. The workers were given unsafe equipment, including shovels that were held together with tape. The foreman made false allegations and comments about the workers. He collected extra checks on muertitos -- made up workers -- and would cash as many as 80 checks for himself. When he did pay Ramon and the other workers, he would deduct $36 per week for a "ride fee." He consistently made them work extra hours, but refused to pay overtime or any wages beyond a 10 hour workday.
Carmen is a farmworker in the Salinas Valley in California who recalls that when she was poisoned by pesticides, she did not know what pesticides were. "Nobody told me what they were; nobody told me they were harmful." She was a recent immigrant from Mexico to the United States and was working in the lettuce fields.
The Struggles of Farmworkers: Between Government and Agribusiness
These experiences are not isolated ones. There are large numbers of farmworkers each year who become ill because of their work in the fields. Just like Carmen, many of these workers are never given adequate information. Many are too frightened to ask a doctor about the cause of their illness, so they leave the doctor's office with a prescription and no idea of what is wrong.
Many farmworkers are recent immigrants unfamiliar with "the way things work" in the United States. They understand that there are many laws that are supposed to protect workers, but are not sure where or when they come into play. To complicate matters, many farmworkers speak only Spanish, and the language barrier limits the way in which they can interact in U.S. society. Many farmworkers feel overwhelmed by being in the United States and are unsure of who to ask for help or what to ask of doctors and other service providers. In addition, many undocumented workers who labor in U.S. agricultural fields fear job loss or deportation if they act upon any possible work-related injury.
There is an often overlooked historical background to these farmworker struggles. Why are farmworkers so poor and disadvantaged? This is because of deliberate policy decisions to keep them so -- namely, excluding agriculture from most workplace reforms that took place under the New Deal. Historically, this was directly descended from the institution of slavery. The Roosevelt administration caved to specific Southern Democratic demands that blacks not be awarded the right to unionize, for instance, by agreeing to exclude agricultural and domestic workers -- the two occupations overwhelmingly dominated at the time by African Americans -- from National Labor Relations Act protection. As a result, New Deal policies exempted agricultural workers from basic rights and services, at a time when eighty-five percent of African Americans were farmworkers. At present, ninety-nine percent of all migrant farmworkers are members of an ethnic minority, and although the racial make-up of the agricultural workforce has shifted from predominantly African American to predominantly Latino, it continues to be racial minorities who suffer as victims of these policies. Agricultural workers are exempt from or receive fewer protections or benefits from most federal laws, including standards on minimum wage, unemployment, workers compensation, OSHA regulations, child labor, and many others.
Today, migrant workers are subjected to new pressures and exploitation from federal policies and the agribusiness/agri-foods industries. Smallholder farmers in Mexico and Central America were subjected to a cycle of debt and bankruptcy through Green Revolution policies in the 1960s and 1970s, followed by structural adjustment programs imposed by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund in the 1980s. In the1990s and early twenty-first century, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and its Central American equivalent (CAFTA) flooded local markets with cheap subsidized grain.
No longer able to provide basic subsistence for their families under the new rules of global trade, desperate farmers and farmworkers from Mexico and Central America come to the U.S. looking for work. These millions of marginalized workers now provide cheap labor on farms, in slaughterhouses, and food processing plants, for an agribusiness and agri-foods industry already enriched through large federal subsidies. Food First director Eric Holt-Gimenez points out that, "The agri-foods industry depends on immigrant labor, and it requires their illegal status to realize windfall profits."
Fighting Back
Migrant farmworkers themselves, and the advocacy organizations that support them, are fighting back against these inhuman conditions. The first task is to publicize the basic situation of farmworkers in the U.S. Government and independent surveys estimate there are anywhere from 2 to 4 million farmworkers and their dependents in the U.S. Between 300,000 and 800,000 child farmworkers are laboring under dangerous and grueling conditions. As they work the land, migrant and seasonal farmworkers face economic, health and humanitarian hardships, including routine exposure to toxic chemicals and exemption from standard labor laws, such as collective bargaining rights, minimum wage, overtime, and unemployment. A National Agricultural Workers Survey (for the years 2001 and 2002 reported that the average individual income range from farm work was $10,000 to $12,499 annually and 61% of the population lived below the poverty line.Farmworkers and their advocates are organizing to change these conditions and to challenge the economic and political forces that create these massive migrations. Some of their work is described further in Policy & Advocacy, Program Profiles, and Take Action. The status of U.S. farmworkers and their families is an important part of the ongoing story of hunger, poverty and injustice in the United States. In order to truly discuss the components of a just food system, it is essential to examine the conditions of those working to harvest the food we eat. As Americans become more aware of the dominant food system and strive to eat more healthfully, we must embrace solidarity with those responsible for harvesting our fruits and vegetables, and commit ourselves to improving their working conditions and livelihoods.
Notes:
The stories mentioned above are edited excerpts of farmworker testimonies from United Farm Workers of America.
This topic does not consider in detail the food workers who work in Americas vast food processing, preparation and distribution systems. For more on this, see Eric Schlossers Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal (2001).
Backgrounders:
Racism, Farmworkers, and Family Farmers, Richard Mandelbaum
Colonizing the Immigrant Dream: The Agri-foods Industrys Deadly Cycle of Dispossession, Appropriation and Substitution, Eric Holt-Gimenez
Updated 8/2009
