Legislation and regulation favor agribusiness

Farmworkers: An Overview of Health, Safety and Wage Issues

By Kathleen Reynolds and George Kourous

For generations, California’s onion and lettuce fields, the cotton farms of Texas’ Rio Grande Valley, and the chile fields of New Mexico have provided employment for migrant farmworkers pulled north from Mexico by the lure of higher U.S. wages. Under the U.S. government’s bracero program (1942-64), 3.3 million Mexican nationals were shuttled north across the border to work and bused back to Mexico when the harvest season was over. Today, changes in Mexico’s agricultural sector produce much the same effect, as do clauses in U.S. labor and immigration laws designed to provide U.S. agribusiness with low-cost labor. As a result, farmworkers in 1998 continue to wrestle with the same challenges that they did in 1948-extreme poverty, isolation from the communities where they work, and political disenfranchisement.

It is difficult to pin down with certainty the exact number of migrant farm laborers working in the U.S. today. Depending on which government agency’s definition, methodology, and count you accept, their numbers range anywhere between 1 and 5 million people. The demographic characteristics of the farmworker population are hazy as well. Different surveys have found that between 70% and 94% of the group is Latino, and that anywhere between 20% and 50% are undocumented and in the U.S. illegally. Most research does concur that the majority of migrant farmworkers are male, Spanish-speaking, of limited education, and born in Mexico; but a growing number of workers are native peoples, from either Guatemala or southern Mexico. Adult farmworkers typically have completed eight or fewer years of formal education.

Shifting Borders, Similar Situations

The end of the bracero program, amnesty granted via the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA), and changes in agricultural production have altered the nature of the border for many Mexican and Mexican-American farmworkers. Today, only 10% to 15% of people of Mexican origin in U.S. border states work in seasonal agriculture. Certainly, some parts of the border still employ significant numbers of farmworkers—California (particularly the San Joaquin Valley) receives 800,000 farmworkers a year, 90% of whom are immigrants. But other border areas have experienced drops in full-year or part-year farmworker populations due to the mechanization of farming, the shift of agriculture to other areas, and a generation gap in which the children of older farmworkers seek employment in other sectors. These days, for example, South Texas frequently functions as a recruiting ground, where migrants from Mexico and further south stop on their way to harvests in the Northwest and Midwest or along the East Coast.

In some respects, conditions for farmworkers have worsened in recent years—particularly in terms of wages. Agricultural economists report that over the past twenty years, wages for farm work have declined up to 25%. According to the Farmworker Justice Fund, about 60% of migrant farmworkers have incomes under the federal poverty line, and 73% of migrant farmworkers’ children live in poverty. Yet despite this poverty, farmworkers are less dependent on public assistance than other populations—due to their immigration status, the difficulties associated with serving migrant populations, language barriers, and the disinclination to use outside assistance common to disenfranchised, self-reliant communities.

The increasing use by employers of farm labor contractors—middlemen, often based in the border region, who recruit workers or teams of workers for jobs further north—is one key reason for the increase of poverty and exploitation of farmworkers. Frequently, contractors abuse workers by misrepresenting jobs and benefits, charging exorbitant "hiring fees," or taking deductions from workers’ paychecks. A 1994 study by the DOL found that farmworkers employed by such intermediaries are more likely than those who aren’t to be forced to pay for their equipment (45% versus 16%) and for food, rides, and/or housing (34% versus 14%).

The poverty facing farmworkers leads to a host of other problems. Without adequate income, families and individuals must live together in crowded housing—sometimes sleeping in shifts—to afford rents that are prohibitively high. Often, workers accept housing in camps provided by their employers, frequently characterized by overcrowded trailers, garages, and sheds, as well as unsanitary conditions.

Unsurprisingly then, health problems are also a concern. Infant mortality rates are a stunning 125% higher than in the general population, and the average farmworker life expectancy is 49, compared to 75 in the United States overall. Malnutrition is higher among migrant farmworkers than among any other subpopulation in the country. Four out of five farmworkers don’t have employer-provided health insurance.

Pesticide poisoning, in particular, is a prevalent health risk that confronts farmworkers. Over 1.2 billion pounds of pesticides are used annually in U.S. agriculture, and according to a 1995 report published by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, these toxins are responsible for more than 300,000 illnesses and 1,000 deaths in the farmworker community each year. The same study established a link between pesticide exposure and reduced male fertility, stillborn births, and severe birth defects such as neural tube defects and facial clefts (see table 1 and table 2).

The intense physical demands of farm work also take their toll: agricultural workers constitute 3% of the nation’s work force but account for 11% of all occupational fatalities. Child farmworkers are particularly at risk from occupational hazards—300 children die each year from agriculture-related accidents and illnesses, and over 20,000 are hurt. Some 200,000 to 800,000 children nation-wide work in the fields—100,000 of them illegally, according to the National Child Labor Committee. Economic necessity, along with lax enforcement and oversight—a random survey undertaken by the Associated Press last year found three times the number of illegally employed child farmworkers reported by the DOL— keep these youth in the fields.

Importing "Third World" Labor Earns First World Profits

U.S. farmers and farming corporations are well familiar with the benefits associated with employing a "third world" labor pool—a practice that is rapidly becoming standard corporate operating procedure in the new global economy. The need for the cross-border flow of field workers was established during the labor shortages of World War II and later enshrined in the post-war boom years when U.S. salary expectations grew and the nation’s economy shifted in new directions. More recently, the reorganization of Mexico’s ejido system and the export-oriented mechanization of the country’s agricultural sector (brought on by the PRI’s embrace of neoliberal reform and free trade economics), coupled with post-1982 economic instability, have reinforced the historical pattern of northern migration. Today, agribusiness continues to profit from the use of low-maintenance migrant laborers, whose ethnicity, citizenship status, educational background, and nomadic lifestyle keep them at the fringe of society and at the bottom of the economic ladder—making them eminently affordable.

Maintaining this fluid, cheap pool of farm labor requires the support—or complicity—of government in making laws that perpetuate the migrant farmworker system. In theory, legal exemptions and government subsidies for agriculture are justified by the idea that they help small, family-owned-and-operated farms. But in reality, large, corporate agribusiness receives the most benefit: in fruit, vegetable, and horticulture, the sector where most migrants work, the largest 10% of farms (all corporate) account for 80% of total production and employment. This corporate consolidation of agriculture has led to the creation of a powerful lobby that pressures government to maintain both direct subsidies—cash payments and crop buy-outs—and indirect subsidies in the form of the weak laws that govern farm work.

A case in point is the Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Worker Protection Act (MSPA). Passed in 1983, the law requires certification for farm labor contractors and written disclosure at the time of recruitment of the type and length of employment, wages, transportation, benefits, and housing. Under the law, transportation and housing provided for workers must meet specific standards.

The MSPA is better than previous laws for farmworker protection, but it still has significant flaws, including weak enforcement by the DOL’s Wage and Hour Division. In 1995, the DOL investigated 2,376 farms under the MSPA, about half the number of inspections it conducted in 1985. The DOL claims that limited resources—the agency has fewer than a thousand inspectors for the entire country—and bureaucratic gridlock make further enforcement difficult. But violations ranging from unfit housing to illegal contractors were found in 63% of the 1995 inspections, which farmworker advocates say is nowhere near the total number of farms that regularly break laws.

The MSPA also exempts businesses with few workers, which often means that large employers circumvent the law by listing the earnings of all family members under the name of the head of household on their payrolls, thus reducing their official employee count. This practice contributes to low wages and renders other family members ineligible for Social Security benefits, unemployment, and (when available) worker’s compensation. The MSPA also exempts employers from having to follow certain provisions of the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA) as well as minimum wage and overtime laws.

Similarly, no federal law on workers’ compensation protects farmworkers (14 states, including New Mexico, provide no benefits at all for farmworkers injured on the job), while much of the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) is not extended to agricultural work. The FLSA requires that fourteen- and fifteen-year-olds be allowed to work only outside of school hours; for agricultural jobs, however, their hours are unlimited, and with DOL permission, children as young as ten are allowed to work in the fields. Again, enforcement concerns exist—the Associated Press investigation mentioned above found that the DOL consistently failed to find and protect the most vulnerable child laborers and had a policy of fining farmers less than other businesses for labor law violations.

In like manner, despite the current national climate of anti-immigrant sentiment and restrictive immigration legislation, U.S. policy makes exceptions in the case of foreign guestworkers. The H-2A program, for example, admits nonimmigrant workers for specific agricultural jobs that normally last less than a year, and the program falls outside of all national immigration quotas, family reunification schemes, and other immigration regulations. Currently, the agribusiness lobby is making a strong effort to reduce the already limited protections the program grants workers and to expand the number of guestworkers permitted into the country as a part of the program.

Farming corporations claim they desperately need the guestworker program due to labor shortages, and the DOL approves an astounding 99% of all H-2A applications. But numerous studies, including a 1997 report by the U.S. General Accounting Office, have found surpluses in farm labor: in California, where claims of shortages are particularly loud and lobbying efforts particularly strong, as many as 300,000 farmworkers have been unemployed in the last five years.

Despite these facts—and against the recommendations of the U.S. Commission on Agricultural Workers, the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform, and Secretary of Labor Alexis Hermann—agribusiness has effectively lobbied for a revised, expanded version of H-2A called H-2C. On July 24, the Senate passed the guestworker expansion bill as an amendment to the appropriation bill for the Commerce, State, and Justice departments by a vote of 68-31. H-2C would weaken wage, recruitment, working condition, housing, and law enforcement protections for guestworkers; further, employers would not be required to recruit workers in the domestic marketplace before filing guestworker applications.

Farmworker advocates oppose both H-2A and H-2C. Testifying at a hearing on guestworker legislation, Richard Estrada, Commissioner of the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform, said the proposed programs resemble slavery in that workers are not free to sell their labor on the open market but are instead brought to the U.S. to work for only one employer. Economically, they would worsen working conditions and drive down wages by cheapening the cost of labor and providing a large pool of workers who are unable to unionize.

As a result of regulatory shortcomings and the economic and political pressures that work to maintain the farm work system, union organizing of agricultural workers has always been a struggle. The lack of a legally recognized right to organize and bargain collectively—farmworkers are among the few groups of workers excluded from the National Labor Relations Act—further undermines their position. Farmworker unions saw their heyday years ago with the UFW’s successful organizing campaigns and its boycott of California’s grape industry. The economic and political trends described here, as well as the increasing use of farm labor contractors (who maintain workers in small, isolated, tightly controlled crews) have led to a sharp decline in farmworker union activity over the past twenty years. In the mid-1970s, the UFW had 80,000 members; by 1994, they were down to 20,000.

Efforts to Improve Farmworker Conditions

But the UFW continues working, experiencing a resurgence in the past two years with its latest campaign: organizing California’s strawberry pickers for better wages and conditions. New strategies—convincing supermarkets to approach strawberry growers about working conditions and targeting the entire industry rather than particular growers—have met with some success. The UFW’s ranks have climbed to 25,000, and 6,000 out of 32,000 markets nationwide have signed on to the campaign. But grower resistance to organizing in the strawberry fields has been fierce.

In late July, for example, workers at Coastal Berry in Watsonville voted 532-410 in favor of the Coastal Berry Farmworkers Committee (CBFC), denounced by UFW representatives as a pro-grower front group financed by some of the state’s biggest berry producers. According to UFW representatives, not all ballots were counted and foremen threatened to fire workers who didn’t sign the election petition. In some instances, the opposition has been less subtle: on July 1, around 150 CBFC supporters assaulted pro-UFW workers in the fields, and one key CBFC organizer was arrested for felony assault.

Other unions have met with similar mixtures of harassment and victory. The El Paso-based Sin Fronteras Organizing Project, for example, has for years played a key role in organizing agricultural laborers in New Mexico and Texas. And other cross-border organizing efforts—like the Toledo, Ohio-based Farm Labor Organizing Committee’s (FLOC) campaign with Mexican tomato workers—have been successful as well: higher wages in Mexico remove much of the incentive for agribusiness to move there, thus diminishing a common management threat to U.S. union efforts.

Advocacy groups take a different tack in their attempts to improve farm work conditions. Lawsuits and legislative work are frequent tools. For example, California Rural Legal Aid (CRLA) and Texas Rural Legal Aid (TRLA) represent farmworkers who live or were recruited in their states in litigation against employers and farm labor contractors. Cases often involve the failure to disclose contract information or breaches of contract regarding housing, transportation, and wages. Both the CRLA and TRLA win the bulk of their cases, but both also recognize that changes in the laws, not just challenges to them, are needed. In Washington, DC, the Farmworker Justice Fund and the Migrant Legal Action Program also represent farmworkers on the national level, lobbying for better working and living conditions and fighting against programs like H-2C.

Other organizations address the social service needs of migrant farmworkers at the grassroots level, providing them education, housing, and health information. Migrant Health Promotion, based in Monroe, Michigan, runs an innovative Camp Health Aide Program (CHAP), which trains migrant farmworkers in basic health education, first aid, advocacy techniques, camp sanitation, and information gathering. Each year, CHAP trains more than 150 aides who then provide preventive care, emotional support, and emergency health care in migrant farmworker communities. The program operates in nine Midwestern states, and offers a similar version in the winter months in the Lower Rio Grande Valley.

A major function of CHAP is to refer farmworkers to local health clinics, many of which are government-funded. The federal government, in fact, operates an extensive social service network for migrant workers. During the 1960s, with public attention focused on the plight of farmworkers and with state and local governments reluctant to get involved, the national government inaugurated today’s main migrant-specific assistance programs. In the 1970s and 1980s, the number of programs increased dramatically. There are now 12 federal migrant aid programs; the largest four are the Migrant Health Program, Migrant Education Program, Migrant Head Start, and Title IV, Section 402 of the Job Training Partnership Act (JTPA), which provides job training for farmworkers seeking to leave the fields. These programs make farmworkers among the most visibly serviced group in the nation, but figures suggest that these programs (funded at $600 million a year) aren’t reaching all those eligible. Federally funded migrant health clinics, for example, reach less than 15% of the farmworker population.

Although government programs targeted to migrants may in fact play an important role in improving the well-being of workers, they also act as just one more subsidy for agribusiness. When the relevant legislation fails to give employers any incentive to pay workers living wages, provide decent housing, and ensure safe working conditions, federal migrant programs assume the responsibilities (and costs) that these legislative and regulatory shortcomings have created.

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