We must treat farmworkers fairly

[Guest guest]

Posted on Mon, Apr. 21, 2008

We must treat farmworkers fairly

DICK DURBIN, BERNIE SANDERS and SHERROD BROWN

This column was written by Sens. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., Bernie ,

I-Vt., and Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio.

Almost 50 years ago, on the day after Thanksgiving in 1960, CBS aired

R. Murrow's documentary about migrant farmworkers called

Harvest of Shame. The portrayal of the workers' poverty,

powerlessness and struggle to eke out a living introduced the plight

of migratory farmworkers in Florida to the public consciousness.

Tragically, in Immokalee, a tomato-producing region in Southwest

Florida, migrant farmworkers still live in shanty towns and earn

nearly the same wages they received 50 years ago. Tomato pickers in

this region are paid by a piece rate according to how many tomatoes

they pick. The Florida Tomato Growers Exchange, the trade association

that represents the region's growers, claims that their tomato

pickers earn an average wage of $12 per hour wage. To earn this wage,

workers must pick 3,000 tomatoes per hour, an impossible pace to

sustain over the course of a day. Even the highest paid farmworkers

in the region earn less than $10,000 a year.

Working 10-12 hours a day

Immokalee workers destroy their backs and knees picking tomatoes,

lettuce and apples for 10 to 12 hours per day. They live in filthy,

substandard housing. They travel from one rural area to another,

disconnected from home and family. And things may be even worse than

we can imagine -- more than six slavery cases have been successfully

prosecuted in the region, many of them uncovered by the Coalition of

Immokalee Workers. One of the slave rings prosecutions resulted in

the imprisonment of contractors who held 30 workers against their

will and forced them to pick produce. Another resulted in the

conviction of three Florida labor contractors who had enslaved and

threatened more than 700 farmworkers with death if they tried to

leave.

Last week, the Senate Health, Education, Labor & Pensions Committee

held a hearing to shine a spotlight on the terrible working

conditions in the tomato fields in Florida. One of our witnesses at

the hearing was Growers Exchange Executive Vice President Reggie

Brown. He and his organization are supposed to serve their members as

an agricultural cooperative and responsible part of the supply chain.

In reality they are leading the fight to stop chains like Taco Bell

and Mc's from providing Immokalee's workers with a much needed

extra penny per pound of tomatoes picked. Recently, the Coalition of

Immokalee Workers, which for 15 years has been fighting to improve

working conditions and wages in Immokalee through collective action,

successfully negotiated two landmark agreements with Yum! Brands,

which owns Taco Bell, and Mc's Corp. Under these agreements

Taco Bell and Mc's would pay workers an extra penny per pound

for tomatoes picked and agree to a vendor code of conduct to improve

worker conditions.

These agreements could be life-changing for thousands of tomato

pickers. Unfortunately, the Growers Exchange is threatening its

members with massive $100,000 per incident fines should they

cooperate in a penny-per-pound arrangement. This threat has halted

the participation of farmers in the Yum! and Mc's agreements,

denying the modest penny-per-pound increases for workers. What's most

surprising is that the penny-per-pound proposal would cost Florida

farmers and the Growers Exchange absolutely nothing.

Why would the Growers Exchange stand in the way of the agreement when

it clearly wouldn't require them to have to pay a penny more out of

their own pockets? That is what the Senate HELP Committee explored in

its hearing. The answer we heard from Brown was unsatisfactory.

It has become clear that in addition to trying to convince the

Growers Exchange and fast food companies to work with the Coalition

for Immokalee Workers, broader steps are needed to improve the labor

protections for farmworkers across the country. If a society is only

as strong as its poorest members, our treatment of migrant workers is

an embarrassment.

The time has come to reconsider our labor laws to ensure that migrant

farmworkers are treated fairly. For example, under the Fair Labor

Standards Act, migrant farmworkers are not entitled to overtime pay.

The National Labor Relations Act does not extend to farmworkers the

protections against unfair labor practices afforded to other

employees working to act collectively for better wages and working

conditions. These basic protections should cover all workers, and it

is inexcusable to leave some of the most vulnerable workers

unprotected.

Investigate these problems

Even enforcement of existing protections has been lacking. In the

last 30 years, the number of wage and hour investigations has

decreased, as has the number of completed compliance actions. This

decline occurs at a time when the number of workers covered by the

Fair Labor Standards Act has significantly increased.

The Senate has an obligation to investigate these problems and work

to correct them, but all Americans have a reason to call on their

elected representatives to get involved, to urge the Growers Exchange

to stop threatening their members with punitive fines if they provide

their workers a modest and long overdue increase in their

compensation.

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