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HispanicVista Columnists

Growers and farmworkers union agree to bring in temporary guest workers.

By Patrick Osio, Jr.

Let’s see if we can absorb this – 8,500 farmworkers who are already in the US will obtain Guest Worker visas, and be represented by a farmworkers labor union? Not in California, nor Texas, nor Arizonabut in - North Carolina? But wait a minute – the pending AgJobs legislation is still in Congress’ limbo. No one wants to deal with it until after the November elections. Even President Bush’s January 14^th call for immigration reform hasn’t been heard from since. And North Carolina farmers went along with this?

It seems the obvious finally came to roost in North Carolina – if you leave it up to politicians they will do nothing for the undocumented farmworkers simply because they can neither vote nor do they make political contributions. Farmers, well, that’s a different story – they both vote and give mightily to political aspirants or those in office – depending on who will toe the line.

So what made North Carolina farmers change their mind? Money, that’s what.

For five years the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC), dedicated to building a national campaign to support farmworkers justice, has carried on a boycott against North Carolina based Mount Olive Pickle Company, the nation's second largest pickle company. Like Cesar Chavez’s grape boycott of the 1960s in California, it takes time, but eventually the erosion of sales under the weight of persistent bad publicity begins to take its toll. Companies are about profits created by sales, which in turn are both negatively impacted by negative publicity.

FLOC was supported through those five years by the National Council of Churches and part of the bad publicity were accusations that Mount Olive’s workers often lived in squalid housing and that at least two workers died of heat over exposure and/or pesticide exposure. Now couple this to the growing citizens’ demands to stop hiring undocumented workers – and it’s time to ignore the politicians and work within the law.

And, that law is the H-2A guest worker visa program for agricultural-workers that has been existence since 1964 (H-2 amended in 1986 to H-2A). That’s right it’s been on the books all along – there has been no need to come up with new legislation – simply updated to meet today’s requirements and the US could have been without half the undocumented immigrants we have today – and no amnesty either.

But it’s so much cheaper to hire undocumented workers with the added benefit that they can’t complain when ill treated or shorted on their pay.

So the agreement is historical because it is the first of its kind (guest worker program) between a growers association, the North Carolina Growers Association, which represents 1,000 farmers, and a farmworkers union, the FLOC, based in Ohio. Added features in the agreement include a 10 percent pay increase over a three year period that will bring the pay range between $10 and $12 per hour from a present hourly wage of $8.06.

The grower’s association will establish various committees to study how to improve workers’ housing and health care. FLOC and the growers’ association will open a line of communications with the Mexican government to discuss graft, bribery and blackmail carried out by migrant workers recruiters active in Mexico charging outrages fees and inducing illegal border crossings. FLOC will also set up a union hiring hall in Mexico to process the visas applications for contracted workers.

Without the union’s boycott pressure the likelihood such an agreement would not have taken place is evidenced by what took place in Georgia’s Vidalia sweet-onion industry. On May 13, 1998, the then INS launched operation “Southern Denial” apprehending 21 of the estimated 3500 to 5000 harvest workers. Within hours the Georgia Congressional and Senators were on the telephone demanding the INS stop the raids, which they did.

Within days an agreement was reached: the workers were provided H-2A visas; the growers formed the Vidalia Harvesting, Inc. cooperative to obtain legal H-2A visas for future years. However, growers abandoned the H-2A program when they learned they would have to pay the Department of Labor’s determined prevailing wage and provide the mandated temporary housing to both domestic and foreign guest workers.

What for they told General Administration Officers, “workers just ‘show up’ without notice when they are needed.” Plus growers didn’t want to spend money on workers recruitment, housing or other benefits.

The signs should be clear to the agricultural industry in every state – don’t wait for a boycott and the negative image. Forget politicians, either hire domestic workers, or abide by the laws already in place. What part of “illegal-hiring” don’t they understand?

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Patrick Osio, Jr. is Editor of HispanicVista.com (www.hispanicvista.com). He can be reached at: Posiojr@aol.com

(Comments to this article to: EditorialOpinion@aol.com)