IMPORTING OR EXPLOITING?

December 3, 1998

Spencer Michels reports on importing farm workers from foreign countries when the supply of domestic workers is low.

SPENCER MICHELS: It is sunrise near Visalia in California's vast agricultural Central Valley. Aden Hester is checking whether enough farm workers have shown up to pick the olives on the 300-acre DeJong Farm. Hester is president of the state's Olive Growers Council. ADEN HESTER, California Olive Growers Council: You're seeing black olives on some of these trees, and that's an indication that he hasn't been able to get the people to get in there to get them off on a timely basis because, you know, actually black olives are picked green and then turned, turned black in process. SPENCER MICHELS: All harvest season farmers all around the country - many in areas with low unemployment - have been complaining that they haven't been able to hire enough workers to harvest their crops. ADEN HESTER: As the labor pool begins to shrink, a lot of the farm workers go into other professions that are easier, not as dirty, and then they got more benefits. The pool continues to shrink, and who do you replace it with? SPENCER MICHELS: The growers thought large numbers of those replacements could come from foreign countries like Mexico. Currently, there is a guest worker program on the books known as H2A, which allows farmers to recruit foreign workers when a shortage of domestic workers exists. But few farmers use it. They claim it's cumbersome and overly bureaucratic and makes too many demands on the employer. They want a new program that would ease the flow of temporary workers into the US. Opponents say such a law would be reminiscent of the policy that preceded the current H2A program, the discredited Bracero program, which means "strong arm" in Spanish. The old Bracero program brought 4.6 million Mexican workers into American fields from 1942 until 1964. The program ended amid well-publicized charges that the workers had been exploited by growers. The treatment of farm workers was a major reason for the rise of the United Farm Workers Union, co-founded by the late Caesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta, who today is the union's secretary-treasurer. DOLORES HUERTA, United Farm Workers Union: The Bracero program was a terrible program. It was bad for the families of the people that lived in Mexico, and when they were here, they were earning very little wages. There were - I saw paychecks for $15 for a two-week period of time. There was a tremendous amount of abuse. SPENCER MICHELS: Huerta thinks a new Bracero program, as she calls it, would be just as bad. DOLORES HUERTA: One would think that as we go into the 21st century that somehow the attention would be placed on how do we make life better for the farm workers, you know, how do we make it better for them, instead of making it worse for them, and this, of course, would make it worse for them. SPENCER MICHELS: When the farmers took their proposal to Congress this year, they promised it would be good for the workers. Its key provisions would be preferential hiring for American citizens, vouchers for housing, and transportation assistance. The farmers also claimed that the program would reduce illegal immigration and make them less dependent on illegal aliens, who now make up about half their workers. But growers, like Rick Shellenberg, who raises Thompson grapes near Fresno, believes a new law would clarify the murky immigration status of his work force by making any future workers he hires temporary but legal. This fall, however, Shellenberg's main concern was getting his crop off the vine. RICK SHELLENBERG, Farmer: When I grew this crop this year, my intention was to make raisins. I get paid more money for raisins than I do wine grapes or juice grapes. SPENCER MICHELS: But he couldn't get workers. Without enough workers, he couldn't pick at the optimum time for raisins, so he had to sell his grapes a little later for jug wine. RICK SHELLENBERG: The price that I got for the grapes versus what I could have gotten for raisins is about $30,000 difference, so it's a lot of money. And - SPENCER MICHELS: You blame that on the labor situation? RICK SHELLENBERG: I blame that absolutely on the labor situation. SPENCER MICHELS: The labor unions don't accept that there is a shortage. Leaders say it's just an excuse farmers have invented to get cheaper workers. DOLORES HUERTA: We have double-digit unemployment in every single rural country in California. There's a lot of people that are without work, but obviously they're not going to work where they're going to be abused, where they're not going to have sanitary facilities in the field, and when they're not even making the minimum wage. SPENCER MICHELS: Grape grower Shellenberg says that he was paying good wages but still he could find only a few workers. He said the state Employment Development Department, EDD, couldn't help. Opponents of the program say that growers should first look to the ranks of the unemployed for workers, but EDD division chief Diego Haro says that while Fresno County has an unemployment rate above 10 percent, only a tenth of those have agricultural experience. He says using others for farm work is unrealistic. DIEGO HARO, Employment Development Department: Because, I mean, they have to guarantee minimum wage, so someone who cannot pick enough crop at the wage in order to justify their own wages, that farmer is going to lose money on them, so they have to be skilled enough to - and fast enough and work hard enough to be able to earn at least that much. SPENCER MICHELS: The workers, themselves, at least those in the EDD office, say they often can't find enough work. We talked to several through a translator. INTERPRETER: He says that he did find work, but the work that was supposed to last a month long only lasted a week or two. If they would make the wages more attractive, they wouldn't have to go anyplace else. SPENCER MICHELS: By law, farm workers are supposed to earn at least minimum wage, $5.75 an hour in California. Most of the workers we met said they were not making much over the minimum, depending on the crop. But growers in the olive industry, for example, say that to pay much more makes farming uncompetitive in the global marketplace. Olive Council President Aden Hester. ADEN HESTER: California is competing head on with Spain and Morocco. They have started making black ripe olives in those countries, and they have focused on the food service industry in the United States. And they're selling them very cheap. SPENCER MICHELS: So if you want to pay one of your workers $10 an hour, what happens? ADEN HESTER: Pay them $10 an hour you'll be out of business tomorrow. SPENCER MICHELS: Wages are higher in the premium wine industry. At the Hoot Owl Creek Vineyards in Sonoma County, where they produce fine cabernets and Merlots, management found that higher wages weren't the solution. Workers there average $125 a day, with some making up to $200 during the peak harvest season, which lasts a few weeks, but still, giving enough help has been a struggle. So, manager Pete Opatz bought a $100,000 mechanical picker from New Zealand. Now, with five men, he can pick 15 acres a day. In contrast, a crew of 30 farm workers harvesting by hand picked just five acres. PETE OPATZ, Hoot Owl Creek Vineyards: We've reduced our dependency by about 2/3 on seasonal farm workers. SPENCER MICHELS: So if you have mechanized and you don't need so many workers, why do you favor the Bracero program? PETE OPATZ: Because in our business if we were to get six inches of rain tomorrow, we have machines that would not access these fields; they would - it would have to be done by hand. SPENCER MICHELS: As part of the enticement to get and keep workers, Hoot Owl Creek provides housing for its laborers, some of whom live here year-round. Housing for migrant workers has long been a contentious issue. Union leaders point to camps like this one in the town of Huron that was actually built during the Bracero era and is still in use today. Paul Chavez of the Farm Workers Union toured it with the mayor of Huron, Ramon Domingez. SPOKESMAN: This is the latrine, huh? SPENCER MICHELS: Under a new guest worker program a tight housing market for farm laborers would become even tighter, according to Chavez. PAUL CHAVEZ, National Farm Workers Service Center: The problem is, is there is inadequate housing. The bottom line, there isn't places for people to live. And so, yes, there's talk about a voucher program, and we were laughing and saying they're probably going to have to build tents out of those paper vouchers and live under them. There is no housing here. SPENCER MICHELS: The guest worker program easily passed through the Senate and moved directly to a House-Senate Conference with the White House. But the President, pushed by labor, got the measure dropped. Growers are certain to revive the proposal in the new Congress and labor is just as certain to fight it once again.