Workers Claim Race Bias as Farms Rely on Immigrants

[lostinblue 1,989]

Workers Claim Race Bias as Farms Rely on Immigrants

Working for hours on end under a punishing sun, the pickers are said to be crowded into squalid camps, driven without a break and even cheated of wages.

By ETHAN BRONNER

VIDALIA, Ga. For years, labor unions and immigrant rights activists have accused large-scale farmers, like those harvesting sweet Vidalia onions here this month, of exploiting Mexican guest workers. Working for hours on end under a punishing sun, the pickers are said to be crowded into squalid camps, driven without a break and even cheated of wages.

Unemployment in Vidalia, Ga., is about 10 percent.

.

But as Congress weighs immigration legislation expected to expand the guest worker program, another group is increasingly crying foul Americans, mostly black, who live near the farms and say they want the field work but cannot get it because it is going to Mexicans. They contend that they are illegally discouraged from applying for work and treated shabbily by farmers who prefer the foreigners for their malleability.

They like the Mexicans because they are scared and will do anything they tell them to, said Sherry Tomason, who worked for seven years in the fields here, then quit. Last month she and other local residents filed a federal lawsuit against a large grower of onions, Stanley Farms, alleging that it mistreated them and paid them less than it paid the Mexicans.

The suit is one of a number of legal actions containing similar complaints against farms, including a large one in Moultrie, Ga., where Americans said they had been fired because of their race and national origin, given less desirable jobs and provided with fewer work opportunities than Mexican guest workers. Under a consent decree with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the farm, Southern Valley, agreed to make certain changes.

With local unemployment about 10 percent and the bureaucracy for hiring foreigners onerous guest workers have to be imported and housed and require extensive paperwork it would seem natural for farmers to hire from their own communities, which they did a generation ago.

In fact, the farmers say, they would dearly like to.

We have tried to fill our labor locally, said Brian Stanley, an owner of Stanley Farms, which is being sued by Ms. Tomason and others. But we couldnt get enough workers, and that was hindering our growth. So we turned to the guest worker program.

The vast majority of farm workers in the country are not in the guest worker program but are simply unauthorized immigrants. The plan to place those workers on a path to legal status would reduce the chances of their being exploited, the bills sponsors say, and thereby also improve the status of Americans who feel they cannot compete against vulnerable foreigners.

Mr. Stanley, like other farmers, argues that Americans who say they want the work end up quitting because it is hard, leaving the crops to rot in the fields. But the situation is filled with cultural and racial tensions.

Even many of the Americans who feel mistreated acknowledge that the Mexicans who arrive on buses for a limited period are incredibly efficient, often working into the night seven days a week to increase their pay.

We are not going to run all the time, said Henry Rhymes, who was fired unfairly, he says from Southern Valley after a week on the job. We are not Mexicans.

Jon Schwalls, director of operations at Southern Valley, made a similar point.

When Jose gets on the bus to come here from Mexico he is committed to the work, he said. Its like going into the military. He leaves his family at home. The work is hard, but hes ready. A domestic wants to know: Whats the pay? What are the conditions? In these communities, I am sorry to say, there are no fathers at home, no role models for hard work. They want rewards without input.

Such generalizations lead lawyers and residents to say there are racist undertones to the farms policies.

I am not arguing that agricultural work is a good job, said Dawson Morton, a lawyer who focuses on farm workers rights at the Georgia Legal Services Program, a nonprofit law firm. I am arguing that it could be a better job. If you want experienced people, train them. Just because people are easier to supervise, agricultural employers shouldnt be able to import them. It is not true that Americans dont want the work. What the farmers are really saying is that blacks just dont want to work.

To which J. Larry Stine, an Atlanta lawyer for Stanley Farms and other big farms, replied: The farmers are not racist or against Americans. They have crops to be picked, and they see that domestics just dont have their hearts in it.

Jim Knoepp of the Southern Poverty Law Center, a nonprofit group that has campaigned against the guest worker program, said that farm work, like other difficult labor, could be made attractive to Americans at reasonable cost, and that farmers should not be excused from doing so.

There used to be lots of American pickers who moved around the country, he said. But wages have stagnated and conditions have deteriorated, and agriculture is unwilling to make these jobs attractive. Think of trash collection. Thats not very appealing, either. But if you offer a decent wage and conditions, people do it.

Cindy Hahamovitch, an expert on guest worker programs at the College of William and Mary in Virginia, said that in the 1970s about two-thirds of farm workers were Americans and a third were foreign, and that a decade later the proportion was reversed. Today, she said, the vast majority of farm workers around the country are immigrants, although not in the guest worker program.

Republicans in Congress, mindful of the Democrats desire to bring legal status to the nations 11 million unauthorized immigrants, have made an expansion of the guest worker program a key element of any deal. Current proposals include increasing the number and category of temporary workers to the dairy and construction industries, and increasing their stays from a matter of months to three years so that employers have the workers they say they need.

The guest workers who are planting cucumbers for Southern Valley and harvesting onions for Stanley Farms are among 10,000 holders of H-2A visas in Georgia this year and 85,000 nationally. They are generally guaranteed a minimum wage of just over $9 an hour, but are paid per piece and can boost those wages by increasing their productivity. Other workers, known as H-2B and numbering around 65,000, labor in other businesses in which there is a demand for temporary or seasonal workers, including hotels.

Employers must show that they have tried to hire Americans through advertising and other means and that they could not attract enough of them before resorting to the H-2 system. In the litigation that resulted in the consent decree with Southern Valley, the federal government argued that the effort had not been made or had been intentionally not serious. Excuses were used not to hire locals or to fire them training was minimal, and people were fired when they were less skilled than others who had been doing the work for years.

Youve got some people who dont work as fast as Mexicans, but they dont teach you, and it can be learned, said Misty Johnson, who was fired and then rehired by Southern Valley as part of the consent decree.

For the past few months, Southern Valley has been required to provide daily bus transportation to the farm and demonstrate that it was training and retaining Americans. But a recent inspection of those efforts left federal officials unimpressed.

Southern Valley officials make no secret of their belief that the consent decree the free bus, the orientation program they now run and the training is a waste of their time and money. They assert that there is no discrimination and that they would prefer to hire locals if they could.

Lawyers for the local workers say the system is rigged to favor low-cost foreign labor because, given the conditions and the pay, no one else will do it.

If you cant find locals to do the work, why is the answer to bring in people who have little protection and not grant them legal status? asked Mr. Knoepp of the Southern Poverty Law Center. If we need them, why not bring them in and make them legal citizens with real protections? The answer is because then they wouldnt keep working in the fields given the conditions of that work. They would do something else. It doesnt have to be this way.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: May 6, 2013

Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article misstated where the Southern Poverty Law Center is based. It is in Montgomery, Ala., not Atlanta.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/07/us/suit-cites-race-bias-in-farms-use-of-immigrants.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

“We have tried to fill our labor locally,” said Brian Stanley, an owner of Stanley Farms, which is being sued by Ms. Tomason and others. “But we couldn’t get enough workers, and that was hindering our growth. So we turned to the guest worker program.”

Exactly. Everybody knows where all the illegals are. However, nobody is going to get rid of them, because we need them. There are not enough legal folks standing up, ready to work.

Tell you what, for every one of you that says they are taking jobs away, go spend a week, or even a day, doing what they do.

Edited May 7, 2013 by The Patriot

[Karee 4,189]

Exactly. Everybody knows where all the illegals are. However, nobody is going to get rid of them, because we need them. There are not enough legal folks standing up, ready to work.

Tell you what, for every one of you that says they are taking jobs away, go spend a week, or even a day, doing what they do.

You saying Americans are lazy?

[GandD 5,966]

Why is the format all jacked on this thread?

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

You saying Americans are lazy?

Smart. Why pick grapes when Obama pays you to sit on the couch? If you want to see Americans get back to work, cut off that unemployment at 6 months or less. No extensions.

Why is the format all jacked on this thread?

The OP article probably didn't close a tag.

Edited May 7, 2013 by The Patriot

[lostinblue 1,989]

I know what they do... I have picked apples with them, In a school system that a friend works at 80% of african american males do not get past 10th grade. They are being displaced by for the most part people south of the border. . It is not just farms...It rings true in the construction trades also. Walk in a housing development in the southern part of the United States and Spanish is what you hear. Who will be left behind when we invite another population that is the size of ohio. I have read that 1/3 of the population desires to come here from Mexico alone. Who gets displaced ?.

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

Exactly. Everybody knows where all the illegals are. However, nobody is going to get rid of them, because we need them. There are not enough legal folks standing up, ready to work.

Tell you what, for every one of you that says they are taking jobs away, go spend a week, or even a day, doing what they do.

I'll say that agricultural jobs would be hard to fill with US labor. I see the folks on the strawberry and tomato fields around here and I know there aren't enough Americans that will do this work. But illegal labor is everywhere. In hotels, restaurants, construction, factories and so on. Don't tell me that you can't find American labor for those jobs. Time and again, those jobs were filled real quick with lawful US labor following each and every raid that was done on any of the illegal labor employer in the US. We have 11 million illegals in this country and right about the same number of unemployed. The vast majority of the unemployed is low skilled labor - the exact market that is occupied by illegal labor today. That isn't some coincidence.

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

I'll say that agricultural jobs would be hard to fill with US labor. I see the folks on the strawberry and tomato fields around here and I know there aren't enough Americans that will do this work. But illegal labor is everywhere. In hotels, restaurants, construction, factories and so on. Don't tell me that you can't find American labor for those jobs. Time and again, those jobs were filled real quick with lawful US labor following each and every raid that was done on any of the illegal labor employer in the US. We have 11 million illegals in this country and right about the same number of unemployed. The vast majority of the unemployed is low skilled labor - the exact market that is occupied by illegal labor today. That isn't some coincidence.

I live in an ag county, in an ag state. When the immigrants refuse to go to work without a raise, nobody is clamoring to take their jobs. They make good money, can pretty much set their own wages, and have no competition. That is why nobody is in a big hurry to see them leave.

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

I live in an ag county, in an ag state. When the immigrants refuse to go to work without a raise, nobody is clamoring to take their jobs. They make good money, can pretty much set their own wages, and have no competition. That is why nobody is in a big hurry to see them leave.

I don't doubt it. I live pretty remote from the city - lots of strawberry fields, orange groves and cattle pasture around here. When I see folks in the fields in the spring and especially in the summer - I sure don't want to be where they are. It's rough work, no doubt. And when you see where our migrant labor lives - good lord. Thanks but no thanks.