By Tim Mayer
Unlike most things in stores across America these days, food does not have its origins
in a factory or warehouse, or in some dark storage room. No. Food is grown in fields far away from the stores we shop
at, in some cases thousands of miles away. What’s more, it is grown by people. And more than
that, it is grown, maintained, and harvested by people who receive a pittance for a wage, people who have been
attracted to American fields to labor under the hot summer’s sun thousands of miles from their homes.
These are people who have not made the decision freely, but people who must deal with the set of social,
economic and political circumstances that fate deals them; in this case, fate is the global agricultural
market and free trade.
Because many farming families in Central American countries have lost
their competitive edge in their local economies due to heavily subsidized American companies flooding their
produce in local markets across Latin America, those families have had no choice but to migrate north.
Some stop at the border and work in the dilapidated maquila industry. Others choose to cross and look for
work up in the United States. Many cross illegally and are without documents.
There are two
nasty myths about migrant laborers which circulate in popular American thought. One is that migrants
are taking jobs away from Americans. The other is that they are only taking the jobs Americans don’t
want. Neither is true. The fact is that the bosses want cheap, easily exploitable laborers so they can cut
production costs and expand their profit margins. It is no longer possible for a white American citizen
to work on a farm as a laborer. This is not because there are no jobs, but rather that no grower or farmer
will pay them what they are accustomed (and rightly so) to. Also, if they are being treated unfairly, they
have knowledge of avenues of recourse to report abuses.
Welcome to the twilight zone, where
laws become suggestions, people transform into machines, and a cry for justice is but an echo across the
farmlands of America. The injustices done to migrant farm workers are so great as to fill up space beyond
the capacity of this publication. A Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) victory for North Carolina migrant
farm workers, though, has injustice on the retreat. The battle has only begun for many organizers, though.
The makings of a solution
In 1999, FLOC initiated a boycott
against the Mount Olive Pickle Co. (hereafter referred to as Mt. Olive) to address the oppression of migrant
farm workers in North Carolina, whose farms utilize the greatest amount of migrant labor in the United
States and is also, coincidentally, the most anti–union state in the country.
A litany of violations
As one migrant farm
laborer succinctly put
it, "Farm work is hard work."
Exploitation adds needlessly
and wantonly to the suffering.
Here are some of my "
highlights"
from a summary–of–violations
report submitted by a FLOC
organizer this past spring
detailing conditions at a
labor camp in North Carolina:
"…raw sewage was flowing
outside the camp."
"…workers were sleeping
on metal frames with no
mattresses and the stove
didn’t work."
"In this case, the workers did
not want to make any formal
complaints because of fear of
retaliation."
"…still has no hot water…"
"The most common violations
include: lack of bathrooms
in fields, lack of cold water
provided or lack of drinking
cups and illegal application
of pesticides while workers
worked in the fields."
"…one worker was actually
beaten up for stopping to
drink some water."
"…workers were sold beer
while working, which of course
is dehydrating."
"…leaving some workers with
as little as $25 take–home
pay by the end of the week."
"…there are serious wage
violations including workers
being the equivalent of
indentured servants, forced
to work off a debt and not
being allowed to leave…"
"The well known blacklist makes
H2A more likely than others
to be afraid of reporting
problems…"
"…deeply held and often
blatant racism persists in the
fields and labor camps of
North Carolina."
Traditional
labor agreements are between employer and employee. When dealing with farm workers, however, such
arrangements are not adequate to satisfy either party’s demands. In the late 1970s, FLOC began
to pioneer an innovative approach to labor negotiations by demanding another party be present: the
corporation that bought the growers’ produce. FLOC president, Baldemar Velasquez commonly refers
to the analogy of farm workers and growers "scrambling over a small lot of peanuts on a table"
during employee–employer negotiations. Velasquez insists that the person handing out the peanuts
needs to be part of any negotiated settlement. The grower simply pays the farm worker with money the grower
received from the sale of the produce. Most often in such circumstances, the purchaser of the produce is a
large national or transnational corporation, not a family farmer selling to the local market.
In
order for FLOC to win an agreement with the North Carolina Growers’ Association (NCGA) that would be
to the benefit of the thousands of migrant farm workers in North Carolina, the participation of the buyer
would be necessary (see sidebar). In this case, that buyer is Mt. Olive, whose primary concern is cucumbers,
which it processes into the pickles we see on the shelves of grocery stores. Many of the growers in the NCGA
are suppliers of Mt. Olive. For two years beginning in 1997, however, Mt. Olive refused to negotiate with
FLOC, stating repeatedly that it believed labor agreements were a product of employee–employer negotiations
and it was not the employer of the workers FLOC sought to represent, meaning the farm workers. Technically, this
is true. As previously stated, however, the growers are unlikely to agree to higher wages unless they themselves
receive a higher premium for their produce. In order for that to happen, Mt. Olive must become part of the
negotiations. After two years of failing to bring Mt. Olive to the table, FLOC felt it necessary to begin a
boycott of Mt. Olive products in stores across the country.
FLOC is based out of Toledo, and its
support base is mostly in the Midwest. Within two years, FLOC was able to clean Mt. Olive products out of that
city. Mt. Olive is strongest in the South, however, where it has a larger share of the market than any other
pickle company. Any serious dent in its sales could only be the result of an aggressive campaign in the South.
Locally, students from the Coalition for a Humane and New Global Economy (CHANGE) sponsored
Baldemar Velasquez to speak on the Kent State University campus during the Student Week of Labor Action in
the spring of 2003. While there was interest in supporting the campaign, no student group from KSU actively
organized around the boycott. This past May, I began bringing together social justice activists in the
Cleveland area in an effort to clean Mt. Olive pickles out of Tops, Heinen’s, and Super K–mart
grocery stores. Together, with the help of Baldemar Velasquez, we were able to meet with the CEO of
Heinen’s and representatives from Tops’ corporate management. After Heinen’s failed to
follow up with FLOC, a Cleveland support group made up of religious, labor and Latino activists initiated
one picket of Heinen’s in late July. As we were gearing up for successive pickets in September, word
of a possible settlement was in the works, and the demonstrations were called off.
The fruits
of organized labor
On Sept. 16, it was announced that two agreements
had been reached: one between FLOC and NCGA and another between FLOC and Mt. Olive. While Bill Bryan, CEO
of Mt. Olive, stated that the boycott had almost no effect on pickle sales, he went on to add that dealing
with phone calls from customers, activists and grocery store owners was becoming too much of a hassle.
Groups in support of the boycott numbered in the hundreds, perhaps close to a thousand. Among them was
the Methodist Church of which Bill Bryan is an active member.
The North Carolina Growers’
Association
The NCGA is an organization
of close to 1,000 growers in
North Carolina, almost all of
whom utilize the H2A visa program,
whereby people from outside the
United States are granted visas
permitting them to work in the
country’s agricultural sector.
Some 10,000 H2A laborers were
employed in North Carolina, making
them the largest group of users
of the program in the country.
Even more migrant farm workers
are employed in North Carolina
fields "illegally," or without
any documentation. Some estimates
place the number of undocumented
farm workers to as high as
100,000. If the documented workers
have rights guaranteed through
their union in their labor
camps, the benefits of those
gains through union representations
may pass down to undocumented
workers.
The agreement with the NCGA
covers not only pay increases, but also addresses working conditions, housing, and the notorious
"blacklists" on which union agitators are so often placed. The contract also allows for a
three–step grievance procedure and union representatives in each labor camp in North Carolina.
Workers will also be able to negotiate contracts through the union, receive compensation if injured,
and receive time off to attend funerals, among other things.
In what is being called a
"sidebar" agreement, Mt. Olive agreed to increase wages by 10 percent over three years and to
expand its purchasing code of conduct. Mt. Olive is one of the largest pickle companies in the United
States, and it is likely that other companies will begin to negotiate with FLOC, knowing that one of
their main competitors has already done so.
This agreement is merely a beachhead in a long
struggle for justice in the fields of America. It will be many years before the millions of migrant
workers in this country have their "dignity as human beings" fully validated, but this most
recent agreement shows that oppression is on the retreat. With the thousands of farms with workers
who have documents and those without, obtaining full unionization will be an uphill battle. FLOC has
a small, dedicated staff, and if history is any indicator, this is a battle the organization does not
mind fighting.