Faces in the Fields

Workers harvesting sweet potato in 2009. Photo by Peter Eversoll.By Zachary Kohn
Law Intern, NCJC 
J.D. Candidate 2013
UNC School of Law

This summer on outreach, I had the privilege to talk to farmworkers about everything from La Copa de Oro to minimum wage laws, and witnessed everything from scrimmage soccer matches, to workers trotting home under a majestic sunset with dozens of buckets strapped to their limbs, to tractors spraying pesticides in fields right next to farmworker housing. I enjoyed the aroma of delicious traditional meals being prepared at the end of the day, shared tortillas off of a truck with famished workers and even filed a few complaints with the NCDOL on behalf of farmworkers. 

Among the most memorable experiences so far was at a migrant labor camp where workers are suffering from bed bugs, snake bites, inadequate bathroom and water breaks, and housing with malfunctioning toilets, refrigerators, and stoves. The farmworkers at this camp, a talkative and friendly bunch, did not bring up any of these issues until we had been talking for hours. Even when the problems came to light, almost no worker wanted to file the complaint, even anonymously, out of fear that their employer might retaliate. Fortunately one worker had the desire for change. He told us that he would make the complaint not for himself, but for his fellow workers and future workers living at that camp. I cannot imagine a better client or a more righteous act.

Migrant farmworkers, just like anybody else, need to be able to prepare and store food free from insect infestation, earn livable wages, receive proper medical care, have access to water and bathrooms at the workplace, work in a location free from exposure to pesticides, have privacy in their homes and sleep on actual beds with mattresses. And no one should have to work for an employer who takes advantage of him or her.  Unfortunately, most of what we would consider basic requirements for human beings appears to be frequently denied to these incredibly hardworking, optimistic people.

Nonetheless, we can apply the same optimism and dedication the farmworkers have when they travel thousands of miles from home to do back-breaking work, by refusing to let others treat these workers as a distant abstraction. We must do everything in our capacity to demonstrate our belief that these honest people deserve an opportunity for a better future instead of being cheated, abused and lied to. We can witness, speak to farm workers, share our knowledge with others, make documentaries, pressure the legislature to pass bills in favor of humane treatment of farm workers, write about our experiences with workers, file complaints on their behalf, and even file lawsuits. What we cannot do is be complacent and accept their mistreatment. We must act. 

The outreach trips have been one of the most rewarding aspects of my legal internship at the Justice Center. Aside from interacting with clients and brushing up on my Spanish, I witnessed the hidden realities of our agricultural system, awakened to the plight of the truly impoverished, reignited my desire to study law and learned firsthand that even in the most truly difficult situations people can find happiness and hope. While it's frustrating at times to see progress in farmworker's lives develop so slowly, I can only hope that they have received at least a fraction of the benefit I gained from participating in this incredible experience.

60 Minutes misses the rest of the story

On Sunday, May 22, CBS’ 60 Minutes featured a report on child labor in agriculture in the U.S. The report primarily focused on the economic necessity of young children working in the fields to both the grower and the farmworker. Currently, children as young as 12-years-old are allowed to work an unlimited number of hours in the fields outside of school hours.  In almost every other industry you must be at least 14 years of age and the hours permitted to work are limited. The 60 Minutes segment appears to justify the existence of child labor and how and why it plays an “inevitable” role within the complexities of the agriculture industry.  However, there is something terribly askew in this business model if producing fruits and vegetables forces growers and farmworkers to employ children, so that both can financially stay afloat as well as feed the nation.  

AFOP’s Children in the Fields Campaign Program Director Norma Flores López was also featured in the segment. Back in August, Flores López, who is a former migrant farmworker, sat for an hour long interview, sharing the barriers and dangers farmworker children face as a result of the unfair agriculture exemption in the U.S. child labor law. While the report did shine a light on the agriculture exemption, important information shared by Flores López describing why children should not be exempted from the protections established in the child labor law that governs other industries was missing. 

Children who work in the fields are exposed to many dangers including pesticide exposure, which has been scientifically linked to delays in learning rates, reduced physical coordination, cancers, and behavioral problems to name only a few.  Farmworker children are also exposed to heat-related illnesses and are subjected to injury and even fatality from operating heavy and dangerous machinery and equipment.

Farmworker children in North Carolina have reported experiencing vomiting, dizziness, nausea, rashes, sunburn, and heat sickness while working in the fields.  We need to stop and ask ourselves, “Would I allow my 12-year-old child to work 10 hours a day, 6 days a week in the tobacco or strawberry fields knowing these risks?” 

Take a stance to end child labor in North Carolina’s fields! Visit www.harvestofdignity.org  for simple ways you can take action.

Emily Drakage
Children in the Fields Campaign
Association of Farmworker Opportunity Programs

Update on Tuesday, May 31, 2011 at 1:32PM by Chris Liu-Beers

Here is extra video of Norma Flores Lopez that is online but did not appear in the televised report:

New Short Film: Uprooted Innocence

The Farmworker Advocacy Network worked with Professor Bruce Orenstein's video and social change class at Duke University to produce this brand new documentary about the Harvest of Dignity Campaign. Stay tuned for more...

This powerful student-made short film highlights an issue that most of us think disappeared a century ago - child labor.  Here in North Carolina, children as young as 12 years old and in some cases as young as 10 are allowed to labor in the fields, while in every other industry the minimum age is 14 or above. Agriculture is one of the three most dangerous industries in the nation, and yet every year across the country close to 500,000 farmworker children and youth risk their childhood, health, and well-being in order to bring food to our tables. Children in North Carolina are no exception.

Want more facts about children in North Carolina's fields?  Download the fact sheet now. 

Want to help end exploitative child labor?  Take action now.

Food writer Mark Bittman visits farmworkers in Immokalee

Recently, Mark Bittman went to Immokalee, Florida to see for himself what has been happening with the workers who harvest nearly all of the winter tomatoes grown in the U.S. Bittman is renowned for his recipes and his long-running weekly New York Times column “The Minimalist,” and has appeared on dozens of TV shows.

Here are some of Bittman’s initial thoughts:

I spent a couple of hours talking to workers and organizers at the offices of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, went for a walking tour of workers’ housing (the lattice over the windows is there to reinforce a ban on air conditioning, a ban that has been lifted in at least one instance as an indirect result of the recent agreement), even visited three workers in their “home,” and saw the house where several workers had once been held in slavery (not “like” slavery — slavery, as defined), chatted with one of the more progressive growers, and was driven through the fields, whose winter/spring crop is over, though not entirely picked…

Though far from North Carolina, the tales of abuse and exploitation from Immokalee are very close to home. We have seen cases of modern-day slavery here in NC, and we are all too familiar with the poverty wages and substandard living conditions so prevalent in south Florida.

But this story is not all bad news. While Bittman’s visit will help to raise the profile of farmworker issues, farmworkers themselves in Immokalee have been making progress over the last few years. The Coalition of Immokalee Workers has challenged major fast food chains and grocery stores to take responsibility for their supply chains. Many companies – though not all – have taken responsibility, and workers in Immokalee are starting to see the difference.

Field and poultry workers in North Carolina, including the Farm Labor Organizing Committee, are working to make changes here too. Nationally recognized experts on food – like Bittman and Eric Schlosser – are joining the conversation and making a difference.

Will you join it too? Click here to endorse the Harvest of Dignity campaign pledge.

A state of fear

Human rights abuses in North Carolina’s tobacco industry

Last week Oxfam America and the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) released a groundbreaking report on the conditions in North Carolina's tobacco fields.  Tobacco has always been a vital cash crop for NC, but this report confirms that too often workers at the heart of the supply chain live and work in slave-like conditions. 

The study includes direct quotes from tobacco workers:

Tobacco work is hard, but they don’t pay us like it is… the chemicals are very strong and they make you dizzy, sometimes you vomit, you get nauseous, it’s very tough….Your whole body feels tired, you don’t know… if it’s the spray [chemicals] or the tobacco.

—Jaime Arroyo, farmworker in Johnston County, North Carolina

I think our housing is disgusting. Not everyone has a mattress to sleep on, and there are 10 men in one room. There are three showers, but only one works, and the same goes for the toilets.  We don’t have a refrigerator or good ventilation.

—Aparicio Rosales, farmworker in Wilson County, North Carolina

Read more: Executive Summary | Website

Read more about FLOC's campaign with RJ Reynolds - a Winston-Salem-based company with over $2 billion in annual profits - to improve conditions for farmworkers.

Children in the Fields

By Emily Drakage, NC Regional Coordinator, Children in the Fields Campaign - Association of Farmworker Opportunity Programs

The U.S. Department of Labor’s (USDOL) Wage and Hour Division sent out a press release on November 4, 2010 concerning the Strike Force initiative this summer in Western North Carolina.   The new and active interest taken by the DOL on child labor issues in North Carolina was encouraging to read about as an advocate of migrant and seasonal farmworker children. I was pleased to hear the investigators had found no evidence of child labor in the tomato harvest in Western North Carolina.  While this is a great improvement from the series of violations found during the blueberry harvest in 2008, it still pains me to think that when the USDOL investigates child labor in agriculture they are really only searching for children younger than 12 years of age.  

The agriculture industry is consistently ranked as one of the three most dangerous industries in the nation according to USDOL statistics.  All farmworkers toil under very harsh conditions and have less worker protections than any other industry. Yet, a result of an unfair exemption in the U.S. child labor law, children as young as 12 are permitted to perform dangerous, back-breaking labor for unlimited number of hours (outside of school hours) for poverty wages. The Fair Labor Standards Act, which regulates child labor in the U.S., has not been amended since its initial enactment in 1938 and fails to equally protect children who labor in agriculture as it does for all other youth in all other industries.

It is shameful that we as a country still allow this unequal standard of protection to exist.  Migrant and seasonal farmworker children continue to work and live in such environments and as a result these children sacrifice their childhood, education, and well being giving them little hope of escaping the cycle of poverty. The Fair Labor Standards Act which has not been amended since its initial enactment in 1938 fails to equally protect children who labor in agriculture as it does for all other youth in all other industries.

As previously stated, legally a 12-year-old child can labor in agriculture for unlimited number of hours outside of school hours. How can this be considered equitable when, for example, the law stipulates that a youth must be 14-15 years old with a workers permit to work limited number of hours in a grocery store? We must lend our voice in support of farmworker children and youth protections.  Farmworkers’ labor puts food on our tables and is an essential asset to North Carolina and the nations’ economy, but child labor is not.  In order for all children to receive equal labor protections please take action to end child farmworker discriminations by contacting your local representative or by finding more information at www.afop.org , www.ncfield.org , or www.harvestofdignity.org.

Giving Thanks on Thanksgiving

The Birth of North Carolina’s Food: farmhands at work 

By Erin Krauss

Many of us think of the USA as an industrialized and professionalized country, worlds away from dependence on the land. But the food we eat, whether fresh or highly processed, at one point came directly from the soil. It is easy to forget who works the soil to make food grow. In elementary school, all of us learned about the Food Chain – who consumes what and what it takes to keep things balanced. In light of Thanksgiving season this year, I propose that we all revisit this idea of the Food Chain. But instead of just thinking about what we eat on a daily basis, let us think about where it comes from. How is food planted, tended to, picked and shipped to our stores? Whose hands do this work? Have we ever shaken one of them or thanked one of them? Finally, what would we do these hands were no longer here to pick the food that nourishes our state’s people?

Where does North Carolina’s food come from? It comes from the 150,000 farm hands that tend to our soil – about 8,000 of whom are contracted and brought here on Agriculture Visas (H2A Visas). The other 142,000 are estimated to be undocumented immigrants. All of these people are needed to work the land to produce the food that NC demands. These people plant, tend and pick sweet potatoes, peppers, cucumbers, cabbage, tomatoes, blueberries and strawberries - NC’s top agro-crops. This job is not an easy one. Does everyone remember how hot it was this summer? Cities across NC set record high temperatures over 100 degrees. Can you imagine harvesting vegetables in 100-degree heat, carrying 2 tons of sweet potatoes on your back? This is the way that farm workers in NC make a buck. Two tons equals 4,000 pounds, which is the equivalent to the weight of your average car. Carrying a car on your back will earn $50 if you are a farm worker. (I earn $50 within four hours, sitting at a desk job at UNC.) This job is not one done only by strapping young men in perfect health; to the contrary, a number of people in the fields are women, middle-aged folks, and youth. According to the US Department of Labor, nationwide, in 2006, around 1.2 million children under the age of 20 resided on farms – many worked in the fields. Not only this, but did you know that the places farm workers live are called “Labor Camps”? Yes, you heard that right, Labor Camps. Reminiscent of times in history we’d rather let reside in the past, right? But oddly enough, these “Camps” still exist with many of the same conditions that people lived endured in the mid-20^th Century. I’m not referring to sparseness; I’m talking about deplorable conditions. Bathrooms with no separation between the stalls for basic privacy; people washing their pesticide soaked clothes in buckets; no access to kitchen space to cook food; cockroach infested, tight spaces with 20, 30, 40 people in one-room buildings; and no landline phone provided for possible emergencies. This is what is really happening in the NC food chain: unhealthy working conditions, unliveable living conditions, and total naivety among the NC population regarding where the food comes from that nourishes our bodies and keeps us alive.

This Thanksgiving let us be conscious of what we know to be true about North Carolina: first, that it is a beautiful state and one that we are proud to live in. Second, that our neighbors, the farm workers, the people we depend on to feed us, are mistreated, hidden from the public, and neglected by employers and many legislators. The very people that feed us, half the time, are unable to feed their own families due to extreme levels of poverty. One in four of these people report being injured on the job – the job we ask them to do because we don’t want to do it. And these people’s voices are kept silent. Most US Citizens will not do the backbreaking work it takes to keep our stores stocked with an overabundance of food. But what we need to do as US citizens is speak up. We have the voting, constituent power to make a difference, speak out in our communities, and to talk to our legislators.

This Thanksgiving I invite my neighbors, residents of the Triangle area, to make a daily effort to think about food. Where does it come from, how many hands touched it before it arrived on your plate? Who planted it, made it grow, harvested it, and processed it? I invite you to talk about food with your children, loved ones, friends, and co-workers. I invite you to hold an event at your church, at your home, at your school – a dinner, a film screening, or a discussion. And finally, I urge you to speak up to your representatives – and tell them that you support legislation that will ensure safe living and working conditions for farm workers and will demand the enforcement of current protections that exist for people who harvest our food. 

This fall, the Farm worker Advocacy Network is launching a new legislative and community engagement campaign to support farm workers. If you want to be involved in any way, shape, or form, call to find out about how you can help.  Farmworker Advocacy Network (919) 861-2064; ask for Erin Krauss.

New Reports Demonstrate Need for Policy Reforms

The Center for Worker Health at the Wake Forest School of Medicine just released two new policy briefs that highlight the need for reforms to better protect workers.  

A look at the data on occupational safety shows, for example, that many field workers are forced to do their jobs in unsanitary conditions:

• About 20% of migrant farmworkers reported lacking individual cups for drinking water.
• Lack of water for washing hands increased to more than 1/3 in late season.
• About 1/2 of migrant farmworkers reported having no soap available for hand washing.
• About 60% reported having no disposable towels available for hand washing.

A second policy brief, focused on pesticides, concludes that "Greater effort is needed to reduce farmworker pesticide exposure through training farmers as well as farmworkers, more cautious use of pesticides, greater enforcement of current pesticide safety regulations, and new regulations documenting pesticide use."