Protecting migrant workers in our vineyards

I have been reading an article in YES! magazine titled presente! a radio station barn raising by Hannah Sassaman relating how a low-power radio station became a high-powered tool for farmworkers struggling in America’s tomato fields for dignity and against poverty and modern-day slavery as late as 2002.

The seasonal immigrant workers, who today number about 2,500, spread throughout Florida, are largely Latinos, Haitians, and Mayan Indians. Most speak little or no English. They are isolated from friends and family. Most U.S. labor laws—including the 40-hour work week, the right to collectively organize, child labor protection, and unemployment insurance—don’t apply to them, and even when they do, any worker who complains risks deportation.

They live eight, 10, 12 to a trailer, and pay exorbitant rent for the homes they use only when they are not picking tomatoes, from four in the morning until dark falls again. The farmworkers are paid 45 cents for each bucket of tomatoes they pick, averaging about $50 for their dawn-to-dusk labor—about the same as they made in 1980.

“When I first arrived, I was brought to South Carolina, where I was told I’d work in the fields picking cucumbers. What they didn’t tell me was that I had just consented, without knowing, to being a prisoner and slave. I was yelled at daily, wasn’t allowed to leave the premises and had guns pointed at me and others all the time,” says Julia Gabriel, a petite 29-year-old Guatemalan Mayan farmworker. Gabriel first came to the U.S. in 1992 and found herself in debt bondage to the employer who had arranged for her to come. She was held captive among 70 undocumented workers in a South Carolina labor compound for three months. After escaping, she became a key witness in the U.S. v. Flores case, which led to the federal Worker Exploitation Task Force in 1998 and Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act in 2000.

In our vineyards in recent years, there have been busloads of contract workers. Generally referred to as Cambos (Cambodians), they come from Indonesia, Singapore and other south east Asian countries. Each year, we also read of Immigration Department raids finding busloads of illegal migrant workers in our region.

As the vineyards contract these people by the busload - not as individuals - like the American situation, they are not subject to our Industrial Relations rules and awards. It is quite possible, that some of these workers, especially the illegal ones, are being exploited by their contracting bosses.

I do not know if orchardists and vineyard managers who employ these migrant workers have to verify the legality and payment of the workers. For them to contract these groups and ignore the working/payment conditions or the potential for exploitation would be ethically damning.

With the shortage of unskilled labour in the fruit picking and vineyard districts, the Federal Government is talking about bringing in South Pacific Islanders to fill the void.

This magazine article is a timely reminder of the exploitation that can occur when orchards and vineyards employ contract labour by the busload. Let us hope the new IR laws and the Immigration Department anticipate these problems and prevent the modern day slavery found in America.