From Labor's Champion
December 15-31, 1989
By Jim Rosenbaum
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In previous issues of Labor's Champion, we have seen how Mexico has become increasingly dependent on U.S. imperialism. Austerity programs have subjected Mexico's working people to devastating poverty and unemployment. Meanwhile, the U.S. banks that have imposed these programs have reaped billions of dollars in super-profits from the debt peonage that Mexico is subjected to. As a consequence of their deteriorating conditions of life, increasing millions of Mexican workers have been forced to leave their country and cross the border into the U.S. to gain their livelihood. Here they find a new form of super-exploitation, but in the interests of the same monopoly capitalists that hold their homeland in a state of dependency. The situation of these immigrants is the subject of this article.
The traditional area of work for Mexican immigrants in the U.S. has been in agriculture. Mexican and Chicano workers make up the bulk of migrant farmworkers nationwide. They move up the western states, from the grape and lettuce fields of California to Oregon and Washington. They work in the fertile Rio Grande valley and other parts of Texas. They also pick tomatoes and other fruits and vegetables in Ohio and Michigan. Jamaican immigrants and Afro-Americans have been the main workers in the citrus groves of Florida and the sugar cane fields of Louisiana, and Afro-Americans have been the main workers in the apple orchards of upstate New York and Vermont. But Mexican-born farmworkers are increasingly found in these fields, as well as harvesting tobacco and sweet potatoes in North Carolina and other crops up and down the East Coast.
Farmworkers are paid at piece rates, and though these are supposed to be set so that the workers earn at least the minimum wage of $3.35 and hour, this is not always the case. Migrants must work fast to even earn this minimum. The work is irregular, frequently providing less than 5 days income in a week. And it is seasonal, the planting and harvesting periods of the crops only lasting several months of the year. Whole families, including school-age children, must frequently work to barely survive. The average income for a family of four migrant workers is estimated at between $7,000 and $9,000 a year, well below the poverty level. And during the drought that affected much of the U.S. in 1988, many workers earned only half that. Most farm owners, of course, were insured against the drought - the farmworkers got nothing.
Migrant farmworkers are still subject to debt peonage. Meals, which they must generally eat at the camp, are overpriced and deducted from their pay. The crew chiefs will often advance tobacco, wine or even drugs to the workers, which are charged to them at payday.
The reason that farm work is so low paid has nothing to do with the nature of the work. Other jobs, such as those of construction laborers, demand a similar level of skill and are equally hard but are generally much higher paid. The capitalist farm owners and the government intentionally super-exploit the farmworkers. Until recently, farmworkers were exempt from federal minimum wage and overtime laws. (Today they are formally covered, but these regulations are not enforced.) Moreover, the undocumented status of many immigrant farmworkers makes them liable to firing and deportation if they protest against their conditions. This has made unionization among these workers much more difficult. Also, the farm owners have always been able to count on a renewed supply of immigrant workers.
But the cheap labor of the immigrant farmworkers does not go to benefit only the farm owners. Many farm owners are actually under contract to huge agribusinesses. Tomato growers in the Mid-West, for example, are often under contract to companies such as Libby's and Campbell's, which determine the amount of crop to be grown, set the prices for the picked tomatoes, etc. It has been calculated that, of the total value of the tomatoes, the workers in the fields and canneries each get 4%, the farm owners get 9%, while the canneries such as Libby's and Campbell's get 83%. (Similarly, in other industries dependent on immigrant labor, the small capitalists who actually hire many of the workers at low wages are often contracted by large monopolies who avoid paying higher wages to their own unionized workers by this method, known as outsourcing.) Thus, it is not the small farm owners, but rather the agricultural monopolies, who make super-profits from the labor of the immigrant farmworkers.
The migrants live in camps, frequently sleeping in overcrowded trailers or unheated rooms. Often there is no hot water or even any running water or indoor toilets. The work is hard, often involving stooping, kneeling and digging with ones bare hands. Many farmworkers develop serious illnesses from the work, such as back pain, slipped disks or bursitis.
Farm labor is one of the most dangerous occupations in the U.S. Some 300,000 farmworkers are made ill from toxic chemicals in the pesticides and herbicides used in the fields. Many of these chemicals are known to cause cancer. In just one small town with 6,000 people, McFarland, California, eleven children of farmworkers were diagnosed as having cancer between 1981 and 1986, and four of them died. Other ailments from the chemicals include chronic skin rashes, kidney and liver abnormalities, and chest cavity problems. Women farmworkers are 7 times as likely to have miscarriages as other women in the U.S.
All of this results in the fact that farmworkers have an average life expectancy of only 49 years, compared to over 70 for most people in the U.S. This is one of the clearest indications of the brutal life of exploitation faced by farmworkers in the U.S. today.
The small improvements that have been realized in the conditions of the farmworkers in recent years have been due to the militant action of the farmworkers themselves, both immigrant and U.S.-born. Farmworkers unions have grown, not only in California, but in the Mid-West and along the East Coast. The workers have fought for their unions, contracts and improved health conditions, not only by calling for boycotts, but with strikes, demonstrations and other mass actions. Beginning in August, 1978, 2,000 workers went on strike against tomato growers contracted to Libby's and Campbell's, and organized a boycott of the two agribusinesses the following year. The strike, which lasted more than five years, was the largest agricultural strike in the history of the Mid-West. It forced the farm owners and the agribusinesses to sign a 3-part agreement for improved pay and working conditions. In these actions, the workers have to face the risk of being fired, arrested and even deported. But their militancy has testified to their determination to fight.
The government, which serves as the board of directors of the capitalist class, plays an important role in channeling Mexican and other immigrant workers into various sectors of the economy. The "Bracero Program," which lasted from World War II until 1964, was set up to provide the agricultural monopolies with a plentiful supply of cheap labor. This was followed by the H-2 program, which was similarly designed to provide contract laborers, not only from Mexico but also from Jamaica and other countries. In the contract labor system, the government and the farm owners set the wages - the workers have no say at all. More recently, in 1986, the U.S. government passed the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA). One of the main purposes of this law is to step up chauvinist attacks against immigrant workers.
The "needs" of the farm owners for a sufficient supply of immigrant workers has been provided for by the government through its Special Agricultural Worker (SAW) and Replenishment Agricultural Worker (RAW) programs. The SAW program "legalized" about 1.3 million workers, more than 80% of them from Mexico. They had only to show that they had done a certain amount of work in perishable agriculture in the U.S. However, many of these workers used their new status to gain relatively better paying jobs in services and industries. The farm owners have been complaining that this has left them with a shortage of workers. Of course, they refused to make up for this "shortage" by offering higher wages. The RAW program is meant to provide some 50,000 additional immigrants each year for the next four years to serve only as farmworkers. This program forces the immigrants to work at least 90 days in agriculture each year for 3 years. This is another form of peonage, or forced labor, as the workers will have no right to seek jobs in other areas. They are thus bound to the farm owners. The RAW program is designed to fill the farm owners need for extra labor after many of the SAW workers moved on to form a cheap labor pool for other industries.
The U.S. workers must join with the immigrant workers to fight this super-exploitation. The division of the working class drives down the standard of living for all workers. We must form a militant united front of all workers against the ruling class. We must fight for full equal rights for immigrant workers. And we must also support the struggles of the working people in Mexico and other countries against the conditions of capitalist dependency that force them to come to the U.S. in the first place.
In the second part of this article we examine the situation of the Mexican immigrant workers in other industries and how the U.S. government and the sold-out union leaders combine their efforts to maintain the slave-like conditions of these workers.
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