[Mb-civic] Guardian Unlimited: US crops left to rot as Mexicans leave the fields for better-paid jobs

[harry.sifton at sympatico.ca]

Harry spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it.

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US crops left to rot as Mexicans leave the fields for better-paid jobs
Low pay, harsh conditions and security checks force immigrant workers into other sectors
Dan Glaister in Calexico
Saturday February 04 2006
The Guardian


Standing in the early morning darkness just 50 metres inside the United States, Roberto Camacho is doing his best to ward off the cold. Dressed in a black bomber jacket with a baseball cap pulled low over his brow, he shuffles from foot to foot as he waits for a lift to work.

After 15 years working in the fields of California for American farmers, Mr Camacho has found a new life: two months ago he started working at the Golden Acorn Casino.

"It pays better," he says. "In the fields you work all hours, it's cold and hard and you don't get more than $7 [about £4] an hour. With this job I have regular hours, I know when I'm going to work and I know what I'm going to earn."

Mr Camacho is not unique. Agricultural labourers, almost exclusively Latinos and at least two-thirds of them undocumented, are moving into more stable, less harsh employment.

The migration from agriculture is taking its toll on one of the largest industries in the US - and particularly on California's $32bn a year sector. Faced with an exodus of labour to the construction industry as well as to the leisure and retail sectors, farmers are struggling to get their crops in. Ten percent of the cauliflower and broccoli harvest has been left to rot this year, and some estimates put the likely loss of the winter harvest as high as 50%.

Each morning at 4am workers like Mr Camacho file through the border at the Mexican town of Mexicali to enter the US at Calexico. There they are met by labour contractors who engage them for the day and ferry them directly to the fields in rattling old school buses.

Tightened border security is providing further complications. "This year is the worst," says Gilberto Lopez, a contractor waiting for his crews in the early morning. "They do a lot of checks, so the crossing's very slow. It can take an hour, hour and a half to cross."

Mr Lopez - known to admirers and detractors as The Dog - has been working in the Imperial Valley around Calexico for 39 years. Each day he hires 600 to 800 workers, but this year he's been unable to meet the farmers' demands. "There's lots of work and very few people," he says. "We never make up our teams. You could pay them $10 an hour and it wouldn't make any difference." Most of the workers are paid $7.25 an hour, above the minimum wage of $6.75.

Money and markets

Around him, hundreds of people mill about, waiting for the ancient buses to leave for the fields. But there is a delay. A frost means the lettuce pickers cannot start until the temperature has risen. The people who bear the brunt of this are the day workers. Rather than being paid from the time they are contracted, they are paid from the time they arrive at the fields.

"Some people say they should pay as soon as you get on the bus at 4.30am," says Claudia Magaña, a team forewoman, as she sits on a half-full bus belching its way toward the nearby broccoli fields. "But the contractors don't say anything." The bus stops at her house to pick up her 18-year-old son, a student who works four days a week in the fields to pay for his studies. He dreams of becoming an estate agent.

Signs of the construction boom are all around Calexico, with homes sprouting up on former farmland where they will sell for as much as $400,000 to commuters priced out of San Diego, 120 miles away.

"Four hundred acres [161 hectares] over there just went for building," says Chuck Clunn, another supervisor. "Farmers are selling their land for big money, and it's not for low-income housing." Mr Clunn, who provides workers for 15 farms, watches the buses leave the garage forecourt he commandeers each morning. "We're running 10 buses," he says. "We have 20. We'd like to be running all of them, then we wouldn't have a problem." He agrees that wages are too low. "We say, hey, Mr Farmer, if you want to get your crops in, you've got to pay. The farmers say they can't do it."

Farmers argue they are hemmed in by the market, a market dominated by five giant supermarket buyers.

The labour shortage has already produced one wage rise since November, pushing salaries above the minimum level. Workers have also been put off by the attentions of la migra, the border patrol which has the task of apprehending illegal entrants inside the US.

"The border patrol checks the buses," says Mr Clunn. "They get everyone off the bus. These guys want to come here, work, get their beer and go home." Time spent being checked by the border patrol, he says, is precious work time lost. The attention of the border patrol has united farmers, workers and unions. It has also set some of the business community against the Republican party.

Jon Vessey is the biggest farmer in the valley, with 3,240 hectares growing carrots, artichokes, cabbage and half a dozen varieties of lettuce.

"Last year money was being thrown at border patrol and homeland security," Mr Vessey says, sitting in his office in the nearby town of El Centro, a signed photograph of him with George and Laura Bush hanging on the wall. "They've got to get numbers. So what do they do? They pull over labour buses. The bottom line is, we're not getting people on to our buses with bags of marijuana and bombs. These are hard-working people."

For Mr Vessey the solution is a guest worker programme, although the politics of Washington dictate that few Republicans will support guest workers without a corresponding tightening of border security.

Next month the Senate will consider a hardline immigration measure passed by House Republicans in December. In this week's state of the union address, George Bush strengthened his call for a "rational and humane guest worker programme", while stressing his rejection of any amnesty for undocumented workers already in the US.

"There is a hysteria around the border and terrorism that has nothing to do with agriculture and people who want to earn a good living," says Mr Vessey. "The idea of spending millions building a fence from the Gulf of Mexico to San Diego is ridiculous. Shouldn't we be building bridges rather than walls? If you have a free trade agreement, you should have open borders," he says. "But that would never fly."

Relative values

Tom Nassif, the president of the farmers' group the Western Growers Association, puts the dependence on immigrant labour in stark terms. "Our industry is going to rely on a foreign workforce," he says. "It's only a question of whether that workforce harvests crops in this country or in another country and builds up the economy of that country."

Back in Calexico, it is 6.45am and the orange sun rises on fields of pale green broccoli. The workers are making their final preparations for the day ahead, pulling on hats and jumpers. One man pushes his feet into a pair of muddy wellies. A woman wraps a white scarf around her head.

In 10 hours' time their day will finish, and they will be paid $72.50, minus tax. They will return to the border, cross into Mexico and make their way home, arriving up to 16 hours after they left.

"We want them to put the money up. They should pay $8.25," says Jose Luis Tejas, as he prepares to begin work. "But when we ask them they say, 'Oh, maybe next year.'" Is that why there are so few people here today? "Oh no," he says. "It's because today is Monday."

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