Migrants No More
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On a late afternoon, after a day working the blueberry fields, Vicente opens the trunk of his car to reveal a cache of tools worth, in farmworker wages, a small fortune. "This one was sixty dollars," he says, picking up a three-foot pair of pruning shears. "This is about forty," he goes on, pointing to a two-foot pair of shears for grapes and oranges. There are a half-dozen other tools in the trunk, most of which need new blades every few months, at $20 apiece. Then there are the gloves and goggles that he and Isabel need to protect their hands and eyes.
Farmworkers' tools used to be provided by the companies that own the fields and groves. But most growers no longer hire their own field hands. Instead, the work is subcontracted to independent agents -- a direct, if unintended, result of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, which holds companies liable for knowingly hiring undocumented immigrants. In the San Joaquin Valley, as many as 90 percent of farm laborers now work for contractors -- many of them former farmworkers -- who often take advantage of workers. Forcing laborers to buy their own tools is common; one contractor, Vicente says, tried to get him to shell out $150 for a ladder to work in the olive groves, the equivalent of three days' wages.
Vicente guesses that he spends about $400 each year on tools, a substantial bite out of the $10,000 he makes. He knows that employers are supposed to pay double the minimum wage if workers supply their own tools; he knows, too, that in the winter, when field work withers and some contractors pay $20 a day for tying and pruning the stubborn dried grapevines, they are breaking the law. "But what can you do?" he says. Bad work is better than no work, particularly since 28 percent of Arvin's population is unemployed in the best of times.
Some labor contractors "bounce checks or fail to pay anything at all," says Mike Meuter, a lawyer with the nonprofit California Rural Legal Assistance. "They pay piece rate when it's not the equivalent of minimum wage. They charge workers for tools. And they charge workers for rides to and from the fields." But most workers are reluctant to complain, particularly if they are undocumented and even more so if they are indigenous Mexicans -- like the Mixtecas from Oaxaca, who have poured into the Valley in recent years and who often speak little Spanish, much less English.
Roy Gabriel, director of labor relations at the California Farm Bureau, says his group doesn't approve of contractors who break the law. But the growers leave the task of policing labor practices to the state, which has only 56 field inspectors responsible for 25,000 agricultural work sites. Workplace violations are so common that a 1998 federal study found that one-third of the agriculture sites surveyed violated minimum-wage laws. A 2001 investigation by the Sacramento Bee revealed that during a two-year period, 1,600 farmworkers lost out on a total of more than $800,000 in wages -- and those were just the cases in which claims were filed with the state.
Near sundown on a summer evening, the 90-degree heat is finally letting up. Mexican music wafts from a neighbor's house, and the bells of an ice cream truck jingle a few streets away. Isabel has changed out of the work clothes that she washes separately from the children's because of the film of pesticides from the fields. As she sweeps the back stoop, her three kids climb the branches of a tangerine tree, an unexpected bit of green in the dirt yard.
"School is the most important thing," Vicente says, explaining why he is raising his children in the United States. "I don't want them to work in the fields." Like migrants through the generations, he clings to the hope that his kids will have a better life. Some farmworkers even practice their own version of "scared straight": On Saturdays, mothers and fathers bring their sons to pull oranges and stuff them into 60-pound bags, or have their daughters cut grapes in the 100-degree heat. By Monday, most kids are eager to pile onto the school bus.
Though every farming town in the Valley has success stories of students who head off for college and into professional jobs, those cases remain relatively rare. Hans Johnson, a demographer with the Public Policy Institute of California, recently visited the town of Parlier, 120 miles north of Arvin. The town itself "didn't look so bad," recalls Johnson. "But then I saw the Department of Education scores, and I was appalled. I wonder what these kids are going to do." In several grades, up to 60 percent of Parlier High School students tested "below " or "far below" basic proficiency in English and math. And of those that took the SAT (just 20 percent, compared to 37 percent statewide), only 1 percent scored over 1,000.
The statistics aren't very different at Arvin High, which is why Jackson Serros, director of the school's migrant program, says teachers warn their students: "If you don't go to college, you're going to Grimmway University." In fact, a fair number of local kids do wind up at the Grimmway carrot packing plant, or at the Merry Maids cleaning service, or some other low-wage job in nearby Bakersfield.
But for many farmworkers in Arvin, those jobs are a step up. At Grimmway, there is air conditioning. The work is steady. There are no contractors, no tools to buy, no fighting to get paid. In winter, the work is still there, day after day. "No one ever calls in sick at the packing plant," says Serros. "No one misses a day of work. Every farmworker wants those jobs."
"Sometimes," Vicente says, leaning against his car, "I do get dreaming about something different. Maybe I'll go to Florida and do construction. It's hard work, too. But at least there's some money. I just want a stable job." I ask him if he ever thinks about working at Grimmway, and he shakes his head. "You have to have documents to get those jobs." It's almost 7 p.m. now. In an hour or two, he and Isabel will go to sleep so they can head back to the fields by dawn.
Maggie Jones, a writer in Los Angeles, reported this story from California’s San Joaquin Valley while on a journalism fellowship in child and family policy from the University of Maryland.
Photo: Gregg Segal
LA RAZA VIVE PARA SIEMPRE!