Farm laborers’ working conditions surveyed
-By Lori Craig
At 1:30 on a chilly winter morning, 13 USC Law students stood on the United States-Mexico border with dozens of farm workers awaiting the arrival of transportation to the fields nearby.
It was an atypical way to wrap up their winter break, but the students were there with purpose. They volunteered two days of their time to help California Rural Legal Assistance survey farm workers about their working conditions in the fields.
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| Legal Aid Alternative Breaks students in El Centro, Calif. |
For the third year in a row, the law school’s Legal Aid Alternative Breaks (LAAB) group has teamed with CRLA to assist residents and workers in low-income rural communities. Joined by Acting Director of Public Services Malissa Barnwell-Scott, the students traveled to Calexico, where CRLA staff trained them in labor and employment law and taught them how to complete the comprehensive working-condition surveys.
Following an afternoon tour of the El Centro U.S. District Courthouse, where they met Magistrate Judge Peter C. Lewis, the students were in bed by 4 p.m. to rise early and get to the border. All of the farm workers CRLA serves are documented U.S. laborers, and most are long-term permanent residents, but many choose to reside in lower-priced Mexico and cross the border each day to work the fields.
“It was hard waking up at one in the morning, but it was good because that’s what these people do every day because they have to go and stand in line on the border in the freezing cold,” said Nicole Rivera ’11.
For close to two hours, the USC Law students surveyed farm workers on their working conditions in the field, taking about 15 minutes to speak in Spanish with as many men and women as they could. At issue was the use of quotas in the fields and their effect on working conditions.
“Technically quotas are not illegal, but a lot of times it makes for a really harsh work environment, so CRLA is investigating whether or not they can address it from a legal angle,” said Whitney Fair ’11, co-vice president of LAAB.
Paid per piece of produce rather than at minimum hourly wage, farm workers labor at breakneck pace and often without rest. Students asked the workers about breaks, their access to shade and restrooms, and whether they are paid for wait time (harvesting can’t begin until the ground has thawed, so farm workers might have an hour or two of downtime after arriving at the fields).
“It’s especially tough right now because the economy is bad down there, too, so there’s an overabundance of people who are looking for work,” Fair said. “The problem is, when you don’t have enough work and there are too many workers, then who’s going to speak up and say, ‘I need a break?’”
Some laborers work on a contract basis with a farm, but many take whatever job they can from day to day. As at-will employees they have no job security. One laborer interviewed by Rivera said the field he worked in was divided into quadrants and the laborers who worked the lowest-producing quadrant were fired at the end of the day.
“It was definitely eye-opening,” Fair said. “Though the border is further away, it’s still Southern California and still part of our extended community and it was really good for us to see what was going on down there.”
Between interviews, the students also handed out pamphlets from CRLA that contained information on farm workers’ rights and resources available to them. After the workers were picked up and taken to the fields, the students followed and with permission from the foreman, toured a broccoli field in a tractor, where they continued to distribute CRLA pamphlets.
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