Migratory Agricultural Labor In The United States - Thestory Of A National Crisis
Hill, Herbert
The following article is a condensed version of a study issued by the NAACP. Mr. Hill, who is National Labor Secretary of the NAACP, based his report on on-the-spot observations— following labor...
...The firms that own land include some of the nation's biggest industrial corporations...
...A physician testifying before the Commission stated: I can say from the reports of the nurses that we do have dietary deficiency diseases—due to a diet consisting of corn meal and perhaps rice and very little else...
...Who are these people who are so poor and so desperate...
...He is responsible to no one, and his practices too frequently are utterly unscrupulous...
...3. Migrants, most of whom are of Mexican descent, who start in Texas and go north to Montana and North Dakota, working in the wheat and smallgrain harvests...
...You must pick beans all day...
...5. Licensing of camp commissaries...
...But their hopes also dwell on a decent home, good schooling for their children, a pleasant journey from one work place to another, as do the hopes of most citizens...
...The garbage is infrequently collected...
...In terms of real wages their pay was $4.91 per day...
...Four men and a kerosene stove are squeezed into each hut...
...An eight-year-old migrant boy, who was taught to read and write at a special school for migrant children, told some of his experiences in this little essay: Get down on your knees...
...In addition it was found that the importation of farm labor from Mexico is broadly used to depress wage rates for domestic farm labor throughout the entire West Coast area...
...The Federal government has established rules for the shipment of cattle...
...There are many contractors and solicitors who have camps...
...Of the estimated some two million, over one-third are native-born Americans, the majority Negroes...
...ordinary starvation among many of these people...
...10) Congress should authorize an investigation of the foreign-labor program by a responsible committee representing the public, employers and labor 264 and public law 78 should be invoked only when there is an actual labor shortage...
...village conditions in Pakistan no worse than some of the California camps . .. migratory families living under conditions similar to refugees in Seoul (Korea) .5 In New Jersey, at a meeting described by Newark newspapers as the "rowdiest public hearing in years," four hundred farm owners loudly booed the suggestion that they provide blankets, warm water and electricity for their hired farm workers...
...Mostly they just keep rolling along...
...One of the labor camps operated by Mr...
...Entire families, including infants and small children, are hauled in this manner for days and nights, with few rest stops or provisions for eating...
...9 It is of course interesting to note that the victims of this "economic expediency" were mostly Negroes...
...New York State has a law requiring labor contractors bringing ten or more migrant workers into the state to register with the Industrial Commissioner and to keep records on wages, working conditions and other data...
...In May, 1957, the Interstate Commerce Commission held a hearing to consider establishing safety regulations governing the interstate transportation of farm workers...
...Each unit is about ten by twelve...
...Federal aid should be supplied where necessary to make this possible...
...In California, citrus fruit is a billion dollar industry, employing a half million wage earners, selling $3 billion worth of products and paying over $500 million in wages...
...10 "Sweatshops Under Blue Skies" by Sol Markoff, AFL-CIO American Federationist, October, 1957...
...But inadequate appropriations for inspection and enforcement have reduced the value of the international agreements although it is necessary to note that imported workers are legally in a superior position to domestic workers who usually have none of these protections...
...At that moment he becomes a cost item in production...
...I banged on the cab and begged him to stop for 248 Photographs by George Moffett...
...Then start picking beans...
...Union Organization These migratory men and women—and children—who labor in the fields have absolutely no voice in the conditions of their employment...
...So outrageous was this betrayal of agricultural workers in Louisiana, that two representatives of the small National Agricultural Workers Union (an AFL-CIO affiliate) appeared at a quarterly meeting of the AFL-CIO national executive council at Unity House, the summer resort of the International Ladies Garment Workers' Union in Pennsylvania, to protest this shameful "deal...
...I am an American citizen and was born in Los Angeles...
...2) The protections and standards currently recognized as necessary in Puerto Rican and Mexican National contracts should cover all migrant workers, foreign and domestic...
...In his investigations of migrant camps where Mexican laborers are living and working in the United States, Dr...
...I can't see why he didn't fall asleep and kill us all...
...Since the turn of the century, agriculture in the United States has undergone tremendous changes, as has the status of farm labor...
...The Fair Labor Standards Act establishes a sixteen-year minimum age for agricultural employment during school hours...
...12 Foreign Migratory Workers in the United States During the summer of 1957, together with Dr...
...In many states, however, these laws permit children under sixteen, or even under fourteen, to be excused from school to work in agriculture...
...Both are underemployed...
...On February 5, 1959, Dr...
...This astonishing incident occurred in Louisiana in 1956...
...But that is about the limit of his interest in most cases...
...Cyrus Karraker of Bucknell University...
...These workers did not receive payroll statements as required by New York State law, indicating monies earned for a given period and itemized deductions, nor had they been told that deductions would be made for transportation, living quarters, food, and so forth...
...The same driver drove all the way from Texas with no one to spell him...
...If migrant families then attempt to leave the camp, they are warned that they cannot depart because of their "debts...
...A few states have made some limited effort to provide medical care for the destitute migrant farm workers, but the situation still is generally wretched...
...The amendments also provide that if an employee does farm work for an employer on twenty or more days during a year for cash pay figured on a time basis, such pay is covered by the Social Security Law...
...The pitifully few laws which have been passed for the protection of farm workers are violated constantly by farm employers who are penalized very lightly or not at all when such violations are exposed...
...18 The Condition of Farm Workers in 1957, Annual Report of the National Sharecroppers Fund, Inc., New York...
...Because of residence requirements, migrants generally are not considered eligible for medical care through public welfare benefits...
...There was a job for everybody who wanted to work...
...5) Crew leaders and labor contractors should be licensed on a national basis...
...Question: Do you do that...
...The following testimony was given before a Federal Commission of Inquiry by the State Supervisor of the Farm Placement Service in Florida: Question: You say the employment service tries to make sure that there is housing for these people...
...The annual average wage of all farm workers in the United States in 1957 was $892 earned on jobs on and off the farm...
...1 Migratory Labor in American Agriculture, Report of the President's Commission on Migratory Labor, 1951...
...Citizens Act Some examples of positive action are to be found in Pennsylvania where an effective citizens' committee was organized to bring about reforms in the treatment of the thousands of migratory farm workers brought into that State...
...the Commissioner may revoke, suspend or refuse to renew the registration for various reasons, including giving false information to workers as to terms and conditions of employment...
...The United States Farm Placement Service shrugs off responsibility for the working and living conditions of migrant laborers although placing these workers in harvesting and food processing jobs at the request of employers...
...There is also evidence of...
...Galarza vividly described the current operation of the contract labor system in California as follows: The moment the bracero is contracted in El Centro, the Association [of growers] is responsible for his food and transportation...
...Galarza found blatant and widespread violations of the international agreement under which the Mexicans are brought to this country...
...Investigations have uncovered camps in which the entire sanitary facilities consist of one outside privy with no door...
...Their home would be [a] one- or two-room shack, with no inside running water and no flushing-toilet facilities...
...6. Migrants, of all backgrounds, who work up and down the Pacific Coast, harvesting and processing various fruits and vegetables...
...255 Not only has it neglected farm workers, but the American Federation of Labor has in at least one instance actually delivered them to their exploiters...
...That is about as far as we can go...
...2. A requirement to maintain payroll records and to issue a wage state• ment indicating monies earned and deductions from wages...
...An anemic mother, and possibly a tubercular father—a life that will take him into his world where he may possibly die within one year, either from diarrhea, tuberculosis or malnutrition...
...I found a dead mother with six children lying in the same bed, all covered with blood from the hemorrhage of a dying tubercular mother...
...With the virtual collapse of "King Cotton" in the five southeastern states, which in the past supplied a major part of cotton for the United States and the world cotton market, thousands of sharecroppers and agricultural day workers were dispossessed from the land...
...In the yard outside are great stacks of rusty bed springs or rickety iron cots...
...8) State legislation should be enacted to carry out the recommendations of the President's Committee on Migratory Labor in the fields of housing and transportation, and to extend compulsory Workmen's Compensation to cover farm workers...
...this age varies from ten years in Utah to fourteen years in several other states...
...Open intimidation and even threats of violence are commonplace to prevent the worker and his family from leaving the camp...
...The NAACP in cooperation with a small number of other groups has been instrumental in securing the passage of remedial state legislation but often even these limited laws are inadequately enforced...
...In the winter of 1957, under heavy pressure from the National Agricultural Workers Union, the Farm Placement Service reluctantly denied permission to use Mexican Nationals in vineyards and orchard pruning...
...This is because migrant workers are hauled long distances in trucks—not through their free choice, but because very often their employer's labor contractor requires such haulage as a condition of employment...
...As a migrant, his world will be from the Atlantic to the Pacific—from the Great Lakes to the Rio Grande...
...Some were sick and fell to the ground...
...Day after day, week after week, the workers sit in their shacks, waiting to go into the fields and earning not a penny...
...Where it is possible, we inspect...
...14) Congress should direct the Department of Labor to establish a Bureau of Migratory Farm Labor...
...The annual wage was $728 for farm work alone...
...The State of Pennsylvania has issued regula260 tions applying to labor contractors, providing for licensing, and placing upon them certain duties and responsibilities...
...The remainder are Mexicans who enter the United States illegally to engage in farm labor...
...Other branches of the Federal Government are responsible for the foreign contract labor system, and for the poor enforcement of immigration laws which enables thousands of Mexicans—"wetbacks"— to enter the United States illegally...
...Then the big companies started bringing in nationals from Guadalajara, Monterrey and other places...
...Numerous accidents have happened which would not have occurred had the truck been in proper mechanical repair...
...I had the baby on my lap the whole way...
...We always worked in the crops and traveled from one place to another...
...The door to some of the huts can't be closed from the inside...
...On many such trips, no rest stops are made for thirty-six hours or more...
...Because the agreement is between government and government, many safeguards for the workers are included...
...to tell the grower, "You have got to fix this up so and so, and put these beds in," and so forth...
...14 In the course of his testimony at the Public Hearings of the National Advisory Committee on Farm Labor in Washington, D.C...
...The trip may be six hundred miles long, so it is made at night, with breakfast served on the double and work starting immediately...
...MIGRATORY LABOR IS today employed principally in the harvesting and processing of a great variety of fruits, such as berries, melons, apples, oranges and other citrus products, most vegetables including potatoes, beans, lettuce, celery, tomatoes and sugar beets...
...Sometimes they stop for a hamburger and a Coke...
...We wish to thank Mr...
...8 And Then—Payday Payday is just another frustration in the lives of most migratory farm workers...
...Specifically, farm workers' average annual wages rose only about $150, while the average yearly earnings of factory workers reached approximately $2,000...
...Farm labor is excluded from all benefits of unemployment insurance coverage, as well as most other protective and labor legislation...
...It's better to keep them out of sight...
...Answer: It invariably is unreasonable...
...In the past decade the system of cotton land tenancy in the South has greatly diminished...
...Migratory farm labor is so essential to the nation's farming and food processing industry that in addition to recruiting migratory labor in the South and Southwest, through state employment services and private labor contractors, the Federal Government enters into contractual labor agreement with Mexico, the British West Indies, Japan and...
...For the migratory farm worker, reaching his job may be agony...
...It's first come first served, so the workers scramble to pick the best ones...
...The Commission's analysis and conclusions, for the most part, remain completely valid today...
...In addition, these trucks are used to haul produce to the processor...
...6 A New York reporter wrote of the migrant labor camps he inspected as follows: [The trucks] leave the main roads and bump along over dirt roads until they reach a group of cabins in rows or flimsy barracks or remodeled barns or shanties...
...254 Answer: No...
...H. L. Mitchell, president of the union and Dr...
...In the winter of 1958-59 the same domestic labor force was available, but the Farm Placement Service declared a shortage of pruners...
...It should assign to this Bureau primary responsibility for raising the living standards of migratory labor...
...The hard and menial tasks of hoeing and grubbing do not attract domestic workers, not even at 70 cents an hour...
...Many food growers have made strenuous efforts to try to block any improvements in the transport of migrants...
...In other words, it must be a question of at least reasonable protection against the weather...
...My back aches when I think of it...
...Earnings per day are below prevailing standards...
...It will be his world, however, only in that the only piece of property that he will own will be his grave...
...they charge a man two dollars [or] two dollars and a quarter a day for room and board...
...In the course of interviewing many groups of Negro and white farm laborers and from an examination of statistical data it was determined that native American workers, both Negro and white, have been virtually forced out of agricultural employment in California as a result of the importation of Mexican nationals...
...9) The states should be encouraged to provide adequate education and child care for migrant children...
...and Des Plaines, Illinois...
...The states of Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York each conduct a number of medical clinics, and some farm syndicates have begun to maintain clinics, but these are isolated and inadequate 257 Social Security and Child Labor Laws Although it is clear that migratory argricultural workers are more in need of the protection and benefits of welfare laws and labor legislation than any other group in our population, these workers are systematically excluded from state and Federal welfare legislation— with the exception now of Federal Social Security...
...My name is Manuel Martinez...
...But that is about the limit of his interest in most cases...
...Over 1,200,000 workers were employed on the larger farms, many of them controlled by powerful corporate interests...
...There are now six major streams of migratory farm workers in the United States: 1. Migrants, most of whom are Negroes, who start in Florida and move north along the Atlantic Seaboard through Georgia, the Carolinas and Virginia into Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania, 245 working in a wide variety of harvesting and food processing operations...
...They just keep rolling along...
...The verdict: a recommendation that the AFL-CIO approve the action of the Louisiana State Labor Council...
...Complementary state legislation is needed...
...Among the most important of these statutes are: 1. Licensing of labor contractors...
...Crowded in trucks equipped with crude benches or orange crates for seats, men, women and children roll through the Carolinas and Virginia, sharing their common misery and exhaustion...
...The domestic farm labor force proved entirely sufficient and satisfactory, and this was recognized by the Farm Placement Service itself...
...But Act 397 applied only to agricultural labor, such as sugar-mill and processing workers, cotton-gin and compress employees, and those employed in rice-mill and related processing occupations...
...Bay County, Michigan...
...NAACP investigations have revealed that a common practice in many labor camps is to inform farm laborers after several weeks of work that they have earned no money or even that they are in debt because of deductions for food purchased in camp commissaries and for "room rent" and transportation...
...Because this agreement is continuously violated by American farm operators, the conditions of these workers are in most cases about as bad as those of American migrant workers...
...These quarters are provided by the farmer, the grower, or the farmer's cooperative association...
...In lettuce and asparagus harvesting, conveyor belts are used for assembling and packing...
...this age varies from fourteen to sixteen years...
...Some of the migrants have told of their experience...
...We had to travel sitting on a board for three days and nights...
...The middle man is the crew leader, or labor contractor, and all too often he is the villain of the whole sad business...
...The President's Commission on Migratory Labor found that tuberculosis, infant mortality, maternal mortality, dysentery, enteritis, smallpox, typhoid, are all "much more prevalent among migratory workers than among the general population...
...Such a Bureau should have a clear directive as to its responsibilities in housing„ transportation, child labor, minimum wages and other worker protections, child care, registration of crew leaders, health, welfare, and all other matters relating to agricultural labor...
...The Mexican worker or "bracero" now comes to the United States under international agreement...
...A study made by the Bureau of Labor Standards of the Department of Labor notes that: Compulsory school-attendance laws supplement the standards set under the child-labor laws by requiring boys and girls to attend school to a certain age, 258 usually to sixteen...
...A New York newspaper reporter described succinctly the workings of the vicious labor contractor-crew leader system...
...He estimated that since 1942 more than one million Mexican citizens have worked in this country as agricultural laborers, and that they have worked in more than half of the fortyeight states...
...But most employers throughout the country simply ignore the law...
...The Packers Association maintained: The floors of the truck in which the persons are transported are normally covered with bedding or sacks of clothing which provide a more suitable resting place than would seats of the type suggested by the Commission...
...If such is not the case, migrants often do not have the money to move elsewhere— even were decent housing available within walking distance...
...How do you make sure that there is housing...
...The contract says they must work three-fourths of the time and we can't afford to pay them for not working" . . . we couldn't get the Labor Department to send the nationals back to Mexico...
...The President's Commission on Migratory Labor which was established by executive order in 1950, conducted what is perhaps the most exhaustive and significant study ever made of this national problem...
...When you get two hampers full then you weigh them...
...Question: Do you have a standard of housing written up in some way on the basis of which you do that...
...The President's Commission found that in the migratory labor force there are as many males fourteen years through seventeen years as there are eighteen years through twenty-four years...
...I went to his home—a one-room shack...
...Hundreds of jobs were thus made available to domestic workers...
...and worst of all are the most recent programs, such as those involving Japanese and Philippine workers, which are not under Department of Labor supervision, but only under the Immigration Bureau of the Department of Justice which is not equipped for such work...
...But such facilities are not given gratis...
...The Kern Land Company owns 231,000 acres...
...6 Newark (New Jersey) Star Ledger, January 7, 1959...
...4. Migrants, most of whom are Mexican-Americans and Negroes, who start in Texas and then divide into two groups, with one group moving to the Mississippi delta and the other group moving westward to New Mexico, Arizona and southern California, working in cotton...
...In 1958, the average annual earnings for all farm labor was estimated to be $892...
...But the Mexican National, with his captive ways, has captivated employers in nurseries, poultry farms, cattle feed lots, wineries and packing sheds...
...5. Migrants, usually whites of early American stock, who start in Oklahoma, Arkansas and western Tennessee, and move north and west, working in fruit and tomatoes...
...Question...
...Every year at least 600,000 [migrant] children are being denied the privileges of a public school education...
...The picture differs a little here and there...
...Harry F. Byrd of Virginia...
...Such standards should not be lower than those recommended by the International Labor Office...
...Greedy for his own share, he usually delivers his workers to the farmer several weeks before the crops are ready for picking...
...However, these few valuable and constructive projects, which have been the result of work by dedicated volunteer groups, are inadequate and isolated and do not begin to deal seriously with the basic issues which are clearly the responsibility of State and Federal Governments...
...265...
...It is not at all uncommon for wages to be changed at the whim of the employer...
...The Pennsylvania Citizens' Committee has been responsible for a number of significant reforms, among them the establishment of day-care centers for the children of migratory workers in Potter County, which has the greatest concentration of migrants in Pennsylvania...
...It rained on us, and we stayed wet for two days...
...The Pennsylvania Citizens' Committee on Migratory Labor was organized as a result of the extensive investigation of labor camps and working conditions in the State undertaken in 1951 and 1952 by the NAACP and Dr...
...246 With the exception of three states migratory agricultural workers are not covered by workmen's compensation laws...
...These were hauled from Texas to Minnesota...
...AFL-CIO President George Meany appointed a two-man subcommittee to hear the charges and to hear also the Louisiana Labor Council's defense of its behavior...
...12 Status of Agricultural Workers Under State and Federal Labor Laws, U.S...
...When these unschooled children become adults, they will not be equipped to do work which is any more satisfying or financially secure than that in which their parents are trapped...
...Many camps have no facilities for the removal of garbage, so that filth is strewn around the area...
...It is important to note that the diet of migratory farm laborers is not sufficient to maintain health...
...But all are alike in absence of running water in the cabins, in reliance on old-fashioned outdoor privies and in their general atmosphere of down-at-the-heels drabness...
...Because of the grinding poverty in which migrant families are forced to live, mothers and children very often work in the fields along with the man of the family—to earn enough for survival...
...Ernesto Galarza, on behalf of the National Agricultural Workers Union, has made an extensive study of Mexican contract farm workers in the United States...
...Enlightened farmers in Kings Ferry and Cutchogue, New York, have 263 attempted to build adequate model labor camps and day-care centers, while some large processors in Maryland and New Jersey have donated money and buildings for child-care centers...
...In both cases, women and youth are drawn extensively into employment...
...They supply the food, the women, the narcotics— in which there is a heavy traffic within these camps—and beer and wine and everything else, so they subsequently end up with a large proportion of the payroll...
...8) The Fair Labor Standards Act should include farm workers in its provisions, particularly in the minimum wage provisions...
...It should be amended to extend child labor protection to children outside as well as during school hours...
...Even the 400,000 field hands increasingly work with machinery...
...But before you put the beans on the truck you must put them in a sack...
...8 Report of President's Commission, op...
...Yet in the midst of great plenty are two million people comparable in their destitution to feudal serfs, save that they are bound to no land...
...Agricultural workers in the United States are lagging far behind those in Europe from the standpoint of unionization...
...Would you have such authority...
...Governmental Neglect As is evident, American Government has neglected the migratory farm labor problem at all levels: Federal, state and county...
...Frequently, migratory workers must live in this employer-owned housing as a condition of employment...
...Two Federal laws control the employment of children in agriculture...
...The President's Commission on Migratory Labor thought not...
...Agriculture is rapidly becoming "a factory in the field...
...Answer: No, sir...
...Many 256 migratory children suffer from chronic diarrhea, due to fatigue and infection...
...Hector Garcia, chairman of the American G. I. Forum, Corpus Christi, Texas, told the National Advisory Committee on Farm Labor about the health and medical problems of farm workers and their families...
...5 San Jose (California) Mercury, January 23, 1958...
...On too many occasions local police have made these workers the victims of police brutality...
...it is common to find children of seven, eight, nine and, ten years working in the fields, especially along the Atlantic Seaboard during the height of the harvesting season...
...Four states require that such contractors obtain licenses, comply with certain regulations as to records, refrain from engaging in certain undesirable practices and, usually, file a bond...
...Wiggins, Colorado...
...4. Prohibition of child labor during the non-school period...
...A man's conscience won't hurt him so much if he doesn't see these hovels where fellow Americans must live for twelve or fourteen weeks...
...We always made more than fifty cents an hour no matter what we did in the fields...
...If it's hot weather, they must be hosed down with water...
...Department of Labor statistics indicate that the average farm worker's hourly pay is sixty-eight cents, as compared to $2.79 an hour for the construction industry or even $1.05 an hour for laundry workers who are among the lowest paid of all nonagricultural occupational groups in the United States...
...The Sugar Act specifies that producers are not to obtain maximum benefits if they employ children under fourteen years, or permit those of fourteen and fifteen years to work more than eight hours a day...
...S "Out of Their Poverty" by Joyce L. Kornbluh and Hyman H. Bookbinder...
...Answer: That is right...
...He yelled, 'Sit down—how are we going to get the beets if we don't get a move on.' " "When the truck finally reached Minnesota . . . only a few could jump out without help...
...Action by Government...
...The farmer or grower almost always refuses to take responsibility for the conditions pertaining to his workers although the grower who thinks of himself as a respectable, law-abiding citizen directly benefits from the crew leader's control and discipline of the work force...
...the Philippines and Puerto Rico...
...Breakdowns due to mechanical failure can lead to even further misery...
...What is clearly needed now is broad and effective action...
...I may be here because I am still haunted by that remembrance of a day ten years ago when the little boy came to my office to ask me to go and see his mother who was sick...
...259 NAACP investigations during 1958 have shown that at several labor camps in New York State where state labor and health standards are enforced, the services of the crew leader or labor contractor have been dispensed with entirely...
...Under 1957 amendments to the Federal Social Security Law, a person employed on a farm or working in other types of agricultural enterprise earns social security credit for his work from each farm operator who pays him $150 or more in cash wages in a year...
...The nationals had contracts to work for wages at fifty cents an hour...
...In return for its support of Act 397, the Louisiana State AFL Labor Council was awarded the repeal of a more inclusive "right-to-work" law also covering industrial workers which had been enacted in 1954...
...He is now commonly used to drive tractors ; operate sprinkling systems, pack lettuce, thresh beans and do odd repair jobs, youngster sitting and gardening for his boss in town...
...The lack of sanitary facilities in migrant labor camps presents a constant menace of an epidemic...
...However, at the conclusion of an extensive investigation during the summer of 1958 along the Atlantic Seaboard, the author reported to the Social Security Administration that actual coverage for migrant farm labor was "negligible...
...An investigation by the NAACP labor secretary in 1958 revealed that the majority of the workers at the Frank Swiercznski labor camp on Route 104, Orleans County, New York, received only one or two dollars at the end of each week's work...
...it would be practically impossible to attach the seats securely and still use the vehicle to haul produce .4 Journey's End—The Dwelling Place Migrant labor camps, where workers are housed while em• ployed, generally consist of every type of structure imaginable, except decent housing...
...This analysis of the employment and earnings of migratory and non-migratory farm labor suggests that for the migrant to settle down as a non-migratory farm laborer will not help him much financially .1 Statistically, about half the migrant workers are women—most of them mothers...
...Among the rights of Mexican nationals enumerated in the international Migrant Labor Agreement of 1951 (amended) are the following: Although the provisions in international labor contracts are rarely enforced, the Farm Bureau and the growers' contracting associations have attacked the United States Labor Department for the very existence of regulations covering Mexican contract workers...
...the sake of the kids...
...NAACP investigations have shown that child-labor laws simply are not enforced in respect to the children of migratory farm workers...
...Migrants generally have no way of getting from the labor camp to a doctor or a hospital and, even if they were taken for medical care, they ordinarily could not pay for it...
...It is all too evident that Federal and state child labor laws are inadequately enforced...
...Dare they hope for these things, when they must live in abandoned farm houses, shacks, chicken coops, tents, or dilapidated barns, when their children often receive no education at all and must work long hours if the family is to survive...
...E. S. McSweeney, secretary of the Arizona Cotton Growers' Association, told a Congressional subcommittee in 1958 that "we as farmers or farm organizations" 262 have "become quite bitter about this constant regulation down to the minimum detail...
...Farm workers were employed an average of 125 days on agricultural labor and 19 days in other types of employment...
...They are the migratory farm workers, and the conditions under which they live and work do not belong in any enlightened nation...
...Necessary Legislative Action The responsible national and local organizations concerned with migratory farm labor in the United States have agreed on the following 14-Point legislative program as realistic and vitally necessary: 1) The use of the public employment facilities of the Federal-State Employment System should be restricted to growers whose wages, housing and working conditions meet minimum standards...
...Braceros are imported to do stoop labor in the fields, so the theory goes...
...Investigations made by the NAACP along the Atlantic Seaboard and on the West Coast have repeatedly disclosed the widespread illegal employment of children for farm labor...
...no, sir...
...I mean they really rob them...
...It stated: In summing up this comparison of employment and earnings for migratory and non-migratory workers, the similarities are more obvious than the differences...
...261 In 1950 there were about five thousand nationals brought into El Centro...
...Often local residents show a distinct animosity toward Negro farm laborers whenever such workers appear on the village streets...
...7 A. Keller, op, cit...
...Their mobility is in many ways their tragedy...
...The Journey to the Job For most Americans, reaching one's job by a reasonably convenient means of transportation is no problem...
...Those who complained were informed that amounts had been deducted for transportation, "room rent," food, debts, and unspecified expenses...
...No Help For the Sick The health of migratory farm workers undoubtedly is the most seriously impaired of any group of people in the nation...
...these are known as "wetbacks," since they literally wade or swim across the Rio Grande River to enter the United States...
...Nationals were certified and domestics were displaced...
...Migrant workers have no such protection...
...The women and children took turns sitting on the planks on each side...
...For agricultural work during school hours, a minimum age expressly applies in thirteen states and the District of Columbia...
...Beside the bed springs are bales of straw, and each worker fills a ticking cover with enough straw to give his body ease after nine and ten hours in the fields harvesting what they call "stoop crops...
...Only six states and the District of Columbia expressly provide a minimum age for the employment of children in agriculture during non-school hours...
...A member of Congress from a southwestern state described the contract labor system as follows: "100 years ago we owned slaves—today we just lease them...
...is frequently used for picking cotton, but is seldom employed on dairy farms, livestock farms, poultry farms, or diversified general farms...
...This approval was voted unanimously...
...It submitted a historic report to the White House on March 26, 1951 with many recommendations and proposals which have been almost completely ignored by Federal agencies and the state governments up to the present time...
...I was one of forty-two people on that truck— me and my wife and three children...
...Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Standards, Washington, May, 1958...
...His infancy would be a very close association with his brothers and sisters...
...none whatever...
...altogether, there are as many males under eighteen years as there are forty-five years and older...
...7) Federal aid should be extended to help states in encouraging improvement of housing for migrants and extension of health and welfare services to cover migrants...
...During the 1947-57 inflationary period, farm workers' wages remained consistently low while the factory workers' wages rose sharply...
...Answer: Yes...
...Some of the most scandalous conditions, especiall;' with regard to economic exploitation, were found at the huge apple orchards owned and operated by Sen...
...What do you do...
...MORE THAN A HALF-MILLION FOREIGN FARM WORKERS now are brought into the United States under contract each year, plus many thousands of Puerto Ricans who also are brought in for work under contractual arrangement...
...This is one of the most tragic aspects of the entire problem of migratory farm labor...
...The organization of farm workers should be encouraged...
...We Don't Need You Boys Any More" To understand how the alien labor program has affected the native-born farm worker on the West Coast one must hear him tell his own story: I am Casey Garcia...
...2 Allan Keller, Series on Migratory Labor, New York World Telegram and Sun, week of September 8, 1953...
...The farmers, large growers and the food processing and packing corporations are responsible for these pitiful wage rates and working conditions, and they have repeatedly indicated their determination that there shall be no minimum wage legislation for agricultural workers...
...At the hearing, the Tri-State Packers Association, Inc., of Easton, Maryland, expressed its dislike of a proposal that trucks carrying farm workers be required to have seats...
...these people have been uprooted from their homes and work and now they swell the migratory labor stream especially along the Atlantic Seaboard where the majority of these workers are Negroes...
...The American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations has neglected the nation's agricultural workers, especially the migrants, although these people more than any other group of workers are urgently in need of union protection and benefits...
...Standard Oil and Southern Pacific Railroad together own 123,492 acres...
...Hill for permission to use his material, and the accompanying pictures, on this shamefully neglected public issue.—Enrroxs Mid-Twentieth Century America is an amazingly prosperous land—indeed, the wealthiest nation in the world...
...Why should farm workers be excluded from those specific welfare laws that they especially need...
...Ernesto Galarza, the union's secretary-treasurer, met with the AFL-CIO executive council in August, 1956...
...Garcia stated: The children of migrant parents are born into a world completely of their own...
...The Farmers Association is sending some nationals...
...6) Ways of extending the Unemployment Compensation Act to cover farm workers should be studied...
...quarters are provided by the farmer, the grower or the farmers' cooperative association...
...13) Congress should direct the United States Department of Labor to establish and operate, in cooperation with the several states, a federally financed interstate system of highway rest stops for migrants...
...Ernesto Galarza of the National Agricultural Workers Union, the NAACP labor secretary observed at first-hand the labor camps and working conditions of farm labor in several areas in California...
...The Crew Leader: A Key Figure The labor contractor or crew leader may well be the most vicious figure in the entire system of migratory farm labor...
...The first night, Chuck the Boss drove right through with no stop...
...Before they have picked their first bushel of beans or cherries or tomatoes they are in debt to the camp store, run by the crew leader or by someone he has licensed to operate it for him.11 A licensed labor contractor in California gave the following testimony before the President's Commission on Migratory Labor: Question: Do you know what prices these [contractors'] commissaries charge, whether it is reasonable with what the merchants would charge in the village...
...Congress should direct the Department of Health, Education and Welfare to supplement existing grants to the several states, making available money for direct relief grants to migrants, with eligibility for such grants not dependent upon the recipient's residence status in any particular state...
...The current development is toward huge "corporation" farms, in contrast to the family farms of a half-century ago...
...McSweeney's association was described by a Labor Department official as "by far the worst...
...a large farm is classified by the census as five thousand or more acres in the West, and one thousand or more acres in the remainder of the country...
...action by organized labor...
...The reason is that most state legislatures are dominated by powerful agricultural interests, and these same interests have a very strong influence in Congress...
...That board is really something terrible...
...Act 397 was a "right-to-work" law banning the "union shop" thereby making union organization extremely difficult if not impossible...
...You go home when the man tells you.lo Because they often are working when they should be in school, migrant children have the lowest educational attainment of any group in the nation, according to the United States Office of Education, which has said of migratory children: They enter school later than other children, attend fewer days, make the least progress, drop out of school sooner and constitute the largest single source of illiterates...
...Along the Atlantic Seaboard he usually is a trafficker in human misery for profit...
...In Great Britain, Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Holland, one-half to four-fifths of the agricultural workers are members of trade unions, while in West Germany and Austria organizations of land workers have been revived...
...Under this guise, wages simply are withheld...
...Large farms now cover onethird of the land in the United States as a whole and two-thirds of the land in the western states...
...The labor contractor] is in a position to sway the general equilibrium of honesty in any direction he wants...
...3. Certification of migrant labor camps by the State Health Department...
...The subcommittee was composed of Joe Curran, president, National Maritime Union, and Richard Walsh, president of the International Alliance of Theatrical, Stage Employees Union...
...That is, when conditions are favorable for a higher yield, the piece rate may be lowered...
...Incredibly, the Louisiana State AFL Labor Council openly supported Act 397 in the state legislature...
...Few states have laws regulating farm labor contractors...
...Therefore, a sum for "room rent" is inevitably deducted from each worker's paycheck...
...the boss would say, "We don't need you boys any more...
...Migratory workers have been found living in dilapidated barns, chicken coops, old school buses, tents, shanties, tar-paper shacks, barracks, machine storage sheds, and pigpens...
...Question: Of course, you would have no authority if you found . . . any housing...
...He makes a deal with the growers to supply a certain number of workers and he rounds them up in the South, transports them North, and often collects the pay for them, doling it out later...
...Fifteen to twenty persons may share a tiny cabin or a small room...
...Other foreign workers, employed under a contract between foreign governments and growers' associations or only between grower and grower, are less well-protected...
...11) A program for rural redevelopment should be enacted by the Congress with broad scope to wipe out "depressed areas" through land conservation, natural resources and industrial development, together with education, vocational guidance and training for people living in rural communities...
...In San Joaquin Valley alone thirty corporations own more than 5,000 acres each...
...Several investigations and studies have made clear that the United States Government assumes no responsibility regarding the conditions of work—including housing—for which it is recruiting, either at the Federal or the state level...
...In some camps there are cinder block cubicles instead of shanties...
...In 1956, for example, Federal investigators who inspected only a fraction of the nation's farms found some 4,200 children less than sixteen years of age working when they should have been in school...
...Answer: That varies greatly...
...Sometimes, wages are paid by the hour rather than by the piece...
...4 "The Forgotten People" by Paul Jacobs, The Reporter, January 22, 1959...
...the legal basis for this is U.S...
...Every so many miles they must be taken from the trucks, allowed to stretch their muscles, drink and eat...
...The situation as it relates to migratory children is even more serious, since the school laws often do not apply to them, and traveling from state to state as they do, opportunities for school attendance are often very meagre...
...Federal financial aid should be made available specifically for the construction and renovation of migrant farm labor camps...
...Municipalities generally are indifferent to the condition of migrant labor camps in their areas, usually choosing to do nothing...
...11 A. Keller, op...
...Illegal search and seizure, detention by police for long periods without arraignment and other violations of due process are often experienced by migratory farm workers throughout the United States...
...no running water, no electricity, no beds or old springs with no mattresses, badly leaking roofs, no screening, no refrigeration and on one occasion outdoor privies draining toward a water pump...
...cit., 1951...
...2. Migrants, almost all of whom are Mexican-Americans, who start in Texas and go into the North Central and Mountain states, working mainly in the sugar-beet harvest and also picking vegetables and fruits...
...3 Trucks used to transport migrant farm workers generally are ancient and unsafe, without any real seats and very much overcrowded...
...As a result chickens invade and leave their droppings on the floor...
...employers may not use the services of labor contractors who are not registered...
...For these people must roam ceaselessly often having no single place to call home...
...After you weigh them you put them on the truck...
...Oak Center, Wisconsin...
...This is one of the worst and most widely-accepted evils of the whole migrant picture...
...In addition farm laborers from Jamaica and the Bahamas are brought to the United States through work agreements negotiated directly between American farm employers and the Bahamian or Jamaican governments or their agents.' 3 Although conditions for migratory farm workers are much the same throughout the United States, conditions among foreign nationals may vary considerably because of difference in contractual arrangements and degree of enforcement of labor provisions...
...They treat cattle better...
...Following the board meeting, President Meany described the Louisiana action as "economic expediency...
...His future life will be one of wandering, poverty and more sickness...
...It also showed that eight out of tern adults had not eaten any meat in the last six months...
...12) Interstate Commerce Commission regulations affecting the transportation of migrants should be amended to include an "out-of-service" provision to prevent a vehicle transporting migrants from operating if its mechanical condition is to be a likely cause of an accident or breakdown...
...the workers must pay for this "housing...
...If he lives to be of school age, he could possibly go to many schools on different occasions at different places, but will never average more than three years of schooling in his life time...
...However, an analysis of the number of workers brought to the United States under Public Law 78 clearly indicates that there has been a steady increase each year, so that even in a year (1958) of widespread unemployment and recession, over 450,000 foreign nationals were brought to the United States...
...Could you not refuse to refer workers to that farm if, in your opinion, the housing was in bad shape...
...action by enlightened growers and the management of the vast food processing and packing corporations of this country...
...A survey which I made and photographed in the Mathis, Texas, labor camps showed that ninety-six per cent of the children in that camp had not consumed any milk whatsoever in the last six months...
...In its packing plants are 130,000 men and women, working on highly mechanized, and in many instances, automated equipment...
...DESPITE THE DEPLORABLE CONDITIONS under which they are forced to live, the uncertainty of work, and the lack of any normal relationship with an employer and with society, migratory farm workers are productive workers and are absolutely vital to the agricultural economy of many states and the entire nation...
...A limited number of special summer schools for the children of migrant workers have been established in Rochester, New York...
...Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York, all heavy users of migratory 247 farm labor, have recently enacted regulatory statutes...
...14 P. Jacobs, op...
...The requirement that seats be provided appears to be extremely undesirable...
...Typical of what imported laborers may expect either on the West Coast or along the Atlantic Seaboard is the poor treatment of Bahamian workers as reported by the Workers Defense League, which described the dilapidated and unsanitary housing facilities for such workers in New Jersey and Virginia...
...Another one-third are citizens of foreign nations who are brought here to work and then return to their own countries...
...6. Revocation of growers' registration, authorizing the Industrial Commissioner to prohibit the use of migratory farm labor by a farmer or labor contractor who misrepresents conditions of employment...
...A California newspaper described the conditions in some of that State's migrant camps in these words: 253 Longest slum in the world...
...Of the two million migratory workers employed in agriculture, 700,000 worked 150 days or more for the same employer...
...e "The Labor Movement Cripples a Union" by Paul Jacobs, The Reporter, November 1, 1956...
...Seldom are the labor camps for migrants out on the traveled highways...
...The two collective bargaining agreements encountered by the President's Commission existed between a local of the Meat and Cannery Workers (affiliated to Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher Workmen of North America, AFL-CIO) and Seabrook Farms—a large grower-processor in New Jersey, and a local of the United Packinghouse Workers of America, AFL-CIO and Fellsmere Sugar Producers Association— a cane-sugar producing and processing association in Florida...
...4) The Labor Management Relations Act should protect the right of farm workers to organize and bargain collectively...
...Would these migratory workers be better off were they able to find farm work in one locality and stay there...
...action by all the responsible elements in American society to effect fundamental changes in the recruiting, organization and allocation of the nation's agricultural manpower resources, and to secure a basic reorganization of the system of migratory farm labor which will be in the interests of the entire community...
...He is therefore hired as late in the day as possible and hustled north by bus so that he can arrive in time to do a full day's work...
...A New York newspaper reporter in 1953, made this observation: In the early days of the summer you can stand along the edge of the main highways leading North out of Florida and Georgia and watch the migrant workers on their way to northern fields, packed like animals on the way to market...
...Typical is New York State which now has a substantial body of law relating to the use of migratory farm labor in that State...
...In their wanderings over the face of our country, these nomads hope mainly to stave off starvation...
...It is the labor contractor or crew leader who arranges for the worker and his family to be hauled in trucks under inhuman conditions, who deducts exorbitant amounts from the earnings of workers or withholds their wages altogether, who attempts to prevent dissatisfied workers from leaving the labor camp under his control and is often engaged in various rackets including prostitution and the sale of liquor...
...Farm workers are now supposed to receive certain benefits of the Social Security system...
...This exclusion is significant because farming has the third highest fatality rate of any industry in the United States, exceeded only by mining and construction...
...these investigations found that workers were employed directly by the operating companies at the Birdseye Corporation camp, the Quaker Maid Company camp, and the Russo Brothers Muck Farm...
...on February 5, 1959, Dr...
...When he arrives at his destination, he may be so ill from the hardships of the journey that he cannot stand, but has to be carried from the vehicle...
...Public Law 78, which was adopted because of acute wartime manpower shortages in agricultural labor...
...this Act applies to the cultivation and harvesting of sugar beets or sugar cane...
...Migrant workers' wages often are piece rates based on such units as hampers or boxes, or else on such units as acres or thousands of plants...
...Mexican Nationals: The Largest Foreign Group By far the largest number of alien farm workers in the United States are the Mexicans brought to this country under an international agreement...
...In others there are mattresses, torn, dirty, and as comfortable as a rock pile to sleep on...
...Hill, who is National Labor Secretary of the NAACP, based his report on on-the-spot observations— following labor caravans from Homestead, Florida all the way up the Atlantic heaboard—as well as research into every available source...
...Farm labor is totally excluded from Federal minimum wage and maximum hours legislation...
...frequently there are no windows, no heat, and no indoor cooking facilities...
...The Farm Placement Service also uses labor contractors and crew leaders in its recruiting activities, despite the record of these notorious middlemen, and generally appears mainly interested in meeting the labor demands of growers, no matter what the effect may be on the workers...
Vol. 7 • July 1960 • No. 3
