PEONAGE IN THE PINES

...An aggressive yet environmentally sensitive twenty-eight-year-old, Ellis recruits his crew from such places as the Great Peace March for Global Nuclear Disarmament and the Rainbow Festival, a yearly gathering of aging hippies...

...Hernandez lives with other undocumented Mexicans, many also from Cheran, in the six-foot-high chicken coop, the front of which is still littered with feathers and droppings...

...The other, Ellis Leon's brother Gerald Sustaire, is still in Texas awaiting trial...

...Conditions were so abhorrent that two of the Mexicans left the camp to report the abuses to a local sheriff, who called in the INS...

...His crew leader drove him from the camp to a hospital in Clarks-ville, Georgia, where he suffered another heart attack and died...

...In the first case, the company ended up paying the plaintiffs $ 1,000 each...

...Two of the workers point to rashes on their hands from Tordon...

...For another, they do not benefit from some sections of the new Immigration Reform and Control Act, commonly called the Simpson-Rodino Act, which makes it easier for workers in crops deemed "perishable"—including fruits, vegetables, and tobacco—to qualify for legalization...

...Research for this article was supported by a grant from the Fund for Investigative Journalism...

...Linder successfully pursued another timber company, Temple-Eastex...

...Ellis is not alone...

...Rosas, sixty-years-old, carried fifty-pound bags of seedlings, bending and straightening to plant the seedlings for nine to ten hours a day for two weeks...

...Will the blacks...

...Today's forests are yesterday's fields— a vast, largely unregulated industry that feeds on cheap Mexican labor...

...Go on, tell her [the reporter] if you're happy or not," exhorted the Puerto Rican at Preister's urging...

...Three of the men indicted—Ellis Leon Sustaire and his two sons, Rocky Lynn Sustaire and Rickey Dean Sustaire—have fled the country to a ranch in Mexico, says INS investigator Charles Griggs...

...But these minor victories will not bring relief to the majority of forest crews...

...We're trying to establish the principle that when migrant workers work for large timber companies through contractors," Linder says, "they should receive the same protection" as farm workers...

...Again, they shake their heads...

...And, indeed, they are...

...But my personal feeling is that it was at night time, he wasn't working, and we should not have to pay...

...A stone's throw away stands a comfortable ranch-style house, home of Hernandez's employer, James Temple...

...The crew merely nodded...

...During his second week of work, Rosas began complaining that he felt cold and short of breath...

...Who will do the work if the Mexicans don't...

...In light of the new immigration law, he says, Georgia-Pacific amended its bylaws to make clear that it would not employ undocumented workers...

...Beebe signs a form saying that his crew is legal, and there's a $10,000 fine if he's lying...

...The Government seems to have no reservations about using illegal workers," says Mike Economopoulos, owner of Superior Forestry Service in Leslie, Arkansas...

...As the timber industry has moved south, it has adopted the traditional practices of the large fruit and vegetable growers...

...Half the crew had deserted the company only a week earlier...

...Of those remaining, only he and his brother have documentation verifying their legal status in the United States, he says...

...In all likelihood, Mexicans will continue to flee the poverty of their country, and Mexican-Americans will flee the poverty of the Rio Grande Valley, to find harsh, underpaid, and dangerous work in the forests...

...The nearest town is twenty miles away, and a small grocery store is a three-mile walk down a dirt road...

...This is Bradley County, Arkansas...

...some had been working for about a month, seven days a week, nine to ten hours a day...

...He also disputes the wage figures: Workers receive more than $300 a week, he says, and up to $140 a day in planting season...

...Preister claims that all his workers are documented, and Warren Beebe, president of the company, says he hires only documented Mexicans but refuses to offer proof...

...But Temple has not provided them with information on how to become legal residents...

...Largely because of budget cuts by the Reagan Administration, the Forest Service has reduced its work force by 23 per cent since 1980, forcing it to contract out work that was previously done by its own employees...

...Please don't come back until you have more money...

...She starts crying every time she calls me," says her lawyer, Ezequiel Tovar...

...Griggs admits the INS was lucky to discover the abuses...

...In North Carolina's Pisgah National Forest, Billy Preister, a beefy, bearded man with a Southern drawl, leads a group of four Mexicans and one Puerto Rican through a tract of dense forest land...

...The issue arose when several workers returned from east Texas complaining they had been given tax forms 1099 used for independent contractors instead of standard W-2 forms...

...district court in Brownsville...

...Ellis survives financially by working for wealthy Georgia private landowners "who want nothing to do with illegals," he says...

...the terms of the second case are still being negotiated...

...They are also owned by the U.S...

...The contractor, Tommy Jacks, thus avoided paying social security, unemployment, or workers' compensation...

...They operate from a basis of integrity, and the U.S...

...Investigators found workers crammed into the back of the cargo compartments of trucks and sleeping on steel springs of bunks, often with minimal cover, despite cool, rainy weather...

...The chemical can cause serious side effects...

...much later, when they attempt to claim social security or unemployment compensation, they learn they are ineligible...

...But Temple insists that Tordon 101 is harmless...

...Father Manchino, just back from a trip to Mexico where he worked for twenty years, brings Temple's crew a message from their priest: "You don't know how many lives depend on you," he tells them...

...he asks again...

...It's not unusual for forestry contractors to talk about using crews who don't speak English...

...Georgia-Pacific spokesman Richard Good denies that his company is using illegal workers...

...Preister is the crew leader for Beebe Forestry...

...He continued working...

...As far as I'm concerned, it's up to my insurance company," Perrine says...

...Forest Service...

...Forest Service in Washington, D.C...

...If he wins that designation, Weyerhaeuser will be forced to take steps to assure that the contractors it hires are registered with the Department of Labor...

...He claims the Mexicans each receive $466 in take-home pay for a week's work—sixty to seventy hours' worth...

...Those Spanish boys don't tell you nothing," he comments...

...A mother cat and her newborn kittens lie amid empty Coke cans, tattered boxes of Frosted Flakes, and Old El Paso Mexican food...

...It burns a lot," says Anador Hernandez...

...Weyerhaeuser's contractor had illegally deducted for food, alcohol, and rent so that the workers ended up with no pay checks...

...They may take a shower there after work and play basketball in the yard," he says, "but they sure as hell don't live there...

...The Puerto Rican, who acts as translator, is carrying the Tordon 101...

...When a 1983 freeze destroyed much of the citrus industry in the Rio Grande Valley, workers became even more willing to travel long distances for any type of job...

...They earn about $ 160 a week for sixty hours of work...

...The four contractors were indicted in March on charges of conspiracy, harboring and transporting illegal aliens, and encouraging and inducing aliens to enter the United States illegally...

...He was paid $2.86 an hour, about half the minimum wage for workers on Forest Service land in Georgia...

...The Service's overall budget has been slashed by $300 million during these years, placing even more pressure on contracting officers to choose cheap contractors and ignore labor violations...

...Who will do the work...

...In February, the Houston INS office uncovered a camp of fifty-two undocumented Mexicans working on Champion International land in east Texas...

...Jane Juffer is an associate editor of Pacific News Service...

...And in the last several years, the Southeast Forest Contractors Association, which Ellis helped found, estimates its members have lost more than half their business at the hands of contractors who hire undocumented workers...

...Linder is trying to prove, first of all, that forest workers are entitled to the protections provided for in the Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Worker Protection Act...

...The pine trees in east Texas are so huge and they move their camp from day to day, so it's almost impossible to find them...

...The workers are better treated by Preister and Beebe than by many other contractors...

...Government...

...Campos doubts he'll apply for legalization because he doesn't know where to turn for help on the complicated paperwork...

...The practice is common for contractors hiring Mexican workers, says Father Manchino, who visits Hispanics throughout Arkansas...

...In May, when planting is over and workers apply chemicals to kill undesirable growth that pinches the pines, about ten Mexicans remain...

...Anador Hernandez, a twenty-four-year-old undocumented worker from Cheran, Mexico, made his way to Bradley County with the aid of a labor smuggler, commonly known as a coyote...

...Rosas's widow claims he was in perfect health before he went to work for Perrine...

...The crew stayed at a small hotel near the forest and traveled in a comfortable van...

...A more promising approach is direct legal action by workers against their employers...

...Preister is busy watching for rattlesnakes while the Mexicans are using jim-jams: small tools for injecting trees that are crowding out more desirable growth...

...It's not unusual for forestry contractors to talk about using crews who don't speak English.' viewed said he was not happy and planned to return to his family in California in several weeks...

...Temple denies that the workers live in a chicken coop...

...He's told us for several weeks that after two weeks, there would be no more work," says Teodoro Campos, a forty-two-year-old Mexican who has worked for Temple for eight years...

...Linder lost the first round in the U.S...

...He drives them into the surrounding pines, where they work until 6 p.m...

...a Thomaston, Georgia, reforestation contractor...

...The only way we'd work on something is if somebody gave us a direct tip," he says...

...Billion-dollar multinational forestry corporations are trying to recreate the exploitive conditions of Nineteenth Century Robber Baron capitalism by failing to comply with the most minimal protections required by Federal and state laws," says Marc Under, an attorney with Texas Rural Legal Aid...

...The Mexican who agreed to be interThe Government seems to have no reservations about using illegal workers,' says one timber-company owner...

...Temple's laborers rise each morning at 5:30...

...Some of Temple's workers would qualify for legalization under Simpson-Rodino, since they have been in the United States almost continuously since 1982...

...But these migrant workers toil not in the fields but in the forests...

...There's nothing here...

...The responsibility for patrolling the woods belongs, ultimately, to the U.S...

...Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS...

...They spend their long days carrying fifty-pound bags ot seedlings, planting them for the Georgia-Pacific Company...

...You could drink a gallon of it without blinking an eye," he says...

...Temple-Eastex recently settled with Linder, agreeing to deal only with contractors registered with the Labor Department and to comply with the worker-protection act...

...Attorney Billie Ellerbe twice won out-of-court settlements with Weyerhaeuser in behalf of black crew members...

...Georgia now leads the nation in the number of trees planted yearly, and eight of the top ten states are in the South...

...On December 29, 1986, Luis Rosas Perez left his home in McAllen, Texas, to work in the Chattahoochee National Forest in northern Georgia for Bob Perrine...

...Hernandez says the workers don't know whether Temple will deduct rent and electricity from their pay...

...Forest workers often unknowingly fill out the 1099 forms...

...Instead, he uses their illegal status as a threat...

...Some estimates claim that from 50 per cent to 80 per cent of the Forest Service's tree planters are illegal workers...

...None of the workers is wearing protective gear, though the Puerto Rican complains of a rash...

...We will," they say half-heartedly...

...They are not aware that this is less than minimum wage...

...Will the Orientals...

...Steve Myers, president of Qualitree, Inc., of Clinton, Arkansas, says it is now impossible for his company to bid successfully for any work with the U.S...

...While the INS can crack down on employers, it also can deport workers, thus making it an unhappy solution for many of the most mistreated laborers...

...Three times in the last eighteen months, he has been underbid by U.S...

...The case is now on appeal...

...She is suing Perrine for the $51,000 hospital bill her husband incurred...

...Forest Service doesn't...

...A Georgia contractor, David Ellis, developed an eye problem after using Tordon 101 without protective gear, and his dog almost died after drinking water in which Tordon-stained chemical applicators were soaking...

...The workers hadn't yet been paid when the INS discovered them...

...One of the Mexicans, who asks not to be identified, says he usually receives $ 130 a week...

...About 10,000 workers are engaged in reforestation on Service land...

...No, the workers mumble...

...The Forest Service, which produces a fifth of the nation's annual timber harvest, increasingly uses small contractors that skirt the margins of the law...

...These businesses are so dependent on and so encourage the use of illegal contractors that we can no longer compete there at all," Myers has testified...

...Isolated in the woods, workers surfer squalid living conditions, paltry pay, inhuman hours, and exposure to dangerous chemicals...

...The smell of hard labor permeates the room, as the men listen wearily to a visiting priest...

...The Northwest Forest Workers Association in Oregon, which depended on reforestation contracts for survival, went defunct last year after waging a futile battle against the use and abuse of Mexican workers on Government land in the Northwest...

...contractors using illegal Mexican workers, once by as much as 75 per cent...

...David Ellis, owner of Renewable Forestry Services in Barnesville, Georgia, has an ax to grind...

...Temple's workers inject the herbicide Tordon 101, manufactured by the Dow Chemical Company, into the pines...

...in many ways, torest workers are worse off than farm workers...

...Some of the older workers got discouraged and left...

...But we don't know if anything permanent will happen...

...It's none of my business" to question the legality of the workers, he says...

...These contractors employ undocumented immigrants and impose on them some of the harshest working conditions in the entire country...

...One Wall Street analyst estimates that all of the major forest-products companies have at least 40 per cent of their operations in the South...

...A reforestation contractor, Temple does business with Georgia-Pacific and other companies, as well as with private landowners...

...A lot of people feel it isn't our responsibility," says Richard Schaffer, director of reforestation for the U.S...

...At the end of that week, he had a heart attack in the middle of the night...

...Steve Burns is the Forest Service contracting officer who was overseeing the Beebe crew in the Pisgah Forest...

...During planting season, as many as thirty-five crowd into the coop and an adjoining shack...

...Mexicans and Mexican-Americans make up the bulk of the labor force in the expanding reforestation business...

...Salvador Moreno, a forty-five-year-old migrant worker for another farmer in Arkansas, missed work for two weeks last year because his skin rashes from Tordon were so serious...

...His only source of information is Father Manchino, who uses Simpson-Rodino as a drawing card for Sunday mass but knows little about the complicated process...

...Unlike the fields, many of the forests are owned not just by corporate giants like Georgia-Pacific and Weyerhaeuser...

...Rosas's widow is distraught...

...But when asked about Temple's work force, Good responds: "The people the contractors hire are their responsibility...

...Water was often rusty, prompting workers to drink out of mud puddles because that water was cleaner...

...For one thing, they are not protected by the Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Worker Protection Act...

...Preister made his way through a bottle of whiskey and cracked crude jokes, interjecting from time to time, "No way, Jose," and waiting for the crew to laugh despite their obvious lack of comprehension...

...She's concerned she won't be able to pay the $51,000 bill...

...Then he drives them back to the chicken coop...

...Father John Manchino asks in Spanish...

...Their prime concern is to save money...

...Marc Linder, the attorney with Texas Rural Legal Aid, is pressing a class-action suit against Weyerhaeuser, the leading timber company in the country, which owns more than three million acres of forest land in the South alone...

...But we're still here...

...North Carolina Legal Aid in Raleigh has also addressed the issue of corporate responsibility for forestry crews...