Contractors Work Providers Or Abusers? Essay, Research Paper

Contratistas: Work Providers or Abusers?

My problem is the contratistas (labor contractors) continual abuse of immigrants that come from Mexico to California; I believe it is wrong. I am trying to address any reader of this essay in order to further educate and make clear that the abuse of immigrants is not right. The immigrants? wages have fallen while the profits have hit a record high. The immigrants? are also continuously cheated out of their wages by the contratistas. Farmers? medical benefits have decreased and in some places disappeared, and the laborers are forced to live in overrun and overcrowded houses. According to a San Jose Mercury News article called Farm workers face hard times; Middlemen maximize profits by paying as little as possible written by John Hubner published on July 8, 2000 ?30 years ago, 80 to 90 percent of seasonal farm hands in California worked directly for growers,?(Hubner) however today only half do while ?the rest are employed by about 1,200 farm labor contractors, or contratistas? (Hubner).

The federal minimum wage is $5.15 an hour, however half of the labor contractors fail to pay that and ??20 percent of the grape growers who hire their workers directly sometimes failed to pay minimum wage? ( Hubner). In an article called U.S. puts growers on notice: labor contractors don?t meet pay, safety rules written by Christine Hanley in the San Jose Mercury News, Hanley writes that ?The majority of minimum-wage violations occurred when piece rates were paid, and in some these cases, employers tried to mask the low wages by recording the work of several workers on one worker?s time sheet? (Hanley). The wages of laborers have also fallen in the past decade. The United Farm Workers or the UFW stated in an article published in the Jinn website called A Frontier Town in the Strawberry Labor Wars written by David Bacon, that ??wages have actually fallen in the last ten years considering inflation? (Brown). According to Hubner the UFW is trying to renew contracts with orange growers that would ??guaranteed workers $13 a bin, plus medicals benefits.? The growers answered that ?..they could get the oranges picked for $10 a bin with out benefits? (Hubner). Tanis Ybarra, the national vice president of the UFW said, ?? the number one priority of the ag business over the decades has been to encourage a labor surplus? (Hubner). The worker surplus eventually decreases wages because there will always be somebody that is willing to do the same work for less. The immigrant workers are also continuously cheated out of their wages by the contratistas. One way that the immigrants are cheated by the contratistas is by being charged for a ride to work even though some have cars. Even though it is illegal in the state of California to make transportation a condition for work the contratistas still charge them for transportation. Another way the contratistas cheat the immigrants out of their wages is by ??over-charging for food and drinks in the fields, refusing to pay overtime and pocketing workers? final paychecks of the season, unscrupulous contractors siphon off one-third of farmworkers? wages? (Hubner). Contratistas also cheat workers out of one or two hours of pay each day which being over 25 workers amount to more than $200 dollars a day. Another type of abuse is the prevention of medical treatment.

According to Hubner ??benefits hard won 30 years ago are now hard to find.? In his article the contratistas ??block access to worker?s compensation insurance.? Hubner also stated that labor contractors prevent ?workers from seeking medical treatment for injuries on the job so as to keep their insurance premiums down.? An example of this is what a contratista did to Olea Lazaro.

According to Lazaro while working for West Valley Farm Labor Services in August 1997 a moving trailer injured his left knee. When he wanted to go to the doctor he was told by the contratista that they had ??only made two passes through the grapes and needed to make three more,? (Hubner). Lazaro tried to work but could not so he went to the hospital. According to Lazaro ??the number for the insurance was a wrong number.? Lazaro went back and talked to the contratista who gave him another number, which according to Lazaro was also a wrong number. When the doctor called West Valley Farm Labor Services he was told that Lazaro had never worked there. Another type of incident that occurs is that the farm laborers? employer takes the workers to the border and tells them to leave after the worker tells their employer that they are injured. Leo Chavez writes of such in incident in his book called Shadowed Lives: Undocumented Immigrants in American Society. In his book Chavez interviewed a farm laborer who told him:

One time I was working very hard. We had to lift heavy equipment and I was trying to please my patron (Boss). I pulled so hard I hurt my back. For two days I could barely move. Then my patron took me in his truck and I thought he was taking me to a doctor. But imagine my surprise when we arrived at the border and he told me to get out and go back to Mexico or he?d call the Border Patrol? (Chavez 78).

Chavez mentions another incident in which a worker, which he calls Manuel, constantly keeps complaining about feeling sick and attributing his sickness to the exposure of pesticides and fertilizers. According to Manuel when he complained to his employer his employer also took him to the border and told him to ??go back to Mexico? (Chavez 78). The sad part is that such incidents are common amongst people who work for contratistas. This prevention of medical treatment happens even though the contratistas know that farming is dangerous. According to a study performed by the Workers? Compensation Insurance Bureau of San Francisco, in the past decade California has had an average of 30,000 farming injuries and 25 to 50 farming fatalities each year. The Bureau also found that in 1998 the rate of agriculture related deaths was ??22 per 100,000? (Hubner) workers making it second only mining and quarrying. By preventing the immigrants from receiving medical treatment the contratistas are making money at the cost of the health on the worker. Another abuse that the immigrants face from the contratistas is their poor living conditions.

The houses that are provided for the workers are not livable according to state standards. An example of this is the barrack provided to the workers by the grower. According to Hubner the barracks were ??crude even by military standards.? When the state inspector began to enforce the violation the ??farmers tore down the dormitories rather than spend the money to bring them up to code? (Hubner). Today housing is provided to the immigrant workers by the contratistas. The contratistas take new crew members to a two bedroom overcrowded house that is run by a ?slumlord? that during the harvest houses up to 25 workers.. In exchange the contratista receives a ??kickback for every member of his crew who beds down there? (Hubner). Other contratistas that pay their workers $5.75 an hour charge the workers $5 a night to sleep in an ?overcrowded trailer.? According to Hanley?s article a Fresno County vineyard received ?two housing code violations: a cardboard fire wall by a stove and lack of fire extinguishers? (Hanley). These houses are not suitable to be lived in and yet the contratistas endangered the safety of their workers. But as always there is another point of view, that of the contratistas.

The contratistas can argue that with their strong connections with farmers long time employment can be provided to the workers. In his book Farm Workers and Agri-business in California 1947-1960 Ernesto Galarza writes that if the contratista could ??regularly fulfill expectations of this kind year in and year out, a contractor could become a personage of sorts in his chosen area of operation? (Galarza 56). By becoming a person of sorts in the agricultural industry the contratistas receive a steady flow of labor contracts by the farm owners thus providing the workers a steady job. The contratistas also argue that they provide such necessities to the workers as housing and food. According to Galarza the contratistas ?provide housing, transportation, and food? (Galarza 56). The contratistas also relieved the farm employers out of the pressure of having to deal with the workers. The conrtratista ??assumed certain responsibilities that the grower found to costly or inconvenient to discharge himself? (Galarza 56), thus allowing the farm employer to devote more time into what is important, food safety.

In an article written by Devon Brown called The Farm Labor Puzzle published in the Internet site of The Broadcaster, Brown writes:

The contractor does the service of finding and hiring enough men and women to complete a certain job, filling out the required paperwork, training and overseeing labor done in the field, and distributing payment to the workers. The grower need only pay for labor and the contractor?s fee? (Brown).

By avoiding all the hassle of dealing with the workers the farm employer saves allot of money, which in turn he passes on the savings to us. Another point that needs to be clear is that in order for the farmers to be able to provide vegetables and fruits to the consumer at a cheap price and stay competitive they need to hire cheep labor. Brown writes ??growers depend on a constant, efficient and inexpensive labor supply in order to stay competitive in today?s market? (Brown). From what booth Galarza and Brown state in their writing, we can conclude that cheep labor, such as the labor provided by the contratistas, is a necessity in order for agricultural goods to be affordable. In an article printed in the Los Angeles Times called Growers Say U.S. Wrong, Labor is in Short Supply, Stephanie Simon writes that ?Agriculture as it is currently structured relies on illegal immigrants to do a lot of the dirty work? (Simon). Simon writes that 70% of California?s labor force is illegal immigrants, most of them in the San Diego area which is notorious for labor abuses by the contratistas. With out the contratistas to provide the workers what would happen to the economy of California. I believe that California?s economy would go down the drain. Yet I think that what the contratistas are doing is wrong.

The contratistas continual wage garnishment and over charging for a necessity such as food is a constant abuse of the peoples’ basic rights. The forced payment of rides to work and house cost along with the theft of wages leaves the immigrants with no money for themselves. Immigrant are being forced to live in shacks and overcrowded places that are unsafe and are given no choice but to take showers with runoff water from the fields. The worst abuse received by immigrants is that they are denied medical attention by the contratistas either by being threatened or by receiving wrong insurance numbers. It is sad to say that incidents such as the ones previously stated are not rare. It is even sadder that there is no real solution to this problem. The only thing that can be done is to educate people about such incidents in order for them to be able to spot such incidents so that the incidents can be reported. The worst part is that ??it?s Mexicans ripping off Mexicans,? (Hubner).