Laws: January, 2004 - Number #03

In August 2003, the Miami Herald ran a series of articles entitled "Fields of Pain" that charged that FLCs were targeting homeless shelters and similar places to recruit workers who were employed under near-slave debt peonage conditions. The result, according to worker advocates, is that wages and working conditions have gotten so bad that "the only people who are going to do farm work are undocumented aliens or crack addicts." In December 2003, FLC Ronald Jones and the farmer who used Jones to get workers in 2002 and 2003, Thomas R. Lee of Bulls-Hit Ranch & Farm, were sued in federal court, charged by 12 workers with being exploited by Jones. Many of the workers were recruited from homeless centers and, with no money, soon found themselves in debt bondage, required to keep working to pay off food and transportation debts. In recent years, 12 Florida FLCs have gone to prison for abusing or enslaving workers. The Palm Beach Post ran a similar series December 7-9, 2003 under the headlines "modern-day slavery" and "still harvesting shame." The series was sparked by the sentencing of several FLCs to prison for enslaving workers, and opened with profiles of workers who had been smuggled into the US to do farm work. Many worked for FLCs, who become their employers, landlords, meal providers, and check cashers, so that workers became very dependent on FLCs. FLCs in turn, compete with one another to bring crews to farms to harvest crops, and often cheat the workers of wages or the government of payroll taxes to survive. The Palm Beach Post profiled some of the worst abuses, reviewing convictions of FLCs for slavery and sex trafficking ($21 clubs charge men $20 for sex and $1 for a condom). The Post noted that Florida's 1,150 slave owners had 61,000 slaves in 1860, and that slaves were half of the state's residents. In five cases since 1996, a dozen Florida farm labor contractors, smugglers and their associates have been sent to prison for enslaving and exploiting farmworkers; Florida leads the US in having FLC licenses revoked. Falkner Farms, which has 20,000 acres of mostly cucumbers in Florida and Michigan, was sued in November 2003, charged with not paying workers at least the minimum wage. The farm's migrant housing was cited as inadequate by Hillsborough County; the housing violations were later corrected. In response to the series, Lake Worth Mayor Rodney Romano said that political leaders must "get to these farm owners and say, 'You've got to take some responsibility'" for farm worker housing conditions and ensuring that FLCs pay the wages due workers. Lake Worth, a city of 35,000, has an estimated 10,000 farm workers. The Lakeland Ledger on December 28, 2003 profiled a citrus operation with 180 acres near Haines City. Harvest workers are supplied via a farm labor contractor, and the FLC profiled was an ex-supervisor for a harvesting association who became a FLC. The FLC buses the workers to the field, and then uses a Lightning Loader or "grove goat," a flatbed truck with a hydraulic arm, to distribute empty bins and to take full bins to the roadside, where they are transferred to a highway truck that takes them to a packinghouse. Tangerines are picked into bins that hold 10 one-and-three-fifths bushel boxes of fruit, and the piece rate in December 2003 was $14 a bin, compared to $7 a bin for picking oranges. A standard canvas picking bag can hold up to one box of fruit, which is 90 pounds of oranges or 95 pounds of tangerines. The 200 pickers in the area included 70 percent Hispanic, mostly Mexican immigrants, 10 percent from Haiti, and 20 percent US-born Blacks. Worker earnings varied in Fall 2003 from $50 to $100 a day, but the uncertainty about whether there would be harvesting work and daily earnings discourages US workers with options from seeking harvesting jobs and encouraged newcomer immigrants to find steadier jobs as soon as they could. Florida's Department of Business and Professional Regulation inspected 42 farms in Homestead and Florida City in November 2003, and found 94 violations at seven farms, including two children working, non- registered FLCs, and lack of field sanitation facilities. Florida's Farmworker Week was November 9-14, 2003, and the state's farm labor program is at: www.myflorida.com/dbpr/pro/farm/compliance/farmlabor/index.shtml www.floridajobs.org/pdg/msfw/default.htm http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/AA252 FTAA-Oranges. The Free Trade Area of the Americas would lower trade barriers among 34 countries, allowing Brazil to expand from the 18 million tons of oranges it grew in 2002-03, and probably shrinking production in Florida, which produced 11 million tons. Florida has 12,000 citrus growers, but the 10 largest have 30 percent of the 800,000 acres. The US charges a tariff of $0.297 cents per gallon on imported orange juice, which helps to protect Florida growers from lower-cost Brazilian producers. Four of the top five orange juice processors in Florida have plants in both Florida and Brazil, and they process and market 75 percent of Florida's juice. In the 2002-03 season, growers received an average of $3.32 a box for a 90-pound box of oranges; yields averaged 345 boxes an acre, for revenue of $1,145 an acre. Tangerines averaged $8.53 per box, the yield was 253 boxes an acre, and revenue was $2,158 per acre; grapefruit averaged $2.12 per box, the yield was 405 boxes, and revenues were $859 per acre. About five percent of the oranges, 70 percent of the tangerines, and 40 percent of the grapefruit go to the fresh market. If the tariff on orange juice were reduced, Florida growers would have to mechanize to reduce labor costs. About 17,000 of Florida's 666,000 acres of commercial oranges were mechanically harvested in 2002-03; mechanization is expected to be speeded up as the price of harvesting machines, up to $1 million each, falls; as better abscission chemicals are developed so that ripe fruit can more readily be dislodged from the trees; and as more groves are uniformly pruned or "skirted" to facilitate machine harvesting. Ronnie Greene, "Farmers file suit against field bosses," Miami Herald, December 16, 2003. Modern-Day Slavery, Palm Beach Post, December 7-9, 2003. www.palmbeachpost.com/hp/content/moderndayslavery/index.html Michael Browning, "Still harvesting shame," Palm Beach Post, November 30, 2003.