Maine
Opinion: Maine missed opportunity to improve life for migrant farm workers
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Crystal Guzman is a scholar at School of the Atlantic.
In the USA, bringing visitor staff from different nations to work agricultural jobs is nothing new. In 1942, The Bracero Program was born out of fear about labor shortages in low-paying agricultural jobs throughout World Battle II. As an answer, a sequence of bi-lateral agreements between the USA and Mexico gave tens of millions of Mexican males short-term agricultural labor contracts. Moderately than confronting the deeper drawback of the annoying working situations and low wages, the band-aid answer was to convey keen staff from Mexico. From 1942 till the top of this system in 1964, staff signed 4.6 million contracts. Most of the time, the work was extremely strenuous, with staff going through exploitation and racial discrimination whereas growers profited from the infinite provide of low-cost labor.
Right here in Maine, the agricultural season has begun, and migrant staff are arriving to work on farms throughout the state as a part of the H-2A program.
The H-2A Momentary Agricultural Employees Program is one other visitor employee program that’s extremely much like the Bracero Program. The H-2A program permits employers to rent staff from different nations (primarily Mexico) to work momentary or seasonal agricultural jobs so long as the employer can certify they weren’t capable of finding U.S. staff to finish the work and that hiring visitor staff won’t hurt the wages and dealing situations of staff in the USA. Whereas there are protections in place to keep away from exploitative practices throughout the program, the employers nonetheless maintain a lot energy over the visitor staff. H-2A visas are restricted to at least one employer, which means the employer holds all bargaining energy as they resolve whether or not the employee can keep in the USA, which staff can come to the USA, and whether or not the employee can proceed to come back to the U.S. sooner or later.
Centro de los Derechos del Migrante (Heart for Migrant Rights), a company that gives migrant staff authorized, instructional, and coverage assets, accomplished a research by which 100 H-2A visitor staff have been interviewed to be taught extra about their lives as braceros. Authors discovered experiences of wage theft, sexual harassment, discrimination, and well being and security violations by their employers.
Whether or not or not it’s The Bracero Program or the H-2A visa program, there’s a cycle of severely mistreating migrant staff on the expense of bountiful, low-cost labor. Moreover problems with maltreatment, there may be the extra systemic drawback of farms feeling stress to scale up and produce extra, which results in the necessity for extra labor. The prevalence of exploitation in agricultural labor, whereas disheartening, is no surprise given the truth that farmworkers have been overlooked of the Honest Labor Requirements Act and the Nationwide Labor Relations Act handed within the Thirties. The exclusion of farmworkers shows the deep-seated racism as farmworkers on the time of the New Deal have been primarily African-American, and Southern congressman needed to guard the plantation system run within the South.
In Maine, there have been makes an attempt by state consultant Thom Harnett to right a few of these wrongs via two payments he fought to get authorized. One invoice would have allowed farmworkers in Maine to prepare for the aim of collective bargaining, and the opposite would have made agricultural staff topic to state wage and hour legal guidelines, which means staff could be coated by state minimal wage necessities and could be paid time beyond regulation as staff in different sectors are. Sadly, neither invoice grew to become regulation. These payments might have been concrete steps towards higher defending migrant farmworkers in Maine, however there may be nonetheless a lot work to do.
Because the folks that provide invaluable labor and assist Maine farmers develop meals, migrant farmworkers deserve the rights and protections that each different job receives.