Discrimination News

Discrimination on the Farm

When Mary Alice Leach stopped by Bland Farms in May 2000 to inquire about a laborer job at the country’s largest producer of Vidalia sweet onions, she received a rude reception and was told to seek work at a neighboring farm 60 miles away. The 53-year old resident of Glenville, Ga., who walks with a slight limp as a result of reconstructive surgery on her ankle, may have seemed a likely target of discrimination. After all, she is black. She is disabled. And she is female.Yet in an ironic twist, it turns out that Leach was discriminated against for the one reason she would’ve never guessed: She is an American.

Leach is a member of a growing category of job-seekers denied employment in the agricultural industry: American citizens. Qualified U.S. workers are being passed over for farm laborer jobs in favor of foreign workers willing to work long hours under excruciating conditions for low pay. Under the federal government’s H-2A program, agricultural producers are permitted to temporarily hire nonimmigrant foreign workers when qualified American laborers are not available. However, many growers have shown a decided preference for foreign labor, improperly using the H-2A program to hire – and ultimately exploit – non-U.S. workers, says Bruce Goldstein, executive director of the Farmworker Justice Fund, a Washington D.C.-based nonprofit dedicated to improving working conditions for migrant and seasonal farmworkers.

The practice of bringing in temporary guest workers dates back to the World War II era, when a labor shortage made the program essential to sustain struggling American farms. Today’s H-2A program, created under the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, operates to ensure growers an adequate labor pool. It is utilized throughout the United States, with North Carolina and Georgia the country’s most prolific users.

The H-2A program generally requires growers to enforce their own regulations governing wage rates, overtime and work schedules, but some farmers see little incentive in honoring their contracts with foreign laborers. Advocates say non-immigrant workers are cowed into silence out of fear they that they will lose their jobs (and their U.S. permanent residency status) if they complain about their wages or treatment. “Growers generally have not improved wages or working conditions in the agriculture industry and generally maintain very backward labor relations and practices,” Goldstein says.

After Leach was denied employment by Bland Farms, she contacted Dawson Morton, an attorney with the Farmworker Division of the Georgia Legal Services Program (GLSP).

Morton instructed Leach to obtain the proper paperwork from the local employment office and return to the farm. Leach revisited Bland Farms and was grudgingly hired and allowed to work out the rest of the season. Leach was forced to work nine-hour days on her feet without any breaks. She received repeated reprimands from her employers for voicing displeasure with the difficult conditions. “They made it quite well known that if I wouldn’t work the long hours … that I couldn’t work,” Leach said. “It caused me a lot of problems with my leg, standing up for nine hours straight.” Read more at: www.ejm.lsc.gov

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	Did You Know?
	The law requires equal pay for equal work The Equal Pay Act prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in the payment of wages or benefits, where men and women perform work of similar skill, effort, and responsibility for the same employer under similar working conditions.