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My final hypertext of this quarter will examine the low-wage experience of agricultural workers, specifically legal and illegal. Because I have actually worked on a ranch, I can use my own personal experience to some extent, but because my jobs were so different from those of the salary workers, unlike Ehrenreich, I won’t be using this as my main source of information. I do have close family members who work in this business as managers that could provide some very helpful first hand/second hand information on the people with whom they work.
Agricultural work is one of the most difficult jobs out there. It’s an extremely dangerous job that becomes more strenuous because many of the workers are trying to support families in the United States and in Mexico. I want to be able to depict these struggles and hardships in the way that Schlosser did in Fast Food Nation. I want to give an unbiased, factual point of view, keeping my own personal views and opinions separate, while fairly depicting other people’s point of view.
One of the main points I want to address is the “American Dream.” Because many of these workers are immigrants, they are trying to beat the odds and assimilate into American society. I’m going to investigate whether or not the “American Dream” is actually an attainable goal for the common agricultural worker and his or her family. Also, I want to investigate whether or not students at Santa Clara would be willing to help these people in need by paying more for each item of produce that they buy.
The job of an agricultural worker includes everything from working in a slaughterhouse to installing irrigation in a vineyard. It takes a wide range of skills, but none of which are so specific or technical that it would require a degree, making the job low paying and unattractive to the upper-class, leaving it mostly to legal and illegal immigrants. The most common types of agricultural workers are crop, nursery, and greenhouse farm workers. They specialize in growing and harvesting crops. Their average day usually begins around when the sun comes up, and ends when the sun goes down. The next most common group of agricultural workers is farm and ranch animal workers. Their pay is usually slightly higher than that of a harvester, but their living situations are the same. They require at least some expertise in the handling of animals, hence their raise in pay. But for all of these workers, they work in environments that expose them to chemical related illness and injury. They work around dead animals, heavy machinery, and toxic chemicals. Their job is more physically taxing than most other professions yet they get paid less than any other workforce.
The agriculture industry is one of the most dangerous in the world. Workers need to deal with everything from pesticides to dangerous machinery to large animals. In fact, between 1999 and 2001, 5077 agricultural workers died from injuries directly related to their jobs. This is excluding death due to chemical poisoning. So not only do agricultural workers receive the lowest wages, but they also are risking their lives, and their well-being. These people are the least likely to be able to overcome any kind of significant injury. One reason is that they often do not receive compensation when they get hurt on the job, which puts their families in an extremely difficult situation. Another reason that long leaves of absence hurt the common agricultural worker is that they are extremely replaceable. If one worker goes down due to injury or illness, most of the time that worker will be replaced in a matter of days. So instead of resting and coming back to work fully healed, most of these workers try to work through the pain and exacerbate their injuries. The most common injury results from the handling of tractors one way or another, but injuries due to trucks, boats, and other machinery are not far behind. Because many agricultural workers are not unionized (and many are illegal), an injury means no money, which also means no money for their family which makes it increasingly more difficult to work one’s family out of poverty. This high level of injury risk also cuts down on the amount of years an agricultural worker can work. Most need to retire due to physical ailment around the age of fifty. This wouldn’t be too big of a problem in most professions, but because income is so low in this industry, but the time they are fifty, most agricultural workers have little or no money saved up. And because the labor is so difficult most workers cannot begin working full time until they are in their early or mid twenties. So agricultural workers roughly have about thirty years, working minimum wage, to save up enough money to help put their children through college so maybe someday their family can assimilate into American society, even if it takes multiple generations to accomplish this goal. There is good news in this aspect of the work. With technology advancing, machinery is becoming more and more user friendly, lowering the risk of injury. These machines also make the work less taxing on the workers, allowing them to work for a longer time over their lives.
According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, pesticides poison an estimated 10,000 to 20,000 agricultural workers each year. The estimation is so broad because there is no formal reporting system. Many pesticide related illnesses either go unreported or are not recognized because the symptoms can be similar to the common cold or the flu in the less severe cases. The Bureau of Labor Statistics finds that agricultural workers experience the highest rate of exposure to chemical-related illness of any occupation. In 2004, nearly half of the reported pesticide cases in California involved agricultural workers. There is no question that pesticide exposure is a major problem in this industry. It’s especially harmful because many workers don’t have health insurance and can’t afford treatment. Because pesticides can be easily transported, these dangers are also evident in the families of the workers. Unlike the physical injuries workers sustain, pesticide exposure is becoming an even greater problem, because money is spent in developing these chemicals to make them more effective, but these upgrades often make the chemicals even more harmful to the workers and their families. Within this category of agricultural workers, the Mexican immigrants are the ones affected the most by these risks.
The effect of Mexican immigrants might not be as prevalent in any other industry as it is in the agricultural industry. Seventy-seven percent of all crop workers are immigrants. Seventy-five percent of crop workers are specifically Mexican immigrants. The two percent that are not from Mexico are from other Latin-American countries. Mexican immigrants are crucial to the agriculture industry. The fact that there are so many of them willing to work in this industry allows the farmers to pay them less, hence keeping the price of produce lower. Their value cannot be understated, yet they still go over-looked and underappreciated. The average income for crop workers is between about $10,000 and $12,499. For many Mexican immigrants those numbers are cut in half. Many migrant workers send a large portion of their money back home to support their families, whom they had to leave behind in order to provide them with a better life. So not only are they dealing with the physical stress, but also the emotional stress of leaving their families behind.
Illegal immigration also plays a significant role in the agricultural industry, especially in the state of California. Economically, it is necessary to pay at least some workers below minimum wage to keep the price of produce down, yet they get attacked in the media for just being here. So on top of everything they have to deal with in terms of their work, they also need to deal with the constant possibility that they could be sent home to Mexico in the middle of the night. They have a significant disadvantage compared to legal workers who can have yearly salaries.
For workers with permanent jobs, their salaries usually range between eight and thirteen dollars per hour, depending on their job and their status as an American citizen. But, about forty-two percent of workers with permanent jobs receive housing from their employer (which is usually a small two or three room home on the ranch or farm). The most common way for the employer to be compensated for the housing is deducting the money directly from the workers salary, which means they end up earning far less than what they originally were making. Salary workers have at least some safety nets if anything happens on the job because of their relationship with their employer or some sort of pre-negotiated agreement with their employer. Their housing costs are usually very low because they live on the land. But, one downside is that because of the consistency of the job and the small amount of room in the housing, most salary workers leave their families in Mexico, and cannot see them for years at a time.
Many of these workers don’t have permanent jobs and have to wait for someone to drive by and offer work on a daily basis. They then proceed to gather crops all day for pennies on the dollar. Because temporary workers are usually paid in cash, it’s hard to come up with an estimate of their wages, but it can be assumed that they are well below the legal minimum wage, considering that most of these workers are illegal immigrants. These jobs can last between on day or for an entire growing season. There is no consistency in the lives of temporary workers. They also need to pay more for housing than a salary worker because they actually need to find some type of housing in a competitive market in addition to finding some source of transportation to and from work. Temporary workers are most easily replaceable of agricultural workers so injury or illness is a major set back for this group especially. One injury can keep an entire family from reaching their dreams.
There is no one particular definition for the American dream. It is different for every person and situation. Most agricultural workers who migrate from Mexico to the United States are striving to get out of poverty, but not for themselves, but for their children or their children’s children. It is unrealistic to believe that and immigrant in his or her late twenties can climb up the social scale with little or no education and hardly any fiscal means. But the real question is whether or not the average migrant agricultural worker can get his or her future generations out of poverty.
Under normal circumstances, this transition would take generations to accomplish. Occasionally a combination of natural intellect and work ethic can make this a fast process, but that is rare. College is the greatest obstacle for most immigrant families. College tuition in California for four-year universities varies between 20,000 and 50,000 dollars according to californiacolleges.edu. When families all together are making 20,000 dollars per year, college tuition is impossible to pay off. Most immigrant children either need to earn scholarships or get loans. In some way or another, they need help to just achieve middle class status.
For my original research contribution, I conducted a survey of twenty-five Santa Clara students about whether or not they would be willing to pay extra for their produce if it ensured that the workers who harvested said produce would be paid and treated fairly. Because there is disagreement about how much raising the pay of harvesters would effect the cost of produce, I gave each person the option to choose from a ten, twenty-five, or forty percent increase to what they already pay for produce. The results were not very favorable towards the workers. No student was willing to pay forty percent more for their produce while only seven were willing to pay twenty-five percent more. The remaining eighteen students were only willing to pay ten percent more or nothing at all.
It’s clear that if a migrant worker wants to get his or her family out of poverty in order to achieve the American Dream, they either need help or luck, or some combination of the two. Based on my findings, the common middle to upper class student is not willing to do it. If not them who? College students today are the generation that can make a difference in this issue and many others, but it seems like the prerogative of the individual is to better one’s self, which reflects on the group as a whole. The lack of support for the workers, specifically immigrants makes this issue so significant.
Immigration is an extremely important issue in the state of California. At the current rate of immigration, Mexican Americans will be the majority in the state in a matter of ten years, so this issue is relevant to all residents of California. I, personally, have worked on a ranch with several immigrants from Mexico. I witnessed their hard work and devotion to their families. Legal or illegal, every citizen of this country has the right of opportunity. Right now there is almost no opportunity for migrant workers to work their way out of poverty. Their wages barely allow them to survive, let alone climb the ladder of society. I care because these are the poorest of the poor in this country, and they don’t have anyone sticking up for them. They’re only mentioned in politics, but they are referred to more as objects than actual people. They deserve the respect that so many of us take for granite.
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