Farm Labor Wages And Salaries

Drive the highways of the San Joaquin Valley in late summer, during the height of the raisin grape harvest, and you see a pastoral setting. Workers cut grapes and lay them out to dry between the vines, the rows of pale green fruit stretching as far as the eye can see. But take the back roads after the workday ends, and you are confronted by jarring Third World scenes.

A San Joaquin County asparagus grower will pay more than half a million dollars in back wages to farm workers and has upgraded worker housing to settle a federal lawsuit filed last year. The suit charged that workers were held hostage at Victoria Island Farms and threatened with physical harm if they complained to authorities. California Rural Legal Assistance, which sued the farm and JB Farm Labor Contracting, said it will try to contact the 100 to 400 people entitled to the checks.

California grape growers have battled Cesar Chavez's United Farm Workers of America for more than 25 years, but total victory for them against the remarkably enduring 62-year-old Chavez isn't on the horizon. The UFW has been badly weakened by the war but it's still fighting. A complete growers' victory would be a tragedy. Though inadequate and flawed, no other nationally known organization besides the UFW exists to plead the cause of farm workers, most of whom still live in deep poverty.

Most of the millions of dollars deducted as savings from the paychecks of Mexican laborers who came to the United States during the 1940s was later repaid, according to Mexican government records that contradict key assertions of a growing reparations movement. Thousands of surviving migrants on both sides of the border contend they were cheated out of money that they earned toiling in fields and rail yards to replace U.S. workers drafted in World War II.

Two inventors who were watching the strawberry harvest from a Laguna Niguel window have improved the process of timing and paying agricultural workers. Their invention, DataTrack, is a small button that attaches to a worker's identification card. The card can be scanned, and field supervisors can keep accurate count of the number of flats of strawberries or buckets of chili peppers picked by each worker.

A quarter-century after Cesar Chavez rattled the nation's conscience by publicizing the plight of those who tend our crops, California farm workers such as Juan Maciel enjoy protections denied to laborers in other states. Laws ban many hazardous tools--notably the notorious short-handled hoe--and have brought toilets, drinking water, lunch breaks, unemployment insurance and workers' compensation benefits to the fields.

Juan Arreola crouched over a makeshift grill beneath an interstate bridge, heating his supper of corn tortilla and chili peppers. "We are the poorest of all the workers, and that's why we are here," Arreola says of the chili pickers who sleep under the bridge they call "Hotel Mira Estrellas," or "The Hotel Star Gazer."

Farm workers have seen their wages and working conditions deteriorate in recent years while their employers have prospered, according to a federal commission. The Commission on Agricultural Workers' preliminary report, obtained by the Associated Press, found that an overabundance of cheap labor continues to be the problem, despite a 1986 law that was meant to stem the flow of illegal immigrants and punish employers who knowingly hire them. Rep. Edward R.

California's main program for enforcing fair wages and working conditions in the farm industry imposed the lowest total fines in its history last year. The program alleged just 11 minimum-wage violations statewide. Only three dozen times did its inspectors charge the state's farms and ranches with illegally hiring children, one-quarter the number of citations for underage workers issued six years earlier.

The state labor commissioner is investigating apparent violations of the new state minimum wage law at a Fresno chili pepper farm reported in The Times on Thursday, state officials said. Instead of the new legal minimum wage of $4.25 an hour, the workers were receiving a piece rate that netted some of them as little as $1.35 an hour. None of the more than 50 workers interviewed was averaging more than $2.70 an hour.

California's main program for enforcing fair wages and working conditions in the farm industry imposed the lowest total fines in its history last year. The program alleged just 11 minimum-wage violations statewide. Only three dozen times did its inspectors charge the state's farms and ranches with illegally hiring children, one-quarter the number of citations for underage workers issued six years earlier.

Except for the crowded parking lot of the Seminole Indians' bingo palace, there are few signs of prosperity in this dusty farm town. This is the heart of the winter vegetable season, and Collier County is among the state's largest tomato-producing regions. But many packinghouses are closed, many stores dark. And on the streets, dozens of men sit around gripping bottles in brown paper bags.

Luis Choc should be working in the fields for the coffee harvest that begins in earnest next month on this farm in the hills 150 miles north of Guatemala City. But he and 53 other hands have been fired for demanding that they receive the minimum wage. Choc, 40, and his family have lived here for generations: "It is where the bones of my ancestors are buried," the Keqchi Maya community leader says.

Two inventors who were watching the strawberry harvest from a Laguna Niguel window have improved the process of timing and paying agricultural workers. Their invention, DataTrack, is a small button that attaches to a worker's identification card. The card can be scanned, and field supervisors can keep accurate count of the number of flats of strawberries or buckets of chili peppers picked by each worker.

A quarter-century after Cesar Chavez rattled the nation's conscience by publicizing the plight of those who tend our crops, California farm workers such as Juan Maciel enjoy protections denied to laborers in other states. Laws ban many hazardous tools--notably the notorious short-handled hoe--and have brought toilets, drinking water, lunch breaks, unemployment insurance and workers' compensation benefits to the fields.

Most of the workers who plant and harvest America's bountiful crops are still exploited and mired in poverty nearly 30 years after Cesar Chavez began his once promising crusade to help them. You shouldn't get rich leading a charity organization or a crusade to help the poor. Some people do, but not Chavez, president of the United Farm Workers of America. He makes $5,000 a year, which is about the income of the average farm worker.

A federal judge on Wednesday barred the Labor Department from implementing a new wage standard for foreign farm workers under the new immigration law. District Judge Stanley Sporkin permanently enjoined the Labor Department from setting the so-called "adverse effect wage rate" for foreign farm workers at a level equal to the average hourly farm wage of domestic laborers.

Most of the workers who plant and harvest America's bountiful crops are still exploited and mired in poverty nearly 30 years after Cesar Chavez began his once promising crusade to help them. You shouldn't get rich leading a charity organization or a crusade to help the poor. Some people do, but not Chavez, president of the United Farm Workers of America. He makes $5,000 a year, which is about the income of the average farm worker.

After 10 hours a day in the broccoli fields outside Oxnard, Olga Martinez's back aches from constant stooping and bending. Martinez left Jalisco, Mexico, last year to join her parents, brothers and sisters in Ventura, all of whom work in agricultural jobs around the county. Martinez found a job as a cutter that paid $4.80 an hour. "Everything's a strain on my back," said Martinez, during a break Monday from hours of chopping broccoli stems. "I'd like benefits, but there aren't any."

Farm workers have seen their wages and working conditions deteriorate in recent years while their employers have prospered, according to a federal commission. The Commission on Agricultural Workers' preliminary report, obtained by the Associated Press, found that an overabundance of cheap labor continues to be the problem, despite a 1986 law that was meant to stem the flow of illegal immigrants and punish employers who knowingly hire them. Rep. Edward R.