By WORKERS’ VOICE
We met in the city of Orosi, Calif., with a farmworker, Ixtel, to conduct this interview to learn about the situation of the farmworkers. The lack of coverage of this sector of the working class of the United States, and especially California, is disproportionate to the key role that it represents in the national economy. In particular, we want to report on farmworker perspectives on the worsening climate crisis and global warming.
Workers’ Voice: Ixtel, could you tell us a little bit about yourself, what country you are from, why you immigrated to the United States, how long you have been here, and what immigrating has been like?
Ixtel: I am Mexican, from the state of Michoacan. I migrated because I was fleeing domestic violence—and why not say it as well—because I was looking for a better future for myself, for my family, for my parents. As a migrant, I have been here for about 25 years and as a farmworker for about 16 years. It is difficult to get up at 4 a.m. to go to work in extreme temperatures; let’s say, right now, the weather is 112, 114 degrees F. Next week, it will be 116, and many of us do not stop working until it reaches 100 or until the workday ends at 2:30 or 3 p.m. It is up to us to decide whether to stop or not, but it is very difficult.
WV: Why did you choose farm work as your main area of work?
I: As fate would have it, the recession of 2007 made me come here to the countryside, and it was very difficult for me. I had already told you about adapting, but I imagine that all the bad things that farmers go through and that I got to see and go through was what made me love this job more, have more affection for the people of the countryside. Now I am just another farm worker like all the others and I love it because I get to eat the fruits and vegetables very fresh. I know that they arrive in the city but they don’t arrive there the same way as when I pick them. So for me it is something that motivates me day by day, and we have no other choice, someone has to do the work.
WV: Would you like to tell us about your coworkers, the diversity of ethnicity, and countries where the farmworkers come from where you work?
I: In the last year I have seen people from Colombia and from Uruguay, and I think there were some Panamanians—and this was all in the last year because in previous years they were almost all Mexicans, whether they were from Guerrero, Chiapas, Oaxaca, Michoacan, or Sinaloa. This past year more people came from Central America. Cultures are different from ours; but you mix and you get used to it.
For food, I didn’t used to eat yucca much, but now I eat it. I didn’t used to eat different things. I mean, they come with the ideas … of the plantain, the golden banana, cooked, so it’s a culture that’s very different from those of Michoacan or Mexico. So there, we are already sharing. It changes how you speak, because even the sound of how you speak sticks to you; yes, the whole mess, things stick to you and they are very nice things.
People from other countries are arriving and it is something very nice because between cultures, between customs, it is a diversity of colors. So when you get along well sometimes I bring my stove and my pan and I get to making eggs and suddenly someone comes by and asks, “don’t you like plantains?” and I tell them, well yes I like them but I don’t know how you make them. Is it cooked? How do you get them so dark and she tells me, yes, it is cooked and she takes it her ingredients and gets cooking.
And all this is wonderful because as we live together it is also a very nice experience because you meet people from another country and they start to tell you about the rivers back home and so on, it’s lovely. It is a diversity of customs, of traditions you could say. There are so many peoples that we do not know but when you meet them then you get to appreciate them. You really appreciate those countries.
Also the suffering that the peasants face coming here, and when they arrive here, they say, “Wow, I have never felt this heat. Never in my life have I felt such heat before.” Last year I was working with a Guatemalan who was saying this, and you could see it on his face.
WV: What are the working conditions, the length of the workday, the salary paid to the day laborer and the type of contracts?
I: The work schedule this season is starting from 6 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., and they take half an hour for lunch, which they never pay for. It is Monday through Friday only, $16 an hour, and the contracts are temporary. We can’t sign a longer-term contract with a company even if everyone knows that the company is going to need pruning or other work. We cannot have a year-long contract—only from season to season.
I’m going to expand on that a little bit: If there is a farmer who is injured during sowing season, they will be paid compensation only during sowing season. If there is a farmer who was injured during pruning time, they will only be paid compensation during pruning time. So it is for the time of the contracts. We would like to put something in the contracts that would support us much more because if they hurt their back, if it was only in winter time, then they will be paid in winter time—and who is going to pay them for the rest of the year if they can’t work? Especially if it is the same company? If we are going to work for this company then it should be a continuous contract, not seasonal but continuous, but unfortunately do not have that yet.
WV: We know that there are a variety of work contracts that bring people to the fields. Some work with seasonal contracts that come and go from Mexico with a temporary visa. Others work with temporary contracts and without work visas. Can you tell us a little bit about that?
I: It is sad because for us as undocumented migrants it is very difficult. Seeing people come and work is something very nice because they come and tell us what is happening in our countries when they arrive here. In this area here we have not seen so many temporary visa workers. I don’t know if it is because a company has not yet arrived to bring people here or if the market is already saturated here, but we are going to see most of them on the coast or in Washington, in Oregon, in the New York area—those are places where it’s mostly visa workers.
On Friday of last week I went down to San Diego, and there were about three or four buses coming and there was no doubt that they were visas and they were going to the Washington area. So it is good that people come documented and that they come to work, because they get to enjoy with their people what we cannot. What we need is legalization to be able to say that we are counted. You are counted, my children who have papers are counted, the people who have papers are counted—but the undocumented people are not counted yet. They may be in the census but they are not counted.
So when I looked at all the young people that got off [the buses], then my daughter said, are they all coming for a vacation? And I told her they may not, but they are with a visa, and she said, what is that? There is a visa that is 2H that they bring all the people hired especially to work; they come, they work, and they go back home. How nice! I think we would all like to come and put down roots that way.
WV: There was a great tradition of struggle on the part of farmworkers to win representation of farmworker unions in the time of Cesar Chavez in the Central Valley in California. Can you tell us anything about how farmworkers are doing in relation to unions today?
I: Not very well. And a lot of it is not because of the legacy that Cesar Chavez left us. He fought a tireless fight. So tireless that he ran out of life. As far as I know from history, the causes of his death were that so many times that he went on hunger strike, and the body is wearing out. The new leaders do not look to the people as much as he did. He was concerned about the people in the countryside. The new leaders do not go out to the countryside to see what is happening, to see the needs of the farmworkers.
The greatest struggles have been made by the people themselves. We have representation because we ourselves have fought. As a people, we have united to fight. If there had been better communication from them, if they had been more united, if they had been closer to the people, it would be different, because many people are not well informed about what the union is.
As a member of the union, I think that many people would sign up because it is a huge benefit. And I think that it is not only for the benefit but also for the respect we win, because as farmworkers they look at us as third-class people—we smell bad, we don’t comb our hair, we don’t dress up. But people never think that sometimes we do not have time because the working day is long and sometimes it is far away to where we go to work and come back—and that is where the leaders need to go.
How are we going to help a farmworker who would like to work with a union contract but has not been able to do so. How are we going to provide information so that people can be informed—information that is easy to understand? Because many times they tell you things, but it’s like gibberish. They need to be clear about benefits, about what this will do for my future. Don’t give me gibberish that I cannot understand! Farmworkers need to be given the information as it should be; if it is truthful and effective, the farmworker will understand. When I finally recognized what the union was talking about and how it applied to me, I understood it and said, this is for me, this is for me. It is not only for me, it is also for my children because I am protected. If something happens to me, I am also protected. If those leaders just knew how to talk to peasants, all the peasants would have a contract.
WV: Could you give us your opinion on the contrast between what a farmworker earns and the wealth of the big corporations that do business in agricultural production?
I: You hit on a point I was just touching on yesterday when I was with my daughter. I have a daughter who was turning 29 yesterday, and when we were passing by an orange stand she asks about the bag of oranges, and she says it’s $14. Wow! And they are paying me $16 an hour. You can buy maybe three or four pounds of fruit with what they pay me per hour, but how many pounds did I pick in that hour? I work eight of those hours each day.
And I am not alone. We are hundreds of farmworkers, we are thousands of farmworkers, if not millions of farmworkers, who are doing this work. How do you think these companies got so rich? Whenever you turn around, you see that they have already built three or four new warehouses; they’ve set up another ranch. Because we peasants have the lowest poverty wages but the most work, so we survive; we don’t live, we survive with the wages they are paying us.
WV: The demands that farmworkers make during their workday, such as protection from the sun and rain, having fresh water available, toilets, medical assistance at the work site, are recurrent and usually ignored by the bosses and foremen. How have workers been dealing with these issues in the current times of environmental crisis and global warming? What do workers demand from the bosses to address this new reality of environmental crisis?
I: You know that we complain a lot about the bathrooms. Last year, when I was working in a company, I arrived early in the morning and I said, I am going to go to the bathroom. Because it was long, it was far away, it smelled bad and I told a comrade we need to complain to the rancher, the majordomo. I was going to tell the majordomo, but he was busy, and the contractor was free. So I asked him, “Hey, can’t you have the bathroom washed?” And most of us are women, I told him, it is very dirty. And why don’t they bring us fresh water; yesterday it was very hot and the shades don’t open. Meanwhile, the majordomos get vans with air conditioning! How is it possible? I can’t go to my car to waste my gas, because that’s what I use to get around.
I’m not going to lie to you: The majordomo really laid into me. But if the bathroom is really dirty, I didn’t think it was bad to tell the supervisor. Yes, he works for one company and I come from another one, but so what? As workers we should have this right. But he told me, “If you do it again, I will fire you!” And he called over two other coworkers and told them, “I want you to be witnesses that I am not harassing her.” So I told him, “Well, I am also recording you because you are threatening to fire me, and that is not right. I want shade, I want fresh water, and I want a clean bathroom. I think it is my right as a worker; I have the right to ask for it.”
It is very difficult for us as farmworkers, and even more so as women. The men can go in the field, but where can a woman go? Let us be adults—how can you ask people to take care of their hygiene in a filthy restroom? There are girls and old women who also go to work in the fields; they need shade, fresh water, and clean bathrooms.
How can you say, “I am not going to give you that” to a worker in high temperatures? It gets to 98 degrees, and I am still working. I can ask you for shade, I can ask you for fresh water—but the water is very hot. They tell us, “There is no ice; if you want to, then take it. And if you don’t take it, then don’t take it.”
We are not animals! That’s why people have died—because the water is bad, and it’s hot. We want something cool for the body, but the boss says take it or leave it. It is not right that these people act as if there were no laws. I mean, I get treated worse than I would treat my dogs. The dogs get brought inside when it’s this hot. You are treating me worse than an animal, and I am earning you money. Not only you, but also the person you are working for.
So we do have a lot of complaints, we have a lot of grievances against the climate conditions, especially now in hot weather because our rights are not respected and there are many companies that don’t have CAL/OSHA, but even for the ones that do, CAL/OSHA [California Division of Occupational Safety and Health] never comes. CAL/OSHA is never considered when it comes to hot weather, only when there is a complaint. But I wish that CAL/OSHA would do something about the conditions in the fields here in the Central Valley because here it’s as hot as it gets. I’m going to tell you—Madera to Bakersfield is about as hot as you can imagine. But CAL/OSHA doesn’t lift a finger unless you send them formal complaints, and if you send them complaints, they’ll go, “Well, is it really that hot?”
It is terrible because CAL/OSHA is supposed to be there to look out for us and to make sure we are respected, but at the end of the day we are fighting the majordomos and we have to fight CAL/OSHA too. So how do we do it? Who is going to help us? I know that Workers’ Voice is going to help us, so that people really realize that we are fighting for protection for the farmworker, because that is what is needed, especially in these times. We’ll see what CAL/OSHA does.
WV: What would you like to say to all the workers, students, intellectuals, and the general public who read this article about the challenges you face as farmworkers?
I: Yes, to the young people: You should study hard, but you also need to learn from the fields, to feel proud of their parents if their parents are peasants, to never deny where their parents come from, to on the contrary say with pride where your parents come from and where they work.
To the people of the city: I want you to feel something in your heart when you bite into an apple or a peach and throw it away. When you give your children a piece of fruit, you should remember where it comes from and think about how much was sacrificed for that grape, how much was sacrificed for that banana—because it’s not just the fresh fruits grown here, but also those that come from other countries.
For the other farmworkers: To raise their voices. If something is wrong, if you feel that you are not being listened to by the bosses, there are laws that protect us. And I hope that the bosses will be more conscious of the fact that these peasant hands are the ones that help them to move their companies forward, they are their wealth. Money is not the most important thing that they have. The most important thing that they have and that they do not value are the hands of the farmworkers, because without the hands of the farm workers these bosses have nothing.
This goes for [Governor Gavin] Newsom as well. He’s one of the biggest farm owners in the state. It’s not the boss that is grand; it is the peasant. It is the grandness of the farmworker’s heart that lets them continue to labor through the heat. That is the message I want to send.
