Guest Workers' Dreams Hit Realities in the Fields

Gustavo came to Manatee County, Fla. from Chiapas, Mexico, by bus with a duffel bag and a few American dollars.

He said he lived with nine men in a two-bedroom apartment and endured constant berating from a boss who agreed to pay an hourly wage but instead paid by the bucket.

But he didn't complain. Squeaky wheels, he said, were replaced.

His tale resembles that of many illegal immigrants who, without citizenship, work in this country without the protection of labor laws.

But Gustavo, who did not want his real name used, was not an illegal immigrant.

He was a guest worker, hired under a federal visa program that allows U.S. employers to bring in temporary workers from other countries.

Growers last year scrambled to take part in the program -- called H-2A -- for the agricultural industry because of a labor shortage that left crops rotting in the fields. With many immigrants working construction and other jobs, there weren't enough workers to harvest the crops.

But while the program allows growers to legally import foreign workers, advocates for the workers say there is little enforcement of the H-2A provisions: a guaranteed wage and housing.

And the workers say any complaints mean they will lose their jobs to those who will work for less.

"The supervisors around us will tell us, 'Why don't you just go back home? Don't make problems here. Just go quietly,'" Gustavo said.

"But we came here with a dream of getting ahead, to give our kids the tools to do better in life. That's the Mexican dream."

Bound by contract

The guest worker program for agricultural workers requires that growers pay H-2A workers $8.56 per hour. The growers must provide free housing and transportation to and from work. And they must reimburse workers for traveling expenses to the U.S. and back home once they have completed their contract.

The workers also are guaranteed a certain level of work: 30 hours of a 40-hour-per-week work schedule. If they are fired without cause before they hit that level, growers must pay out the remainder of the contract.

About 5,000 guest workers arrived in Florida within the past several months to work agricultural jobs, an increase of 500 percent from last year.

But things have changed dramatically since the time when labor was so scarce.

With the construction industry shedding jobs, many workers, including illegal immigrants, have come back to the fields. Those workers rarely work for an hourly wage.

Bob Spencer of West Coast Tomato in Palmetto employed Gustavo and about 30 other guest workers. He brought them in through a labor contractor. At least 10 of Spencer's guest workers took their complaints to an attorney, Alejandro Reyas.

Spencer and the guest workers have since reached an agreement over their work contract, and the workers are back in Mexico. Spencer, who didn't want to discuss the agreement, said the guest workers simply didn't work out.

"We have hundreds of people who work in the fields harvesting. You are going to have some people within those time periods who are unhappy and move on," Spencer said. "From time to time, you have a situation where the work situation does not pan out."

But the experiences of Gustavo and other workers demonstrates weaknesses in H-2A enforcement and recruitment.

The Labor Department has conducted some complaint-driven and sporadic investigations, but even with the unprecedented increase in participation, the agency has received no additional resources or staff.

The agency's budget for enforcement of H-2A is currently in limbo.

A handful of growers have sent H-2A workers packing, and more have threatened to follow suit, said Greg Schell, an attorney with the Florida Migrant Farm Worker Justice Project. Schell has interviewed more than 200 workers representing 20 farms statewide.

He said his investigations have shown that only one farm was paying the $8.56 per hour. Many farms were not reimbursing workers for travel expenses to come to this country.

Cutting hours, days

Some growers interviewed by the Herald-Tribune denied there had been any problems, saying that government oversight of H-2A is so intense that it precluded the kind of experiences that Gustavo and his co-workers described.

"There are so many government agencies we've got to answer to, there's no room for these types of shenanigans," said Quentin Roe, of William G. Roe & Sons Farms in Ruskin.

The guest workers tell a different story. Fifteen workers were interviewed for this story.

"First week, we worked normally. We were paid by the hour -- $8.56. The second week, we were paid by the bucket," said Miguel, a 24-year-old tomato picker, who also refused to give his real name for fear of retribution.

They said they were paid a per-bucket rate, about 45 cents per bucket, rather than the guaranteed hourly rate. On average, workers were paid half the amount specified in their contracts, they claimed.

"We asked why; they said, 'It was a mistake.' It would be straightened out next time," Miguel said.

"But it wasn't. That's when it all started -- the mistreatment. They started cutting our hours. They told us we were slow, and that we should just go home."

The workers said that hours and eventually days were cut from their work week. They said they were replaced by undocumented workers.

Complicated, expensive

The agriculture lobby is pushing for H-2A reform. One proposal would freeze the guest workers' pay at $7.69 an hour for three years. It would require that growers pay a housing allowance, rather than pay for housing.

Changes also would free growers from the written contract.

The existing system is too bureaucratic and expensive, say lobbyists for the agriculture industry.

"Anytime you have a regulation that runs 15 to 20 pages long in small print, and you need a booklet to explain it to you ... It's very, very complicated," said Walter Kates, labor relations director of the Florida Fruit and Vegetable Association. "The other problem you have is, three government agencies are involved in it."

The system is almost cost-prohibitive for some growers to use, and many growers still don't understand how it works, Kates said.

The financial penalty for growers who do not follow H-2A's rules is a fine of up to $1,000, plus the possibility of having to pay back wages.

"It's terribly expensive," Kates said. "There's a lot of ignorance out there. But the bottom line is that they have to pay the agreed-upon amount written into the contract."

With the elimination of the National Farmworker Jobs Program in 2004, oversight for the guest worker program has shifted to the U.S. Department of Labor and the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, which has hired 10 inspectors statewide. The Florida Department of Health monitors guest worker housing.

The Farmworker Jobs program had an annual budget of $81 million; the Labor Department's budget for enforcement of H-2A remains largely unsettled.

"The agency's FY 2007 budget request proposed an additional $6 million to finance new investigators," said spokesman Michael Wald.

"However, the FY 2007 appropriation bill has not passed, and the department is currently operating under a continuing resolution."

In his most recent State of the Union address, President Bush called for comprehensive immigration reform that would include a massive temporary worker program.

A logical model for that program might be the current guest worker program -- either H-2A or H-2B, a sister program that allows industries besides agriculture to hire foreign workers, but with a limited number of visas and much less government oversight.

"What is being proposed is a massive guest worker program," said Schell, the labor attorney. "The question is: Will it look like the H-2A program with some protections, or more like the H-2B program with no protections?"

Schell said he has yet to see a program that works well.

"There all types of reasons for this. Some are ignorance and some are guile," he said. "But I haven't seen one of these programs work right, where people are paid properly."