Rural Laws: October, 2002 - Number #9

In the Allagash Wilderness Waterway, a remote part of Maine, 14 Honduran and Guatemalan workers died in September 2002 when the van driven by their crew foreman went off a bridge on a private road into the water. The work place was 2.5 hours each way from where the men lived, and the men paid $84 a week to ride in the van. The Liberty Mutual Group, the insurance company, said it would pay up to $150,000 in death benefits, reflecting 80 percent of the worker's after-tax average weekly wage, for a period of up to 500 weeks.

Private contributions raised almost $80,000 for the families of the workers in the month after the accident.

The men, some of whom had been returning to Maine for five years on six-month H-2B visas, were employed by Evergreen Forestry Services of Idaho to thin trees for $75 an acre, cutting brush with circular saw weed whackers so that trees grow faster. They were guaranteed the prevailing wage of $8.27 an hour to plant trees and $10.13 an hour to clear brush and thin woodlands. Evergreen had 340 of Maine's 5,800 H-2B workers in 2002.

After the accident, the Forest Resources Association said that its members would explore ways to provide housing in the woods where H-2B workers were employed to reduce lengthy commutes. Some suggested providing housing in RVs, since the workers move around doing forestry work. Unlike H-2A farm workers, H-2B nonfarm workers do not have to be provided with housing by their employers.

Use of H-2B workers has been increasing. There is an annual limit of 66,000 H-2B visas that can be issued, and the forestry, hospitality and construction industries may request more than 66,000 H-2Bs in 2002.

Maine hires migrant farm workers: Down East in the blueberry barrens; in the western hills of Maine to pick apples; in Cumberland County to pick strawberries; and in northern Maine, where they pick broccoli. Juan Perez-Febles of the Maine Department of Labor says that the state has a peak 8,000 migrant and foreign workers, including foreign workers employed as H-2B workers in nonfarm service industries. According to the Maine DOL, most farmers supply their migrant workers with housing and transportation to and from work.

New York. In September 2002, Farmworker Legal Services sued a contractor in federal court, accusing the FLC of enslaving up to 500 workers in Kendall and Albion in Orleans and Genesee counties. Also named in the suit were the 10 farmers where these workers worked. The workers were allegedly charged $1,000 each to get to western New York, and then forced to live in substandard housing and paid less than the minimum wage. The US Attorney said that the contractor, Maria Garcia-Botello, was the first person to be charged with "forced labor" crimes under the federal Victims of Trafficking and Violence Prevention Act of 2000.

Gary B. Fitch, executive director of Agricultural Affiliates, said that the farmers knew nothing about the debt peonage; the case is scheduled to go to trial in November 2002.

Apple pickers in Western New York pick apples into 20-bushel bins that are about 4 feet by 4 feet by 2 1/2 feet; most report earning $7.50 an hour. Growers say that they received about $25 a bin for apples in Fall 2002, but their production costs are $30 to $35 a bin.

Long Island, which attracted thousands of migrants in the 1940s and 1950s to harvest and sort potatoes grown on 45,000 acres, today has fewer than 4,000 acres of potatoes. Suffock county has the highest farm sales in New York, but the major crops are grapes, apples, peaches, and berries, as well as nurseries and greenhouses. The 950 farm workers in the county in September 2002 were primarily immigrants from Central and South America.

Almost all Suffock county migrants live in housing on the farms where they work, and some are attracted to the area by the health care benefits provided by the county. Javier Feliciano, outreach worker for the Riverhead Health Center, said "We don't care if a person is here legally or illegally. As long as you are a migrant worker, your dental, medical and prescription coverage will be paid for."

In Massachusetts, six migrant workers-- five from Puerto Rico and one from Arizona- sued 950-acre Weston Nurseries Inc. of Hopkinton in August 2002. The workers allege that they were promised $8.17 an hour but paid only $7.68 an hour, and that promises made at the time of recruitment were not kept at the work place.

In the Western Massachusetts city of Agawam, C & E Tobacco Inc, which has 42 acres of tobacco, tried to build a 2,800 square foot dormitory for 27 H-2A workers on their land, and were rebuffed by the local government after neighbors complained. The workers, who are paid at least $7.94 an hour, are currently housed about an hour away in CT, and C & E wanted to expand production have reduce the commute.