Cherie Berry: Quit Breaking Our Hearts!

Send a “Broken Heart” Valentine to the NC Department of Labor Today!Let Commissioner Berry know she's breaking your heart with this ready-to-print valentine!

This Valentine’s Day, send a valentine to Labor Commissioner Cherie Berry showing your support for farmworkers and their families, and demanding that department officials take their job of protecting ALL workers in our state seriously. Sending a valentine is easy, fun, and meaningful! Here’s how!

Step 1: Make a valentine for Commissioner Berry-either by printing out the pre-made valentine here with your name included, or making your own. Scroll down for sample language and background about the Harvest of Dignity campaign messages.

Step 2: Take a picture of your creation and email it to harvestofdignity@gmail.com so that campaign organizers can share and count the cards! You also may want to show off your valentine on FAN’s facebook page.

Step 3: Mail your valentine to:

Labor Commissioner Berry

1101 Mail Service Center

Raleigh, NC 27699-1101

Step 4:  Send this action alert to friends and family, or have a Valentine’s Day party to make cards together. When spreading the word about this action opportunity, inform people about the Harvest of Dignity Campaign and the invitation to stay involved through email action alerts, events, and other opportunities in support of farmworkers.

More about your message:

We want to tell Cherie Berry that she is “breaking our heart” this Valentine’s Day with her department’s responses that fall shockingly short of addressing the concerns about enforcement of farmworker protections raised by farmworker advocates. For example, the agency brushed off an official complaint (CASPA) filed by NC attorneys with the US Department of Labor last year that cites the NCDOL’s failings.

And more recently, when concerned members of the public mailed Christmas cards to Berry’s office asking for serious examination of farmworker hazards in the fields, all they received in return was a generic letter stating that the department "is committed to enforcing the[law]", which contradicts the department's record of routinely neglecting to enforce it.

We believe the NCDOL should do more than that--lives depend on it. Read more about the NCDOL's patterns of inconsistent record-keeping and classification of law violations, 100% downward negotiation of fines, and failure to inspect the worst migrant camps here : Background and Facts.

Día de los Muertos Video

Check out this new video from our Nov. 1 Día de los Muertos event:

Our Addiction to Cheap Farm Labor

Raleigh News & Observer
By Chris Liu-Beers, NC Council Of Churches

Immigrant farmworkers picking sweet potato

As we enter this holiday season of feasting, we need to be honest about how our food is produced. America has always relied on cheap labor to make agriculture work.

The source of much of that labor used to be slave ships making the Middle Passage. Today it’s no longer slaves but immigrant workers, primarily undocumented people from Mexico and Latin America, whose cheap labor makes possible both low prices at the grocery store and high profits for agribusinesses.

Farmworkers don’t often make the news. Even though 85% of fruits and vegetables are still harvested by hand, farmworkers and their families remain largely invisible to our society. We don’t like to think too much about who is doing the dirty work.

But recently farmers and farmworkers in Georgia and Alabama have made national headlines as labor shortages have forced us to pay attention. Crops are rotting on the vine and growers are staring at huge losses, unsure of how to move forward without a reliable pool of cheap labor.

Why Georgia and Alabama? Both states recently passed harsh new immigration laws designed to crackdown on undocumented immigrants. Proponents said the new laws would open up thousands of jobs for legal residents, especially on farms.

But with average annual salaries of $11,000, 14-hour days in the heat of summer, and shockingly unsafe working conditions, do you think U.S. citizens are rushing to fill these jobs?

The new hit NBC show Rock Center recently highlighted the labor shortage on Alabama’s farms:

We met Jess Montez Durr, who was picking tomatoes on the Jenkins tomato farm on Chandler Mountain in northern Alabama. Durr said he’d stick with this as long as he could, but he preferred his previous job as a dishwasher at Applebee’s. “The work was a whole lot more easier than this,” he said. Since our visit, he and the other American workers have quit.

Consumers, growers, politicians, we’re all caught up in this bind. We want cheap labor and cheap food, but it turns out we don’t really want the people who make it all possible – and all the “inconveniences” of educating children or protecting workers. On our farms we’ve always relied on marginalized and vulnerable workers to do backbreaking manual labor, and now we’re pretending that they are the problem. With these new state laws we’re criminalizing them, telling them that their help is no longer wanted. So they’re leaving.

In Georgia, Gov. Deal suggested that ex-cons should do the work. But it turns out even this population can turn down jobs that are “unsuitable,” and most have. It seems that the few who tried often didn’t last a day in the fields.

So how do we move forward? The solution is not to find yet another vulnerable population to exploit in the fields. Instead, we need to end our addiction to cheap labor.

To start, farmworkers should have the same protections and safety standards as other industries. Despite the passage of the 1935 Fair Labor Standards Act, farmworkers – many of whom were African-American sharecroppers at the time – were excluded from many of its provisions. Decades later, farmworkers are still fighting for the most basic protections that other workers have, like overtime and child labor laws.

Farmworkers should have legal status, too. We all benefit when workers are on a level playing field. Honest employers who obey the laws would no longer be at a competitive disadvantage against unscrupulous employers who take advantage of undocumented workers. At the same time, workers would be able to leave bad jobs and complain about unsafe conditions without fear of being deported.

Finally, farmworkers should earn more than poverty wages. A study of migrant workers in Eastern NC found that nearly half don’t have enough food to feed their families year-round. But if farm wages were to rise by 40 percent, each seasonal farmworker would be lifted above the federal poverty line. The total cost to consumers? About $15 more per household per year. (Check out “Room for Debate” at the NY Times for more on this.)

In a down economy with high unemployment, it’s no surprise when politicians heap blame on the most vulnerable populations, like undocumented farmworkers. But the hard truth these politicians won’t admit is that farmworkers didn’t steal our jobs. We invited them. We needed their cheap, reliable labor and we were content when times were good and workers didn’t complain.

Now that we’re criminalizing undocumented workers in unprecedented ways, we’re merely reaping what we sowed. We have no one to blame but ourselves.

Click here to read this editorial at the Raleigh News & Observer.

Indy Weekly Notes Appalling Conditions in NC Fields

Earlier this month, the Independent Weekly did a feature-length story on farmworker conditions, especially in North Carolina’s tobacco fields. With the insight of a new report issued jointly by the Farm Labor Organizing Committee and Oxfam America, the public is learning more and more about the deplorable conditions in the fields that make possible huge agribusiness profits. Here’s an excerpt from the article:

We found shocking pieces in all of those different categories. We've seen some pretty bad conditions, but this was the first time that we were able to really take an in-depth, personal look and hear from the workers in a very detailed way about a lot of the abuses," says FLOC representative Briana Connors, who helped write the report and conduct 86 farmworker interviews.

In another Wilson County camp, I spoke with a group of teenage workers from Guatemala. The young men opened a flimsy wooden door to reveal a cramped, flea-infested space with unfinished particleboard flooring and old mattresses void of sheets, bedding or pillows, their corners black with mold. According to the report, when some workers complained about bedbugs, their growers allegedly told them to buy Clorox and bleach their mattresses, or to spray the mattresses, and themselves, with Raid.

Similar complaints were filed with the North Carolina Department of Labor (DOL), according to farmworker accounts in the report, which stated the agency initially investigated them but did not follow up.

Continue reading the story and download the report here. You can also learn more about a recent complaint filed against the NCDOL for not enforcing existing laws on the books that are meant to protect farmworkers.

Farmworker Conditions Make National Headlines

NBC News recently ran a national story that highlights the poor living and working conditions that farmworkers face here in North Carolina. From the report:

WILSON, N.C. – The lines on Celdin’s face and the dim look in his eyes make him seem at least 10 years older than his age, 53. They reflect the 12 long years the undocumented migrant worker from Honduras has spent laboring in the fields of North Carolina and doing construction in the United States.

"Kneeling down is hard on my knees," Celdin said in a tired voice as he showed off the inflatable bed that he keeps on the floor. "But it sure beats getting devoured by bed bugs." He says he saved up to buy the plastic mattress that helps keep the insects away.

He wouldn't begin to describe the bathroom conditions at the labor camp in Wilson, N.C., that he shares with dozens of other workers. He wanted me to see it for myself. 

Walking in, one is immediately hit by a dreadful stench coming from a small garbage can on the floor that’s overflowing with used pieces of toilet paper. At the end of the room stand three showerheads with no curtains, and to the left, three toilets side by side, but without stalls or panels to provide workers any privacy.

Continue reading here.

Help put an end to these dehumanizing conditions - get involved in the Harvest of Dignity campaign today.

Farmworkers and Human Trafficking

Legal Aid of NC’s Caitlin Ryland was featured in a recent WRAL Investigates story about human trafficking. The news story shines a spotlight on the disturbing ways that traffickers abuse individuals: 

Caitlin Ryland, an attorney with Legal Aid of North Carolina, says human trafficking does not always involve the sex trade. Some people are forced to perform other labor, such a farm work.

“Essentially, individuals are held somewhere against their will, and through force, fraud or coercion are forced to perform a commercial sex act or do labor,” Ryland said.

“Human trafficking is real, it’s here, it’s in North Carolina,” she added.

Douglas Coasey says he has worked on three farms in North Carolina and lived in labor camps where workers slept on the floor or in unsanitary beds with bed bugs. They also lived with leaky roofs and had rudimentary bathroom facilities and little access to food. The camps are often deep in the woods where workers are isolated and have no transportation to leave.

“They promise you these different things, but you don’t ever get it,” he said. “You end up sleeping on the floor. You end up taking a bath outside in the woods because of the crowdedness.”

Coasey says he finally left farm work last year and went into construction. He snuck away when his boss left the farm and was able to call a friend to help him escape from the camp.

Click here to watch the report:

Several years ago, there was another high-profile trafficking case involving workers from Thailand who were forced to do farm labor in North Carolina. CNN has the report here:

These horrific stories remind us that farmworkers are often extremely vulnerable to abuse. In many cases, workers are isolated and rely completely on their employer for every aspect of their livelihood, including access to food, transportation, and medical care.

Farmworkers, like all people, deserve safe places to live and work. Be part of the solution – join the Harvest of Dignity campaign today.

Thank You!

Thanks to everyone who made our Día de los Muertos celebration a big success. Thanks especially to Dos Taquitos Centro, our speakers, FAN members and allies, and the elected officials who attended.

News accounts were published by the Associated Press, EFE (in Spanish), and others.

We'll have lots of pictures and video up soon. In the meantime, here's a short video of the daytime press conference:

Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) Celebrations

Tuesday, November 1
6:00pm - 9:00pm

Dos Taquitos Centro
106 S. Wilmington Street
Raleigh, NC 27601 

Please join us to honor and celebrate the lives of farmworkers and farmworker children who have died while working in the fields.

Day of the Dead (Día de los Muertos) is a Mexican holiday and celebration that takes place on November 1st and 2nd, in connection with the Catholic holidays of All Saints day and All Souls’ Day.

Traditions connected with the holiday include building private altars honoring the deceased using sugar skulls, marigolds, and the favorite foods and beverages of the departed and visiting graves with these as gifts.

Info, RSVP, comment on Facebook here.

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If you cannot make it to the party in Raleigh, we'd like to invite you to host your own Día de los Muertos celebration at your home, church, or community center. Please let us know if you're hosting a party and we'll help make sure you have everything you need to make it a success.

Here's a packet with ideas for how to make this work:

Host a Day of the Dead Celebration
North Carolina Farmworker Obituaries