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Crystal Guzman is a student at College of the Atlantic.
In the United States, bringing guest workers from other countries to work agricultural jobs is nothing new. In 1942, The Bracero Program was born out of worry about labor shortages in low-paying agricultural jobs during World War II. As a solution, a series of bi-lateral agreements between the United States and Mexico gave millions of Mexican men short-term agricultural labor contracts. Rather than confronting the deeper problem of the stressful working conditions and low wages, the band-aid solution was to bring willing workers from Mexico. From 1942 until the end of the program in 1964, workers signed 4.6 million contracts. More often than not, the work was incredibly strenuous, with workers facing exploitation and racial discrimination while growers profited from the endless supply of cheap labor.
Here in Maine, the agricultural season has begun, and migrant workers are arriving to work on farms across the state as part of the H-2A program.
The H-2A Temporary Agricultural Workers Program is another guest worker program that is incredibly similar to the Bracero Program. The H-2A program allows employers to hire workers from other countries (primarily Mexico) to work temporary or seasonal agricultural jobs as long as the employer can certify they were not able to find U.S. workers to complete the work and that hiring guest workers will not harm the wages and working conditions of workers in the United States. While there are protections in place to avoid exploitative practices within the program, the employers still hold much power over the guest workers. H-2A visas are restricted to one employer, meaning the employer holds all bargaining power as they decide whether the worker can stay in the United States, which workers can come to the United States, and whether the worker can continue to come to the U.S. in the future.
Centro de los Derechos del Migrante (Center for Migrant Rights), an organization that provides migrant workers legal, educational, and policy resources, completed a study in which 100 H-2A guest workers were interviewed to learn more about their lives as braceros. Authors found reports of wage theft, sexual harassment, discrimination, and health and safety violations by their employers.
Whether it be The Bracero Program or the H-2A visa program, there is a cycle of severely mistreating migrant workers at the expense of bountiful, cheap labor. Besides issues of maltreatment, there is the more systemic problem of farms feeling pressure to scale up and produce more, which leads to the need for more labor. The prevalence of exploitation in agricultural labor, while disheartening, is not surprising given the fact that farmworkers were left out of the Fair Labor Standards Act and the National Labor Relations Act passed in the 1930s. The exclusion of farmworkers displays the deep-seated racism as farmworkers at the time of the New Deal were primarily African-American, and Southern congressman wanted to protect the plantation system run in the South.
In Maine, there have been attempts by state representative Thom Harnett to correct some of these wrongs through two bills he fought to get approved. One bill would have allowed farmworkers in Maine to organize for the purpose of collective bargaining, and the other would have made agricultural employees subject to state wage and hour laws, meaning workers would be covered by state minimum wage requirements and would be paid overtime as employees in other sectors are. Unfortunately, neither bill became law. These bills could have been concrete steps toward better protecting migrant farmworkers in Maine, but there is still much work to do.
As the people that supply invaluable labor and help Maine farmers grow food, migrant farmworkers deserve the rights and protections that every other job receives.
