Dick Meister
March 15, 2007
Copyright © 2007 Dick Meister, a San Francisco-based freelance columnist and co-author of A Long Time Coming: The Struggle to Unionize America's Farm Workers .Contact him through his website, www.dickmeister.com.
Thousands of the farmworkers who have helped make California the country’s leading provider of fruits and vegetables desperately need federal aid. The governor, the state’s senators and many others agree, yet President Bush continues to ignore their urgent pleas.
The workers are victims of a devastating cold wave that struck in January, plunging temperatures to the low 20s in an area ranging from the Mexican border up though central California. It destroyed at least half the citrus crop and did great harm to several other crops. Damage amounted to more than $1 billion.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture was quick to offer help to growers by designating 18 counties as “disaster areas.” That made the 3,500 growers in those hardest hit locations eligible for low-interest loans of up to $500,000 each, providing they’d lost at least 30 percent of their crop and could not get loans from private sources or, presumably, crop insurance payments.
There hasn’t been much federal help, however, for the estimated 12,500 grower employees—5,000 harvesters and 7,500 packing house workers—who’ve been affected. Many have been jobless or working only part-time since January and they aren’t likely to find much more work—if any—until the fall harvests begin in October.
In the meantime, they have little to live on. Farmworker pay is so low that few have savings to tide them over. Lacking steady work, they must rely on government aid and private charity to help them feed, clothe and house their families and cover other essentials.
Citrus worker Guadalupe Florez, a widow and mother of three cited by the United Farm Workers union as typical of those needing help, said she’s “started to look for work but there aren’t any jobs. All we know is field work and there aren’t any oranges to pick, sort or pack. I can get $118 every two weeks from unemployment benefits but it is not nearly enough to cover my $742 mortgage and the $250 in monthly gas and electric bills.”
California’s state government has helped with unemployment insurance payments and nearly $6 million in grants to individual workers and county-run food banks. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger also has authorized local governments to help workers meet their housing costs by tapping into $85 million in federal housing funds previously granted the state for its discretionary use.
Farmworkers can apply for that aid and other help such as health care and job counseling at “one-stop centers” the state has set up in farming areas. Many of the needy workers are undocumented immigrants and thus not eligible for government aid, but non-governmental groups have moved in to help them as well as domestic workers.
Service clubs, churches and others have contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to food banks, and utility companies have reduced their rates in some farming areas. The United Farm Workers has launched a major campaign to spread word of the workers’ plight throughout the country, is widely soliciting donations of food and money, and is helping communities organize to take effective action. The UFW calculates that $32.5 million will be needed just to cover the workers’ basic living costs—$500 a month for at least 10 months for 6,500 households.
But the state and the UFW and other private groups can’t possibly meet the enormous need by themselves. The federal government must step in, as Gov. Schwarzenegger emphatically told his fellow Republican in the White House. He urged President Bush in February to formally declare 31 of California’s 58 counties “disaster areas” in order to qualify them for federal aid.
Bush has not responded to the governor, at least not publicly. Nor has he responded to a similar request from California’s two Democratic senators, Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer. They cited “a critical need for federal relief" in a letter to the President this month.
Jim Franklin, pastor of the Cornerstone Church in Fresno, which recently delivered 8,000 boxes filled with a week’s groceries to displaced citrus workers, thinks providing such help is the very least that can and should be done.
“These people have fed us through agriculture for so many years,” he notes. “Now it is time to feed them.”
Certainly they deserve that, and more. As the San Francisco Chronicle noted, “They are part of an economically marginal population that helps drive the state’s economy, and allows consumers to buy fruit and vegetables at an enviably low cost.”
March 15, 2007
Copyright © 2007 Dick Meister, a San Francisco-based freelance columnist and co-author of A Long Time Coming: The Struggle to Unionize America's Farm Workers .Contact him through his website, www.dickmeister.com.
Thousands of the farmworkers who have helped make California the country’s leading provider of fruits and vegetables desperately need federal aid. The governor, the state’s senators and many others agree, yet President Bush continues to ignore their urgent pleas.
The workers are victims of a devastating cold wave that struck in January, plunging temperatures to the low 20s in an area ranging from the Mexican border up though central California. It destroyed at least half the citrus crop and did great harm to several other crops. Damage amounted to more than $1 billion.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture was quick to offer help to growers by designating 18 counties as “disaster areas.” That made the 3,500 growers in those hardest hit locations eligible for low-interest loans of up to $500,000 each, providing they’d lost at least 30 percent of their crop and could not get loans from private sources or, presumably, crop insurance payments.
There hasn’t been much federal help, however, for the estimated 12,500 grower employees—5,000 harvesters and 7,500 packing house workers—who’ve been affected. Many have been jobless or working only part-time since January and they aren’t likely to find much more work—if any—until the fall harvests begin in October.
In the meantime, they have little to live on. Farmworker pay is so low that few have savings to tide them over. Lacking steady work, they must rely on government aid and private charity to help them feed, clothe and house their families and cover other essentials.
Citrus worker Guadalupe Florez, a widow and mother of three cited by the United Farm Workers union as typical of those needing help, said she’s “started to look for work but there aren’t any jobs. All we know is field work and there aren’t any oranges to pick, sort or pack. I can get $118 every two weeks from unemployment benefits but it is not nearly enough to cover my $742 mortgage and the $250 in monthly gas and electric bills.”
California’s state government has helped with unemployment insurance payments and nearly $6 million in grants to individual workers and county-run food banks. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger also has authorized local governments to help workers meet their housing costs by tapping into $85 million in federal housing funds previously granted the state for its discretionary use.
Farmworkers can apply for that aid and other help such as health care and job counseling at “one-stop centers” the state has set up in farming areas. Many of the needy workers are undocumented immigrants and thus not eligible for government aid, but non-governmental groups have moved in to help them as well as domestic workers.
Service clubs, churches and others have contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to food banks, and utility companies have reduced their rates in some farming areas. The United Farm Workers has launched a major campaign to spread word of the workers’ plight throughout the country, is widely soliciting donations of food and money, and is helping communities organize to take effective action. The UFW calculates that $32.5 million will be needed just to cover the workers’ basic living costs—$500 a month for at least 10 months for 6,500 households.
But the state and the UFW and other private groups can’t possibly meet the enormous need by themselves. The federal government must step in, as Gov. Schwarzenegger emphatically told his fellow Republican in the White House. He urged President Bush in February to formally declare 31 of California’s 58 counties “disaster areas” in order to qualify them for federal aid.
Bush has not responded to the governor, at least not publicly. Nor has he responded to a similar request from California’s two Democratic senators, Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer. They cited “a critical need for federal relief" in a letter to the President this month.
Jim Franklin, pastor of the Cornerstone Church in Fresno, which recently delivered 8,000 boxes filled with a week’s groceries to displaced citrus workers, thinks providing such help is the very least that can and should be done.
“These people have fed us through agriculture for so many years,” he notes. “Now it is time to feed them.”
Certainly they deserve that, and more. As the San Francisco Chronicle noted, “They are part of an economically marginal population that helps drive the state’s economy, and allows consumers to buy fruit and vegetables at an enviably low cost.”
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