Imperial County Hungers for Jobs at Harvest Time : Agriculture: The lingering impact of a whitefly scourge has led to the state’s highest unemployment rate.
In agriculture-dominated Imperial County, which promotes itself as the nation’s winter salad bowl, it is the state unemployment office that usually trims its work force during the holiday harvest season.
But these days, the unemployment office in this border town is humming with activity--even in the middle of the night. That’s when employees open the lobby, which has come to serve as an impromptu shelter for hundreds of shivering farm laborers who huddle outside from 2 a.m. on, waiting in vain to make contact with farm foremen willing to offer backbreaking work picking lettuce or broccoli at the minimum wage.
“Sometimes you work one or two days a week, sometimes you don’t work at all,” muttered Aurelio Gonzalez, 53, a sad-faced father of three who wore two fraying sweat shirts under his red jacket. “This is seasonal work, but this is normally the right season to be working.”
Buffeted by the lingering impact of a devastating poinsettia whitefly infestation that began more than a year ago, Imperial County is facing its second consecutive winter of discontent.
With little economic diversification, the isolated county, which is roughly the size of Connecticut but has a population no larger than that of Pomona, lives and dies with the success of its agricultural harvest.
And in recent months, crop production has taken a nose dive, causing the unemployment rate to soar past the 30% mark--more than three times the statewide average in recession-racked California.
“We’ve never had unemployment this high this time of year,” said Angel Somera, manager of the state Employment Development Department offices in El Centro and Calexico. “We’re asking ourselves: ‘Is there an end in sight?’ ”
No question, the flat southeastern California county is traditionally burdened with the state’s highest unemployment rate and lowest average wages. But these days, the data is downright frightening.
In a region where more than 40 different varieties of vegetables are grown and packed, the food stamp caseload has jumped by 40% in the last two years. At this point, one of every five Imperial County residents is receiving government assistance to put food on the table.
“There is no real middle class here,” said county Administrative Officer Richard H. Inman.
Or as laid-off public schools groundskeeper Matt Torbett of Brawley put it as he stood in line at the unemployment office in El Centro: “The only jobs that are ever around are laboring for $5 an hour, unless you know a carpenter or something like that.”
Yet just as the county’s farm laborers exhibit unfettered perseverance each night, some county officials express unflagging confidence that an economic turnaround is within sight.
They pin their dreams largely on the anticipated implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement, which they say could either pull the county out of its negative cycle or plunge it even deeper into despair.
Once NAFTA takes effect, optimists theorize, Imperial County, which has a 66% Latino population, is likely to serve as a major transportation and distribution gateway between Mexico and the western United States. Ground is to be broken next summer, they emphasize, on a new $37-million border crossing that will allow for the inspection of 50 trucks at a time.
“Mexicali, besides being the capitol of Baja, is more industrialized and attractive than Tijuana,” said Bryce L. Birkman, executive director of the county’s Private Industry Council. “And our cost of land over here is much less than in the San Diego area.”
At the same time, other local officials worry that NAFTA could place further economic pressures on the region.
One key concern is the low wages in Mexico, which civic leaders fear could drive employers south, further crippling Imperial County’s strong agricultural and limited industrial base.
According to a recent Mexicali government commission report, the minimum wage for laborers in American-owned assembly plants on the Mexican side of the border is no more than $7 a day. Mexican farm workers are paid even less--$5 a day.
“Free trade could be a plus or a minus, no question about it,” said El Centro City Manager Abdel Salem.
With open borders, supply and demand is also a worry, particularly in the field of agriculture.
“The concern is, they’ll be shipping products in while our harvest is going on--causing a potential glut,” said Wes Bisgaard, president of the Imperial County Farm Bureau.
However, even in the face of the depressing unemployment and welfare figures, there are glimmers of hope.
As the paint peels on dusty storefronts in downtown Calexico and the county seat of El Centro, half a dozen major retail warehouse outlet stores have sprung up on the outskirts of the two communities. Both lie within 15 miles of Mexicali, which, with nearly a million residents, dwarfs Imperial County in population and is widely viewed as a potential gold mine.
Although the Mexican government recently clamped a $50 cap on merchandise its citizens can import from the United States without paying duty, parking lots in El Centro shopping centers remain packed with cars sporting yellow-and-green Baja California license plates.
Wal-Mart, which opened a Gargantuan store in El Centro less than two years ago, is preparing to open a second outlet next month in nearby Calexico, only three miles from the border.
“This is to position ourselves for free trade,” said Wal-Mart manager Ruben Beltran. “Whoever comes over, we’ll service them.”
Housing developers also still seem confident.
The construction market may have crashed in much of Southern California, but new developments continue to sprout next to alfalfa and sheep-grazing fields here. A single builder, Lewis Homes of California, is constructing eight housing developments in El Centro, Imperial, Brawley, Holtville and Calexico, where, with inexpensive land available, prices start as low as $76,000 for a small three-bedroom home.
In recent years, community leaders have attempted to diversify the job market by seeking out employers that other, more fortunate, counties would flatly reject. By far the largest job growth has come with the opening of a new state prison in what was formerly a lettuce field in tiny Calipatria, a few miles east of the desolate Salton Sea. The maximum-security facility employs 900.
In 1993, a second new state prison is scheduled to open in Seeley, a few miles west of El Centro.
But in an otherwise desert-like region blessed with an ample supply of inexpensive imported water from the Colorado River, the economy continues to turn on farm production.
As the saying here goes, when a farmer sneezes, the entire county catches cold. Farming affects virtually every aspect of Imperial County’s economy, from harvesting to packing and trucking. And at the height of the 1991 whitefly invasion, which inflicted more than $120 million in damage to crops, the county’s unemployment rate soared to 24.1%.
In recent months, farmers kept thousands of acres of fertile fields fallow to help stem the outbreak. Fewer than 100 acres of melons were planted in the fall, compared to the usual 15,000 acres.
Growers also worked cooperatively to plow under their land as soon as harvesting was complete in order to bury remaining vegetation attractive to the whitefly.
The moves appear to have considerably reduced the population of the pesticide-resistant insect, officials say. Cold winter weather, it is hoped, will kill off most of the remaining invaders.
“I would not say the whitefly is under control, but we’ve put up a good defense,” said third-generation Imperial County farmer John Pierre Menvielle, who chairs the county’s Whitefly Management Committee.
Still, with fewer crops planted, the county unemployment rate has shot past 30%, by far the highest rate in California and possibly the highest of any county in the nation, according to state employment officials.
What’s more, such statistics do not account for Mexicali residents who have been working legally in the United States for years and thus qualify for unemployment benefits when laid off from jobs in Imperial County. Factoring in those now collecting state unemployment checks who make their homes south of the border--some because they can no longer afford rents that begin at $350 a month in the El Centro area--more than 40% of Imperial County’s work force is without jobs, according to Somera.
To further exacerbate conditions, Holtville farming giant Mario Saikhon, who employed more than 2,000 people, is currently behind bars instead of aboard his tractor, sentenced last September to a 6 1/2-year federal prison term on tax evasion and bribery charges. Saikhon was also forced to pay more than $23 million in back taxes and fines stemming from charges that he bribed an Internal Revenue Service agent for $647,000 to evade more than $10 million in taxes.
Most of Saikhon’s land has since been leased to other farmers, who in turn employ farm laborers. But Saikhon shut down large portions of his packing and cooling operations in Holtville, population 5,100.
Holtville’s city government is now teetering on the brink of insolvency. Local businesses have also been hit hard.
“It’s hurt,” said Alex Silva, manager of the Imperial Stores outlet in downtown Holtville. “They (Saikhon’s enterprises) used to buy their hardware and fittings here.”
As Christmas approaches, an air of uncertainty hovers over main streets and lettuce fields.
Even leaders of the El Centro Optimists Club must strain to take an upbeat view of the county’s short-term prospects.
“It’s never stayed this way forever,” declared club President Steve R. Knell, engineering services supervisor for the Imperial Irrigation District, before one of the group’s weekly luncheons. “Historically, everything has to turn around.”
Farmers, for their part, express guarded confidence that the winter harvest, which is just beginning, will prove bountiful. Most planted their winter vegetables later in the year than usual to avoid the whitefly, and they report that their crops look healthy.
Nevertheless, their outlook is tempered with the knowledge that more than 20% of their acreage remains fallow.
“Jobs are real scarce,” said Menvielle, who exhibited his own caution by planting onions for seed rather than vegetables. “Growers are having to cut back to stay alive.
“We’re all getting conservative. It’s a shoestring operation. Back to basics. No more frills.”
Farm workers, meanwhile, are not sure what to think.
Some talk of moving north to look for jobs in the Napa Valley. Others say they are crossing their fingers and hoping the winter harvest will finally provide them with work. Most say they are trying to break the generational cycle by encouraging their children to stay in school so they can find a better way of earning a living.
On a recent morning between 3 and 6 a.m., 2,000 laborers stopped by the Calexico state unemployment office for an annual state government and Chamber of Commerce-sponsored Christmas farm workers’ breakfast.
There, they feasted on tamales and testimonials.
“When the rest of us are comfortably asleep each night, literally thousands of people are looking for honest work,” said state Employment Development Department Director Thomas P. Nagle, who flew down from Sacramento.
“Every morning it’s a new job search, and there’s no security,” continued Nagle, over the blare of a mariachi band. “(The average citizen doesn’t realize) what it takes to get food to the table at such a reasonable cost.”
Outside, two creaky white buses sat idling in the chilly mist as labor contractors picked up a handful of workers to cut lettuce at $4.50 an hour on farms from Holtville to Yuma, Ariz.
By dawn, however, most of those involved in the nightly job search were trudging back to their homes in Calexico or across the border.
“Maybe things will soon get a little bit better,” said out-of-work farm laborer Andrea Rodriguez, 63, as she stood inside the unemployment office. But not that morning, added the Mexicali resident, who was wearing a “Life’s a Beach” sweat shirt.
“There are just too many people without jobs,” sighed the short, soft-spoken Rodriguez, who supports two children. At that, she turned toward the door to return home, a plate of lukewarm tamales in her hand.
Hard Times in Imperial County
America’s “winter salad bowl,” as Imperial County likes to call itself, is wilting under the weight of an unemployment rate that exceeds 30%, the highest in California. One in five residents is on food stamps, and farm workers who legally cross the border from Mexico to seek seasonal agricultural work are finding jobs scarce this year.
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Soaring Unemployment
Here is a comparison of Imperial County’s monthly unemployment percentage to that of the Southern California area that includes Imperial, Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino and Ventura counties starting in September, 1991.
Source: Sothern California Assn. of Governments
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A Bulging Food Stamp Program
From September, 1990, to September, 1992, the dollar amount issued in food stamps in Imperial County rose by 89%.
1990 1991 1992 % GROWTH Cases 4,639 6,338 6,936 50 Recipients 16,032 19,745 23,069 44 Stamps $632,131 $913,601 $1,192,908 89
Source: Imperial County Department of Social Services
