A Growing Influence : With Decline of UFW, Labor Contractors Have Become a Powerful, and Sometimes Abusive, Link in Food Chain

The hunt for work begins while the barrio is still dark.

Drawn by the hope of a day’s pay, farm workers collect in a poor pocket of Oxnard hours before first light bleeds into the sky--a scene played out daily at hiring sites throughout the state.

This is low tide in the agricultural cycle, the off-season where the working poor jam the streets to scrape the bottom of a shrinking job pool. Hundreds of laborers have joined the hunt by the time the labor contractors arrive.

In their dented pickups and old vans, the contractors are the mightiest men in the barrio for the moment.

They are the middlemen hired by growers to round up laborers and deliver them to the fields; labor brokers with a reputation, if not a history, of mistreating their clients.

In exchange for jobs, some workers say they are forced by contractors looking to pad their profits to hand over a cut of their wages or pay for rides to the fields. Short-handled tools, outlawed decades ago because they cause crippling back injuries, remain in the arsenal of some contractors.

One laborer, at the center of a swarm of job-seekers in Oxnard on a recent morning, said he has been made to stoop long hours under a blistering sun without access to a toilet or drinking water.

“This is like slavery,” he said. “They control the jobs. They decide who eats and who goes hungry.”

California’s $18-billion farm industry has become dominated by independent contractors. No one is sure how many there are, but more than 1,000 are licensed statewide and many more wield power without official blessing.

As the influence of the United Farm Workers union has eroded over the years, labor contractors have become the workers’ primary representative in the fields, a lifeline between growers and job-seekers.

Hired on a crop-by-crop basis, contractors are responsible for paying wages, providing unemployment and workers compensation insurance, and supplying toilets, drinking water and other provisions in the fields.

Farm worker advocates estimate that one-third to one-half of California’s field hands find work through labor contractors, although grower representatives believe the numbers to be much lower.

“The picture is not really as bleak as people have shown,” said Ralph De Leon, a Ventura County contractor and an adviser to Gov. Pete Wilson’s Farm Worker Services Coordinating Council. “I’m not denying there are abuses. But there are only a few contractors who are violating the law simply because they can get away with it.”

But farm workers and their advocates view the rise of the labor contractor system as a dangerous trend that reverses the progress made by field workers in past decades.

Most contractors pay less than growers and offer few benefits and little job security. Some, despite repeated labor law violations, are allowed to operate with impunity, advocates contend.

Although government regulators, farm worker advocates and labor contractor representatives argue about the extent of problems, they agree that the industry is under fire and in line for reform.

It is a growing industry, monitored by state and federal agencies stretched thin by shrinking budgets.

The California Institute for Rural Studies, in a report released this month, cited serious flaws in labor contractor registration, licensing and tax reporting. The report concluded that government regulators were virtually powerless to crack down on the system.

“Farm labor contractors are responsible for the employment and safety of thousands of workers, but the state imposes a tougher licensing exam for real estate brokers and more rigorous standards for pest control licenses,” said Don Villarejo, executive director of the Davis-based institute.

State and federal officials concede that scores of violations have gone unpunished and uncorrected, but they say enforcement is on the rise.

A new statewide effort to crack down on labor violations already has helped rein in unscrupulous contractors, state Labor Commissioner Victoria Bradshaw says. The joint enforcement and educational program, started late last year partly in response to criticism that the state’s agriculture industry was riddled with abuses, has issued hundreds of citations and assessed nearly $4 million in fines.

In the first nine months of this year, the task force conducted 624 agricultural inspections, compared with 178 in 1991. Inspectors issued 267 citations, compared with 26 in 1991.

Despite those efforts, farm worker advocates blast the task force as a public relations ploy designed to polish the state’s tarnished image and too weak to scare contractors into compliance.

In Fresno last month, union officials squared off against farm bureau representatives over a federal bill that would make farmers liable for labor law violations even if they use farm labor contractors as middlemen.

Assemblyman Phillip Isenberg (D-Sacramento) is the author of a bill in the state Legislature that would do the same thing.

“For over a decade, the state of California and the federal government have refused to enforce laws in the fields,” Isenberg said. “That is the shame, the irony and the sin of the way America has treated farm workers.”

Once, the vast majority of farm workers were hired directly by growers. But, over the years, an increasing number of farm operations have employed independent contractors to escape the headache and the liability of hiring workers.

That rise also can be attributed in part to the decline of a unionized work force, growers and labor organizers agree.

In the 1970s, the United Farm Workers union had 100,000 members under collective bargaining agreements. But UFW influence has eroded since then, leaving the union today with contracts covering fewer than 5,000 workers.

The absence of union contracts allowed growers to gut their work crews and rely on contractors to provide laborers for the harvest, UFW officials contend.

Fed by an seemingly inexhaustible supply of labor from south of the border, the state’s farm work force has become bloated, creating an environment where laborers endure poor conditions in return for a day’s pay, farm worker advocates say.

As a result of the large labor pool, thousands of farm workers end up working for contractors who cheat them out of their pay and cheat the government out of tax deductions. And often when wage claims and legal judgments are brought against contractors, they put their contracting firms into bankruptcy--only to later emerge as new companies.

“The facts speak for themselves,” said Maria Echaveste, a former Oxnard farm worker and recently appointed administrator of the U.S. Department of Labor’s wage and hour division. “Things have not improved in the last 12 to 15 years. That suggests that changes need to be made.”

For state and federal officials, the vehicle for change is a statewide program called TIPP.

The Targeted Industries Partnership Program was created by Bradshaw and born last November to coordinate and strengthen the efforts of state and federal agencies responsible for enforcing labor law.

Major sweeps have been conducted from Monterey to Fresno to the Imperial Valley. Smaller sweeps have been done in San Diego and Orange counties.

As part of the statewide effort, TIPP investigator David Dorame inspects buses and vans that transport field workers to ensure that the vehicles are safe and insured. “I don’t know what’s going to happen with TIPP,” Dorame said. “I’m not a politician; all I know is that we’ve got the bad guys running scared here.”

But TIPP has drawn the wrath of farm worker advocates, who have little confidence in the program. They tell of calling TIPP’s toll-free hot line to report violations only to wait weeks for complaints to be investigated.

State officials say they are hamstrung by limited resources and budget cuts. There are only nine full-time TIPP investigators statewide.

For CRLA and other advocates, the preferred vehicle for change is an Assembly bill that would make farmers strictly liable for violations of farm labor laws.

The bill, authored by Isenberg, is scheduled to go before the full Assembly early next year.

But the bill is strongly opposed by farming groups, which argue that it would place an unreasonable burden on growers and impose liability for contractor actions over which they have no control.

Some critics of the legislation go further, accusing its author and supporters of trying to spark a return of organized field labor.

“The political agenda here is to destroy the farm labor contractor system,” said Robert Roy, legal counsel for the Ventura County Agriculture Assn. “They want to go back to a direct hire system, which can be more easily organized by the UFW.”