Sakuma Brothers Farmworker Strike: A Year Later, the Struggle Continues

Nearly a year has passed since farmworkers at Sakuma Brothers Farm in Washington State initiated the first of several walkouts from the 1600-acre, $6.1 million dollar family farm, protesting low wages and poor working conditions. Today, the 460 indigenous Triqui and Mixteco farmworkers who formed Familias Unidas por la Justicia (Families United for Justice, FUJ) are faced with continued unemployment as Sakuma applies for 438 new guest workers on the controversial H-2A visa federal worker program and announces plans to mechanize their harvest production.¹ Sakuma’s attempts to sidestep farmworker demands by replacing their labor with lower-cost alternatives pose a major challenge to FUJ’s goal of winning a fair contract.

As farm owners struggle to stay competitive, farmworkers bear the brunt of cost-saving measures such as wage theft, inadequate housing and piece-rate wages. If anything, the market rewards farmers who are able to circumvent labor demands. Public policies are needed to both protect all workers rights without providing loopholes for employers to avoid improving wages and working conditions. But also, policies must support farmers—especially family farmers who make commitments to sustainability and social justice—in providing dignified employment while also remaining economically viable.

Sakuma’s attempts to sidestep farmworker demands by replacing their labor with lower-cost alternatives pose a major challenge to workers’ goal of winning a fair contract.

Since the end of the 2013 fall harvest season, FUJ and Community2Community, a Bellingham, WA-based social justice and immigrant rights organization, have been hard at work. Besides testifying at legislative hearings, launching a regional boycott of Sakuma products, and mobilizing support from students, church groups and community members, FUJ still faces tremendous obstacles. In an editorial published in the Bellingham Herald, Whatcom Farm Friends, an advocate for farmers in the Whatcom and Skagit Valley region, addressed the labor dispute issue thusly:

No farmer denies the right for farm workers to expect a fair wage, safe working conditions and decent housing. To fail on any of those standards clearly indicates an unsustainable situation. The labor market will ultimately weed out any farmer who cannot provide a safe and fair place for farm workers.²

This “weeding out” of farmers, however, supposes conditions in which farmworkers can freely choose to leave exploitative situations, when this is simply not the case. Guest workers, for instance, generally come from poverty and arrive in debt from securing travel, obtaining the visa, and sometimes paying a go-between.³ Finding another place of employment is prohibited on the visa, and even if allowed, wouldn’t guarantee better conditions.⁴ With few options available to immigrant workers, putting up with abuses or sub-par conditions becomes the only choice—lest they risk everything to take a stand as Sakuma farmworkers have done. Similarly, local farmworkers face the threat of being fired and replaced with immigrant workers who are less likely to complain or use collective bargaining.

A report by Oxfam and Farmworker Justice cited several examples of abuse:

One study, for example, found that nearly a quarter of low-wage workers were paid less than minimum wage and three-quarters were denied overtime pay. Another, a recent study by the Southern Poverty Law Center, reported that 41 percent of low-income Latinos surveyed in the South had experienced “wage theft.”⁵

FUJ workers reported incidents of racial slurs, in addition to shoddy work camp accommodations, and systemic wage-theft from adults and children.⁶ The ALF-CIO defines wage-theft as “employees being denied full compensation for their work”.⁷ For the Sakuma workers wage theft has occurred through improper weight documentation, working in a capacity outside harvesting (cleaning-up, travel-time, etc.)”,⁸ and inaccurate paystubs which last year, resulted in $6000 to youth workers being recovered by FUJ.⁹ Ramon Torres, president of FUJ estimates that “We [farmworkers] are losing $32 a week. If you calculate that, 350 workers that work at this company on a weekly basis the company is earning $11,200…”¹⁰

Additionally, mostly white teenagers from the Skagit Valley are in-charge of weighing and have the power to round weights up or down adding another level of control imposed on farmworkers. “The white checkers are given power over how many pounds are marked for the pickers, and I observed more often than not that checkers marked less weight on the cards than the scale displayed.”¹¹ Wage-theft practices are commonplace in farmworker communities, as is rape and sexual coercion for many women working in the fields.¹² These examples of labor abuse illustrate the steep power imbalance between farm owners and farmworkers. Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel even went so far as to describe the H-2A visa guest worker program as “the closest thing I’ve ever seen to slavery.”¹³

As farm owners struggle to stay competitive, farmworkers bear the brunt of cost-saving measures such as wage theft, inadequate housing and piece-rate wages. If anything, the market rewards farmers who are able to circumvent labor demands.

The intent behind the H2A visa was to address a labor shortage that could result in crop losses, the impact of which allows farmers to drive labor prices lower. In reality, such policies end up supporting mid-to-large scale farmers who have the financial capital to bring in guest workers. Although guest workers often pay much more to third-party recruiters, farmers spend upwards of 1,000 per guest worker and costs to smaller-scale farmers are prohibitive.¹⁴ As a result, the H2A visa promotes the importation of cheap labor, effectively subsidizing those larger farms. The USDA estimates 42 percent of variable farm expenses come from labor.¹⁵ For many farmers, lowering wages is the most attractive option, particularly when the price of inputs such as fertilizer, continue to rise.¹⁶ For farmworkers, unionizing and boycotting becomes the only strategy to leverage collective power and challenge this “race to the bottom” in the labor market.

As costs for inputs rise, farmers hoping to stay competitive in deregulated markets take on different strategies. For Sakuma this has meant vertically integrating with a nursery and processing plant while looking to mechanize part of harvest operations (mainly individual quick freezing or IQF, processing for yogurts and ice creams) and pay at a piece-rate. Piece rates pay a set amount per unit of goods; in this case farmworkers are paid a rate anywhere between 0.18 cents to 0.40 cents per pound of berries picked. Workers are expected to harvest enough pounds of berries each hour to make-up their hourly wage, thus ensuring a certain level of worker productivity.¹⁷ This means some farmworkers aren’t able to attain Washington’s minimum wage of $9.19 an hour. Rosalinda Guillén, executive director of Community2Community adds:

It also means that in order to meet the requirements to earn the minimum wage the farm worker has to push herself to unhealthy speeds resulting in increased injuries and stress from the abusive “carrilla” from supervisors. In essence, it shifts the responsibility to pay minimum wage from the employer to the worker: if she/he does not pick fast enough to prove they are earning minimum wage they are fired^.18

Strawberries are a labor-intensive crop and require skillful picking. In 2013, Sakuma reported 500,000 pounds of unpicked strawberries due to labor shortage. Sakuma cited lower minimum wages in California and in other countries as a barrier to securing workers while meeting FUJ’s definition of fair labor conditions. Why those berries remained unpicked was a different story than Sakuma’s. The farmworkers, however, report that the berries were not picked because Sakuma farm management chose not to pick them. Citing the small size and bad quality of the blueberries, the company allegedly asked workers to stop harvesting until they were ready. Not only did this leave a period where farmworkers were essentially laid-off, but also it casts the erroneous idea that a lack of labor is to blame for un-harvested food in the field.¹⁹

Although Sakuma claims to be facing another labor shortage this year, it’s unclear whether they’ll hire the 460 FUJ members in addition the 400 guest workers they’ve applied for through the H2A process. With about a month until strawberry harvesting begins in Washington, the decision will be made soon and the impact deeply felt by families who depend on summer harvesting employment.

Support Sakuma Farmworkers:

To learn more about the actions individuals can take to support FUJ and their families, see: http://boycottsakumaberries.com/how-you-can-walk-with-familias-unidas-por-la-justicia/

Financially support farmworkers by sending a donation to P.O. Box 1206, Burlington, WA 98233 or by donating online

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