This document summarizes the inequalities faced by migrant farm workers in the United States, with a focus on vulnerabilities experienced by female workers. It discusses the physical risks of farm work, lack of benefits and protections for injured undocumented workers, themes revealed through the Tomasita Project on the global food system including increasing distances and feminization of labor. It highlights how women, who make up 22% of farm workers, face greater exploitation through lower wages, sexual harassment and inability to report abuse due to fear of deportation. Female workers often serve as primary caregivers yet endure discrimination, unsafe conditions and being silenced from standing up for their rights.

1. Eddie Rozynski: Writing Sample
Inequality Experienced by Migrant Farm Workers
Introduction
All across the United States today, millions and millions of farm workers are growing and
harvesting the food that we consume on a daily basis. They not only are providing for their own
families, but they are helping to put food on all of our tables as well. The vast majority of these
farm workers who have come here from Latin America are undocumented, or “illegal”. The
economic and social opportunities have drawn them from their home countries; they have
arrived here for the promise of a more prosperous future. Unfortunately, in their new daily
lives they are subjected to unfair and unequal treatment by their employers and supervisors,
and to unsafe and substandard living and working conditions. Female farmworkers are
especially vulnerable to unfair and unsafe working conditions as the intersection of gender,
ethnicity, and “legal” status further complicates their daily lives. These daily inequalities are
perpetuated by transnational, national and local policies. Because of these policies,
undocumented migrant workers must live in constant fear of being discovered and deported.
The policies, combined with daily harassment and substandard living conditions, are the perfect
storm in perpetuating the negative and unfair treatment of migrant farm workers in the US
today.
Physical Risks
Migrant farmworkers are subjected to physical risks that no other job sector is regularly
exposed to. The nature of field work requires a lot of physically-intensive labor in the hot sun

2. for many hours at a time, often with few water or shade breaks. There is a lot of bending over
and heavy lifting involved, not to mention the use of heavy machinery such as tractors and fruit
pickers. Farm work is considered to be one of the top three most dangerous jobs in the US.
According to the Department of Labor, fatalities involving farmworkers and laborers rose from
127 in 2009 to 156 in 2010. Heat-related illness plays a significant role in farmworker injury.
Working long hours under the sun, without water or shade breaks, makes workers more
vulnerable to heat stroke, which is the leading cause of death among farmworkers. According
to a report released by Oxfam and the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) in 2011, a total
of 68 crop workers died from heatstroke. This number represents a rate nearly 20 times greater
than for all US civilian workers. These migrant farmworkers are exposed to an asymmetrical
amount of physical risk than US citizens, due to their inferior statuses in society.
Normally, workers are covered by occupational insurance or are eligible to receive worker’s
compensation if injured on the job. However, undocumented migrant workers do not enjoy
these same benefits. If they are injured on the job, they face intimidation or even termination
by their employers. If they try to take legal action, which is rare for fear of deportation, they are
blacklisted by employers, making it more difficult to find another job. They are unable to speak
up for their rights, because of their status as undocumented foreign workers.
The Tomasita Project
The Tomasita Project was a cross border research venture that traced the journey of the
tomato from the Mexican field to the North American fast-food restaurant. It focusses on
women’s experiences within various stages of food production, distribution and consumption.

3. Within this journey there are varying interactions between class, gender, nation and race, upon
which the food system is built. This “inside” perspective contrasts significantly with the
“globalization from above”, or the corporate view of migrant workers and multinationals
involved in the process of food production. There are both outside and inside dynamics
reflected in the project’s methodology, which combines a big picture global analysis (the
outside) and the real life experiences of the female migrant workers involved in the process
(the inside). Through the Tomasita Project, several different themes can be picked out by
looking at food production through these female workers’ experiences.
The first theme we can extrapolate is the increasing distancing of the food system. Food
production has grown into a global process, crossing national borders and linking different
nationalities through extensive labor chains. Multinational corporations involved in food
production displace workers far away from their own roots, home bases and cultures. The
distance food travels from production to consumption is also increasing due to the rise of
technologies such as preservatives, and because of the increasing availability of cheap labor.
Another theme evident in the increasingly globalized process of food production is the
feminization of labor. This concept is also synonymous with the feminization of poverty. There
has been considerable attention given to the non-white, young demographics in the new global
economy, including in food production. However, significantly less attention and research has
been afforded to the increasing number of females involved in the food production business
today.

4. A third theme which can be pulled from an increasingly globalized systemof food production is
the rising flexibility of labor. This involves the spatial and temporal migration of female workers
in order to find work. Transnational corporations in the North1 involved in food production,
exploit vulnerable populations in the South2 such as indigenous peoples, women and children.
Females must adjust their schedules to fit the growing and harvesting seasons of crops in
Canada and the US (Barndt). Flexible labor strategies, “have forced these women to continually
reorganize their time, or movement through days, weeks, and months, in new ways, as seasons
begin and end, and shifts expand and contract” (Barndt). In today’s globalized system of food
production, women must travel across national borders in order to fit corporate demands. They
migrate from countries in the South, such as El Salvador and Mexico, to the North to countries
such as the US and Canada, in search of economic opportunity.
Women as More Vulnerable
Women are crucial to the base of the American food system. Not only do they make up a full
22% of the workforce, but they often times provide for and hold their families together either
in the US or thousands of miles away in Latin America. Although they play such an important
role in harvesting our food, they are some of the most exploited workers in the country; they
regularly experience conditions that male farmworkers do not. Female farmworkers are
generally given the lowest paid, least desirable jobs, are usually the first to be laid-off, and
1 “North” refers to the Global North, where many of the world’s most developed and affluent nations ,such as the
US and Canada, arelocated. The North is where the biggest agribusinesses in theworld are located,and is the
destination for many migrant workers lookingto improve their livingconditions.
2 “South” refers to the Global South, where many of the world’s undeveloped and developingnations ,such as
Mexico, are located.The vastmajority of Global South nations arelocated in the Southern Hemisphere. The South
is often times the origin of laborers who leave in search of work in the North.

5. receive fewer opportunities to advance. Female workers usually have no health insurance and
get no sick or vacation days. They endure all of the same problems as males do, but face largely
unique ones such as gender discrimination and sexual harassment, on top of being the primary
caregivers of their children.
Sexual Harassment
One of the biggest issues female migrant workers face is sexual harassment. In one survey
conducted recently in California, 90% of the women identified sexual harassment as a major
problem. A closer glimpse at the anecdotal evidence shows just how common these
occurrences are. According to an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission lawyer, reporting
on farm worker women in Fresno, CA: “We were told that hundreds, if not thousands, of
women had to have sex with supervisors to get or keep jobs and/or put up with a constant
barrage of grabbing and touching and propositions for sex by supervisors” (NFWM). In many
cases, women resort to dressing like men in order to avoid such unwanted, unsolicited sexual
advances. In one company women refer to the field they work in as the “fil de calzon” or the
“field of panties” because so many women have been raped by their supervisors there.
Female workers often times must be flexible to their landowners’, supervisors’ and even
coworkers’ sexual needs. In recent interviews conducted by the Human Rights Watch, several
women, whose identities are concealed, testify that their landowners have forced them into
having sexual relations with them. One undocumented woman describes a current situation she
is in where a man that she works with who is “legal” continuously sexually harasses and
assaults her. She says that because he is legal and she is not, she is scared to file any sort of

6. legal complaint against him for fear that she will get in trouble and be deported. She feels that
she must stay silent at work, even though the harassment continues. Perpetrators are almost
always people in positions of power, who know that the female workers will not be able to
report the abuse.
Unfair Practices
As mentioned earlier, these undocumented female workers are often times the primary
caregivers for their children, making it less likely that they will fight for their rights. This inability
to stand up against harassment comes from a fear of being fired, or worse, being deported and
separated from their families in the US. Due to their fear of being reported to immigration
authorities, they are unable to take legal action against their employers over such personal
violations. They are effectively silenced. The few rights that female workers do hold can be
violated based on gender discrimination. According to The Southern Poverty Law Center, many
employers take advantage of married women in order to evade extra payments such as Social
Security. By illegally paying women on their spouse’s paychecks, instead of issuing individual
payment, female workers are cheated out of qualifying for various benefits and are denied
being paid minimum wage. As a result, these illegal practices rob women of financial autonomy,
giving their husbands an unfair amount of power.
Uniquely Female Risks

7. Perhaps even more troubling than the violation of female workers’ economic rights is the
consistent violation of their reproductive rights. Females, (along with males), working in the
fields are exposed to toxic pesticides through direct spraying, by breathing in pesticide in the air
and by coming into contact by re-entering fields prematurely, just after they have been
sprayed. Such chemicals are used often in order to protect crops against insects, weeds, fungi
and rodents; they are used in order to increase crop production. Pesticides can be harmful to
humans depending on how toxic the ingredients are, the length of time of exposure and how
the chemicals enter the body. Exposure to such harmful chemicals has been linked to causing
infertility, miscarriages, and birth defects in babies. In the words of one fieldworker, Gloria, a 37
year old woman from Mexico:
“When the fruit arrives, it has the white powder on it from the chemicals, and we have to clean
it off. And in one way or another, we’re breathing it in. You feel that your throat and chest is
filling up. We don’t have anything to cover our mouth and nose with. We’re in constant contact
with those chemicals.”
Reproductive problems and birth defects are very real physical effects from pesticide exposure.
Serious effects of exposure can be seen in the ‘Immokalee babies’ in Florida, three children who
were born with severe birth defects. The children’s mothers were all exposed to pesticides
while harvesting tomatoes. The three mothers were neighbors who lived within one hundred
yards of each other. They worked in the same field, picking tomatoes for the same company.
The first baby, named Carlitos, was born with a rare condition leaving him without arms or legs.
Six weeks later, a baby named Jesus was born with a lower jaw deformity which required

8. feeding him through a plastic tube to prevent his tongue from falling back into his throat. The
third baby, Jorge, was born two days after Jesus missing a kidney, an ear, a nose, an anus, and
any visible sex organs. He was later named a girl, Violeta, but survived for only three days
(NFWM). The fields where all three women worked had been sprayed by at least thirty-one
different chemicals during the growing season. Many of these chemicals were labeled “highly
toxic” and at least three of them were labeled by the Pesticide Action Network (PANNA) as
“developmental and reproductive toxins”. Regulations requiring protective clothing such as
gloves, aprons and respirators were not enforced. These women wore bandanas over their
mouths to try and prevent breathing in the chemicals; they were not warned about the dangers
of exposure.
Female workers are not exclusively exposed to these chemicals. Male workers come into
contact regularly with pesticides in the fields as well. All workers can come into contact with
the chemicals indirectly by handling containers (warning labels are still not required to be
written in Spanish in addition to English), and by breathing in “pesticide drift”. Pesticide drift
occurs when the wind spreads chemicals from crops to neighboring fields. In many cases,
workers have no escape from exposure, as the pesticides can literally follow them home after
work in the fields, in the form of residue on their clothes, or by the contamination of the air in
their neighborhoods. Apart from the unique physical risks female workers are exposed to, such
chemicals can cause harmful effects such as Alzheimer’s, diabetes, cancer, autism, and memory
loss.
Substandard Housing

9. Migrant workers are not only subjected to especially hazardous toxins and working conditions
in the fields, but they also must return home to substandard, often illegal, housing conditions.
Many migrant workers live in crowded, unsanitary trailers or rundown houses, and often lack
basic utilities such as clean water and electricity. They are relegated to neighborhoods without
access to vital services such as health clinics, grocery stores, and public transportation. Without
access to such services, it is even more difficult to maintain a healthy lifestyle and provide for
their families.
Migrant workers on farms in the South live in a few types of housing, depending on immigration
status, geographic location and who they are employed by. First, there is government housing,
but in order to qualify for government subsidized housing, workers must be documented.
However, 6 out of 10 of America’s farmworkers are undocumented, as estimated by the
Southern Poverty Law Center. Because the majority of migrant farmworkers arrive to the US
illegally, they cannot qualify for government housing. (Government housing must at least meet
some threshold of safety and affordability standards). The majority of farmworkers who come
to the US must live in grower-owned housing or privately rented housing. Those immigrants
who come to the US on the temporary H-2A visa stay in housing provided by growers, which is
mandated, but not enforced by federal law. H-2A workers only account for about 3% of the
nation’s agricultural workforce. Usually, the workers’ rent is deducted from their paychecks.
Grower-owned and privately-owned housing is often times owned by the same landowner,
such that they have a monopoly on all available housing.

10. In the case of privately owned and grower owned housing, workers are charged astronomically
high prices. Housing can be especially high if they are located next to locations where workers
gather to find work. For example, in one trailer park in Immokalee, Florida, one trailer rents for
$500 per week, partially because of its proximity to a parking lot where workers line-up in the
mornings to find work. Because housing can be so expensive, ten or more workers will pack into
one trailer in order to afford rent. A high ratio of workers to available utilities can lead to more
problems. Multiple people must share a single bathroom, sink, shower, and cooking and
laundry facilities. This can lead to many health and hygiene problems. Harmful chemicals found
in pesticides can be spread much easier in crowded, substandard housing and other diseases
are spread much easier. In some locations, landowners charge rent on a per-head basis.
This makes standards of living much more expensive for migrant workers with families, who
must pay separately for their spouses and children. It is much more difficult for workers to
afford a decent standard of living when they are exploited like this through unfair housing
practices. Workers are unable to save up financial resources to invest in their children’s futures.
Many workers who come to the US in search of work say they do so to ensure a better future
for their children, and to provide them with opportunities that they did not or do not have.
They want their children to have better lives than they did.
Inequality Perpetuated by Policy
As mentioned earlier, some immigrants come to US farms on a “guest worker program”,
sponsored by the government. However, the vast majority of farmworkers who come to the
country are undocumented. This guest worker program, the H2A visa program, allows foreign

11. workers to do farm work in the US. The program also is a prime example of how policy is
continuing to have real, human impacts on migrant farmworkers in the United States. The
North American Free Trade Agreement, (NAFTA), along with current US Immigration policy play
significant roles in the disenfranchisement of migrant workers.
Mexico joined Canada and the United States on January 1, 1994 in the North American Free
Trade Agreement, which created a free trade zone from the Caribbean to the Arctic Ocean. The
neoliberal model was applied hemispherically, but is built upon historical asymmetry between
the US and Canada, and Mexico. The agreement opened up an expansive zone of capital,
consumer and commodity markets, however it did not enable the opening up of labor markets.
It allowed for the free flow of goods, services and capital, but not for workers. Multinational
corporations have benefited from their investments in the manufacturing and production of
cheap goods, while Mexican laborers coming north to find work in the US and Canada continue
to be the biggest losers. NAFTA is built upon historical inequalities within these countries that
have marginalized the poor, peasant, and working class; indigenous and people of color; and
female workers. They are the most vulnerable populations within society, and corporations
exploit them for the cheap labor they are seen as.
Migration issues were largely left out of the final NAFTA agreement, they were left up to the
individual countries to deal with. The US Congress passed the Immigration Reform and Control
Act in 1986 which among other things greatly increased the number of border patrol agents.
This was followed by highly publicized border crackdowns. Agents were shown across the news
media apprehending and arresting Latino immigrants traveling through the desert or across a

12. river to enter the US “illegally”. This representation in the media of officers picking up “illegals”
along the border only intensify Anglo-Americans’ biases and stereotypes of migrant workers
and immigrants. Further, Immigration and Naturalization Service agents were given broad
powers several years ago to remove undocumented immigrants quickly, without judicial review
(Massey).
By giving more power to immigration enforcers, undocumented workers are further subjected
to living in constant fear, under the threat of deportation. Workers are unable to lay their roots
and establish a permanent life anywhere in the US. Immigrants and migrant workers are either
scared to take advantage of, or barred from many public services. They cannot take legal action
or seek medical attention. In 1994, California voters passed a proposition 187 by a wide margin
which barred undocumented migrants from schools, hospitals, and public assistance. It
attempted to enlist teachers, medical personnel and welfare caseworkers as enforcer (Massey).
This was made into federal law, when Congress passed legislation barring non-citizen
immigrants from receiving federal and state benefits. The legislation also imposed harsh fines
on those immigrants who overstayed their visas, and required those who became permanent
residents to pay large fees. Such policies aimed to disenfranchise or marginalize immigrants and
migrant workers will only serve to create poor living and working conditions for them. The
unfair policies will only increase the size of unhealthy, poorly educated immigrant and migrant
worker populations.
The H2A visa program allows foreign workers to do farm work in the US, however, it is yet
another policy that perpetuates the inequality among migrant workers. Migrant workers enter

13. into contracts with employers and come to the US for work; they theoretically return back to
their home country when the contract is over. The H2A program does not facilitate a direct
relationship between landowners and laborers, but rather it permits quasi-private labor brokers
to import Mexican “guest workers” for seasonal farm work. The North Carolina Grower’s
Association is one such broker. The NCGA was mostly responsible for the quadrupling of North
Carolina’s Latino population between 1985 and 2000, 65 percent of whom were from Mexico.
By the late 1990s, 90 percent of all farm labor in the state was Spanish-speaking (Allegro &
Wood). They typical small-scale broker attempted to maximize profits by paying workers poorly
and by selling migrants everything from gloves to fake Social Security cards, at extremely high
prices. Many labor brokers also gauged workers on housing, transportation, and food.
Many undocumented workers have complained about unpaid wages, substandard housing, and
abuse on the job. One worker reported that a work foreman ignored a worker after fainting on
the job. The farm has been investigated by the Department of Labor for abuses, and the grower
is locally known as “El Diablo”. Despite the grower’s bad reputation, the NCGA continues to
supply new labor each year, and more migrant workers are subjected to poor working
conditions and abuse (Allegro & Wood). The NCGA intimidates workers not to file complaints
nor take legal action, on a regular basis. At workers’ orientation sessions, they were warned
against taking legal action, and were told that lawyers were bent on destroying the H2A
program (Allegro & Wood). This kind of institutionalized intimidation further disenfranchises
migrant farmworkers by taking away their power to assert their rights for more fair working
conditions.

14. Conclusion
Migrant farmworkers come to the US in search of economic and social opportunity for
themselves and their families. Relative to what they are paid in their home countries, they end
up making slightly more than what they are used to. However, they are also subjected to unfair
and unequal working and living conditions on the farms they come to work on. They are not
paid on time or paid overtime and are subjected to harmful chemicals without the proper
protections. Their employers know that they can get away with this unfair treatment because
the majority of them are undocumented and therefore are unable to stand up for their rights.
Gender plays a significant role in further aggravating such inequalities for female migrant
workers. They come to the US only to live in constant fear of being “discovered” and
subsequently deported. Many things contribute to the persistence of the inequality they face
on a daily basis. The ways in which workers are treated by landowners and growers to the
unfair conditions perpetuated by such policies as NAFTA, US immigration policy and the H2A
visa program are all mechanisms that relegate migrant workers to a subordinate status in
American society. Despite the adversity they face, many choose to stay in the US, in order to
provide a better future for their family. Migrant farmworkers come to the US for opportunity,
however, what they face are unfair practices and conditions that keep them at the bottom of
society, mostly out of sight and out of mind.

15. Works Cited
Allegro, Linda; Wood, Andrew. Latin American Migration to the US Heartland. Chicago:
University of Illinois Press, 2013. Print.
Barndt, Deborah. “On the Move for Food” Women’s Studies Quarterly. Vol. 29: 1&2 (2001):
131-142.
Massey, Douglas. “March of Folly” The American Prospect. Vol. 37 (March/April 1998): 22-33.
National Farmworker Ministry. “Health & Safety”. Accessed 24 November 2013.
http://nfwm.org/education-center/farm-worker-issues/health-safety/
National Farmworker Ministry. “Housing”. Accessed 24 November 2013.
http://nfwm.org/education-center/farm-worker-issues/housing/
National Farmworker Ministry. “Women’s Issues”. Accessed 24 November 2013.
http://nfwm.org/education-center/farm-worker-issues/womens-issues/
Southern Poverty Law Center, “Immigrant Justice”. Accessed 1 December 2013.
http://www.splcenter.org/what-we-do/immigrant-justice
“US: Farmworkers Face Sexual Abuse” Human Rights Watch. 16 May 2012.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jhKfyG1oU8&feature=c4-overview-
vl&list=PLF1E29F715F114C19