Michigan is known for its fruit festivals. Visitors can taste cherries on the National Cherry Festival in Traverse City or blueberries in National Blueberry Festival in South Haven.
The Apple Festival in Charlevoix and the Romeo Peach Festival offer fruits later within the season.
As a State with diverse crop production and that Top producer of asparagus In the countryside, Michigan offers an agricultural landscape that may be a picturesque mixture of grain fields and fruit trees.
But behind this facade lies the cruel reality of precarious employment and exploitative labor practices for Michigan's farmworkers. According to ongoing research by the Michigan Farmworker Project, they are sometimes invisible to the individuals who benefit from the fruits of their labor.
Few consumers are aware of the migrant and seasonal staff who make this economy possible. In 2013, the last 12 months for which official records can be found in Michigan, the state recorded almost 94,000 migrant and seasonal staff. This number included their members of the family and kids.
The state has not invested in counting staff for greater than 10 years, a crucial step to enhance their working and living conditions. Michigan recently released a Request for quotation to conduct a brand new census study this 12 months.
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In 2019 we launched the Michigan Farmworker Project as an educational collaboration with local and state organizations. The aim of the project is to enhance understanding of the social, working and housing situation of rural staff within the state.
Our goal is to develop sustainable and effective strategies, programs and health-promoting interventions to enhance the working and living conditions of agricultural staff within the state.
Critical work
Farming is a year-round activity, with staff often moving between different crops and locations depending on the season. These staff perform a wide range of essential agricultural tasks, akin to planting, harvesting, pruning, packing, washing produce, applying fertilizers, and spraying pesticides.
Their work is crucial to maintaining the robust 104.7 billion US dollars annual agricultural economy. Yet their presence and significant contribution often go unnoticed by many Michiganders and politicians.
The invisibility of agricultural staff stems from Guidelines And Practices Methods Exercises The violate fundamental human rights through racism, Exclusion and segregation which deprive them of the social and labour protection to which other groups of staff are entitled.
Historic federal laws akin to Jim Crow and the New Deal contributed to structural racism and pervasive occupational segregation which proceed to at the present time, through a policy that deliberately Exclude agricultural staff from basic occupational safety and health transferred to other work areas.
Various federal and state laws have excluded or provided only minimal labor protections for farm staff, including the National Labour Relations Actthat excludes farmworkers from the protection of unionization and collective bargaining. Michigan law also doesn’t provide union protection for farmworkers.
The Fair Labor Standards Act is one other law that applies in another way to farm staff. Under federal law and Michigan state law Agricultural staff are exempt from the duty to pay time beyond regulationand staff on certain small farms should not guaranteed a minimum wage. In addition, Children from 13 years are allowed to work within the fields, in comparison with 16 in other industries.
Farm staff lack time beyond regulation pay, sick leave and vacation, and plenty of don’t have any access to social advantages akin to Medicaid and food stamps. Many are still paid by piece rateand earned only a couple of cents per bucket of products.
Although Michigan Law prescribes minimum wage for pieceworkersOur research has shown that Employers often fire individuals who don’t meet their productivity quotas.
In 2010, the Michigan Civil Rights Commission Investigated allegations on the conditions faced by agricultural staff and concluded that the inadequate living and dealing conditions for lots of them haven’t improved significantly in 45 years.
Afterward Commission progress reportstogether with our own recent researchindicate that little progress was made in the course of the pandemic and beyond.
This continued lack of improvement underscores the ongoing challenges and exploitation Farmworkers in Michigan.
Why precarious work and labour exploitation are vital
Our project revealed that working conditions for agricultural staff should not only precarious, but often exploitative.
As public health researchers, we define exploitative labor practices as those by which a employee's vulnerability – whether psychological, physical, sexual, social, economic, or legal – is exploited in a harmful way for financial gain. Workers often endure labor exploitation due to their economic needs and since they’re excluded from policies that will ensure protection and safety afforded in other occupations.
We find that exploitation of farmworkers in Michigan leads to excessive and unpredictable work hours, penalties, and wage theft. Wage theft can take the shape of denial of piece-rate payments, physical and psychological abuse, coercion, and threats.
The fundamental dehumanization of staff and dangerous violations of basic human rights akin to Access to drinking water and secure working conditions were identified by staff in the primary Michigan Farmworker Project study, conducted from 2019 to 2021.
These quotes represent the voices of the feminine and male farmworkers captured within the research. Names should not included to Data protection laws And Federal research regulations.
“You have to earn at least a thousand pounds a week and if you don't, they can't pay you an hourly wage (minimum wage). They only give you three weeks (of work). If you don't make it (to the minimum wage) on the piecework system, they fire you.”
“We were very thirsty and (the farmer) did not give us water. I left my pipe. I wanted to drink water and the farmer looked at me very dismayed and asked why I had left the pipe. I told him, 'You know it is very hot. I feel dizzy. I need to drink water.'”
“(The grower) wanted me to keep working on the blueberry machine. I suffer from epilepsy and also have a heart disease, so I can't get upset. My husband told him that I had already worked and that we could postpone it until tomorrow. The grower got very angry and said, 'I will not tolerate people who do not want to work with me. Why don't you just leave the house tonight?' My son was only 10 months old, where were we going to go? We had nowhere else to go and not only that, he was very racist. He mistreated (the people), he had no water for my husband and the other workers and he did not want them to take their lunch break and he did not want to pay us.”
When farm staff dehumanized and treated as expendable staffThey are being stripped of their agency and human rights. This not only deepens health inequalities, but in addition undermines core American principles of liberty, equality, and justice for all.
image credit : theconversation.com