Lakeland Ledger January 9, 2005 Hurricanes Create Shortage of Work for Migrant, Seasonal Workers By Kevin Bouffard
The Ledger
WINTER HAVEN Last year's hurricanes left a trail of suffering in many Florida communities, none greater than the largely Hispanic communities of seasonal workers vital to the state's agriculture sector.
"They're desperately going to every agency to find work," said the Rev. Norm Farland, the administrator of Our Lady of Guadalupe Mission in Wahneta, which serves more than 1,400 migrant workers and their families in Polk County. "They're not sitting down to accept help. They want to work."
But the devastation hurricanes Charley, Frances and Jeanne wreaked on Florida agriculture -- including the citrus and tomato crops and plant nurseries -- means thousands of fewer jobs for migrant and seasonal laborers who make up much of the work force on the state's farms, fresh produce packinghouses and juice processing plants.
Juanita Mainster, the hurricane coordinator for the Redlands Christian Migrant Association based in Immokalee, has worked with migrants for 40 years and said the unemployment situation "is the worst I've seen, even after Hurricane Andrew.
"There's some work, but there's still a lot of people out there who can't find anything," she said. "People are really struggling."
A federal grant given to the Polk County Farmworker Jobs and Education program is paying for six people to conduct surveys to gauge the impact the hurricanes had on migrant and seasonal farmworkers. So far, 956 people have been surveyed, and 97 percent have reported job losses, home damages, education and training needs or job placement needs. Housing is a particular problem.
"A lot of them are coming back now that they have no place to stay, because a lot of them lived in temporary housing that were trailers or manufactured homes," said Alice Moore, manager of the farmworker program. "A lot of them were destroyed."
Recently Redlands helped get food and housing assistance for a single mother and her three children in Arcadia, Mainster said. The woman called because she had run out of food after failing to find her usual work picking citrus since coming back to Florida in the fall.
THOUSANDS OF JOBS LOST
Migrant and seasonal workers make up a large segment of Florida's $62 billion agricultural sector, which contributed more than 644,000 jobs directly and indirectly to the state economy in 2002, according to the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services.
A 2000 study by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services showed Florida agriculture employed 194,817 migrant and seasonal workers. That included 16,525 workers employed in Polk.
Seasonal workers live in Florida throughout the year but work in agriculture for just a few months. Migrant workers typically leave the state during the spring and summer months to find farm work in the north.
But those standard definitions often don't fit reality because many migrant workers consider Florida their home despite the annual trek north, Mainster said. Many own homes in Florida that were damaged or destroyed by the hurricanes.
The state agriculture department did not have figures on the jobs lost following the hurricanes, but the numbers certainly run into the thousands based on comments from company officials who spoke with The Ledger.
The hurricanes destroyed about half the fall tomato crop in Central Florida, which led to job losses for harvesters in the field and workers in packinghouses.
East Coast Brokers & Packers Inc., which grows fall tomatoes on about 1,000 acres in Florida and runs a packinghouse west of Mulberry, employed about 400 field and plant workers after the hurricanes, about half the normal employment, said Batista Madonia, the company's chief executive officer. Those who did work had to get by on fewer hours.
The company helped its employees with housing and utility bills at a cost of more than $100,000 a month, Madonia said. More than 200 families also got a free Thanksgiving dinner.
CITRUS DESTROYED
The storms destroyed about 20 percent of Florida's citrus fruit, the state's largest crop. That meant fewer jobs for harvesters as well as seasonal workers in the packinghouses and juice processing plants.
Cargill Citro-America Inc. closed its juice plants in Avon Park and Fort Pierce, idling 300 seasonal and year-round workers, because there wasn't enough fruit to operate the plants efficiently, said Thomas Abrahamson, the company's general manager. The Frostproof plant, which employs about 300 workers total, is operating.
Other companies also cut back production, said Abrahamson, who estimated the cutbacks led juice processors to eliminate more than 1,000 jobs in the 2004-05 season.
Ocean Spray Cranberries Inc. shut down its Vero Beach plant, which makes grapefruit juice, after Frances and Jeanne destroyed an estimated two-thirds of the state's grapefruit crop, said Denise Perry, a company spokeswoman. She had no figure for job losses.
Storm damage combined with the loss of the grapefruit crop shut down 10 citrus packinghouses in the Indian River area, the world's largest grapefruit-growing region, said Richard Kinney, the chief executive at Florida Citrus Packers in Lakeland, the industry trade group.
Most indicated they would be closed for the duration of the 2004-05 season. Hispanic women make up a large part of the work force at the state's citrus packinghouses.
Among the packinghouses shut down for the season is the Indian River Exchange Packers in Vero Beach, which now employs 12 people instead of the normal season work force of 150 workers, said George Hamner Jr., the company president. Its harvesting crew is down to 60 people from 200 pickers normally.
Kinney estimated about 1,500 people lost jobs to the plant shutdowns.
"These are women who need the work because most of them have families," he said.
Even packinghouse workers who did find a job this season will probably suffer economic loss because the crop loss will shorten the season for packing fresh citrus, Kinney said. Some packinghouses may close by February instead of May or June.
Many of the packinghouses that did open cut back on their work force because of the fruit shortage, said Dennis Broadaway, the general manager of the Haines City Citrus Growers Association, which ranks among Florida's 10 largest citrus packinghouses.
Haines City had to shut down one of its packing lines, which employed about 45 seasonal employees, Broadaway said.
"We're hoping they come back when the work is available," Broadaway said.
That reflects a widespread fear in the citrus industry that many seasonal and migrant workers won't return after finding jobs in other industries.
FINDING OTHER WORK
Many migrant workers have found other jobs created in the hurricanes' aftermath, Farland and Mainster said. That includes unskilled construction labor and working cleanup crews.
The competition from construction companies has created a shortage of pickers in the citrus groves, said Joel O'Neil, a harvesting supervisor for the Haines City association. He estimated his picking crews are about 20 percent smaller than last season.
"We're still competing with people who need roofs on their houses," he said.
Hamner agreed there was a shortage of harvesting labor in the fall, but he said that appears to be diminishing now that cleanup jobs are disappearing.
Farland and Mainster said those temporary jobs pay only minimum wage, which falls short of what they earned as full-time agricultural workers.
"Nowhere are they able to compensate for what they made in previous years," Farland said.
One man who found a temporary job told Mainster, "It's not good, but it's work, and I can eat," she said.
The better-paying temporary jobs are not available to undocumented migrant workers who can't prove permanent residency status, Farland and Mainster agreed.
"A lot of these people depend solely on agriculture," Mainster said. |