MIAMI HERALD May 29, 2005
HASTINGS, Fla. - The tattered blue housing camp reeked, the grounds cluttered with discarded Colt 45 cans. At 8:30 p.m., the farmworkers who sleep here had not returned from their work in the fields, still going strong under a darkening sky. This camp reflects the face of farm work in North Florida: tiring, overly demanding -- and, one year after reforms were supposed to usher in protections, still foul. In 2003, a Herald series, Fields of Despair, exposed brutal exploitation of the men and women who harvest Florida's crops, but who often are easy prey for the farm labor contractors who recruit them with hollow promises. Last May, Gov. Jeb Bush traveled to Immokalee, a hub for thousands of farmworkers, to sign a new law to clamp down on abuses and increase fines against culprits. Florida officials say fines have more than doubled over the past year, a sign of stepped-up enforcement. Worker advocates say the law and the enforcement sweeps are a step in the right direction -- but just a baby step. Abuse remains rampant, wealthy growers remain largely unpunished, advocates continue to file suits, and regulators find dozens of violations each time they inspect clusters of farms -- from unsafe vehicles to squalid sanitation to unlicensed bosses. ''From where we're sitting, I have not seen any change in behavior because of that law,'' said Lisa Butler, a Florida Rural Legal Services lawyer driving through North Florida farm country this month to visit housing camps and inform workers of their rights. ``Whatever sweeps they did had little or no impact, long-term.'' Butler ticked off the abuses that workers in this oft -neglected corner of Florida encounter: ``racketeering, loan sharking, drug dealing and violence.'' Last month, she filed suit in Jacksonville federal court on behalf of three workers against Hastings' Byrnes Farms and its Crescent City contractor, Sinclair T. Smith, who provided laborers to pack and grade the farmer's cabbage and potatoes.
ALLEGATIONS Among the allegations: Smith unlawfully charged workers 100 percent interest on wage advances, housed them in a camp with broken toilets and a defective fire exit, lacked proper licenses to house and transport them, understated their hours worked, forced an injured laborer to continue working, and battered and threatened others into staying. Smith, Byrnes Farms and grower Daniel L. Byrnes deny the complaints of workers Elton Campbell, Jose Parrilla Jr. and Darryl Russell, saying that the laborers were properly paid and that any violations of the federal Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Worker Protection Act were ``inadvertent.'' The suit seeks to hold grower Byrnes responsible for abuses at the hands of middleman Smith and his underlings -- an issue that advocates have been hammering for decades. ''The farmer as the employer who is running the enterprise has a responsibility to ensure that minimum employment standards are met and minimum wages are paid,'' Butler said. ``It seems to me it's a question of basic fairness in running a business.'' David J. Stefany, the Tampa attorney for Byrnes and Smith, declined to comment, other than to say there are two sides to every dispute. Byrnes did not respond to an interview request placed through Stefany. In another new case, Florida Rural Legal Services this month sued St. Johns County labor contractor Ronald Uzzle in circuit court, saying he prevented Butler from talking with his crew and even blockaded her car during visits to his work camp earlier this year. Uzzle could not be reached for comment. In 2003, when The Herald visited his Elkton camp, he refused to comment. By law, worker advocates are allowed at farmworker housing camps. But at times, they are greeted with intimidation by bosses who are loath to see them. After Butler drove by a potato plant this month, a farmer followed her vehicle for several minutes before pulling off. Laborers who toil in North Florida's camps are one sliver of the state's second biggest industry, after tourism. More than 200,000 do the seasonal work, with about 4,000 licensed farm contractors. The state's crops carry a $60 billion economic impact, and the companies behind it are big political players. Worker advocates say the connection between growers and politicians is one reason that reforms have only begun to tame the abuses. They say the Alfredo Bahena law -- the state reform measure signed by Bush and named after a late worker advocate -- puts the focus on contractors who hire the laborers, not the growers who own the land. The law: • Increases civil penalties from $1,000 to $2,500 for violations against workers. • Allows contractors to be charged with a third-degree felony for harming workers. • Allows growers or others to be charged with a third-degree felony if they hire contractors without a valid license. Jacob DiPietre, a spokesman for Gov. Bush, described the bill as ''a good first step'' in protecting workers' rights, but acknowledged that ``there is more work that needs to be done.'' ''This is something the governor believes is very important, and continues to look at,'' the spokesman said. Many advocates say sweeps and enforcement actions have picked up under Florida's Department of Business and Professional Regulation. Last month, for instance, the department visited 65 primarily citrus farms in Polk and Highlands counties on a three-day sweep.
VIOLATIONS The state issued 74 violations to about three dozen farm labor contractors, for failings such as transporting workers in unsafe vehicles or lacking nearby toilet facilities. The state has issued more than $224,000 in fines so far this fiscal year. That's more than double what it issued all of last year. ''We want to make sure the farmworkers are protected from exploitation, that contractors have licenses and are aware of the law,'' said Kristen Ploska of the Department of Business and Professional Regulation. ''The truth of the matter is that the state law is flawed very badly,'' said Gregory Schell, a lawyer with Florida Legal Services in Lake Worth who has tangled with the industry for decades. ``What happens when they take their license? The wife, brother, father, whatever takes the license and the job goes on without any real change.'' He and other advocates say the state law should mirror federal law, which can hold both the grower and the labor contractor liable for abuses. ''It's like arresting all the street-level drug dealers doesn't end the drug problem. You have to arrest the kingpin,'' Schell said. ``The grower has to tell the crew leader to stop.'' Ploska said her state agency ''doesn't have any statutory authority over the growers,'' but added: ``When a farm labor contractor is fined thousands and thousands of dollars, which the law allows us to do, I think it hurts the grower as well.''
INDUSTRY SUPPORT State Rep. Ralph Poppell, R-Titusville, co-chair of the House Committee on Agriculture, sponsored the Bahena bill. Poppell is a past member of the SealdSweet Sales Citrus Board and Florida Gift Fruit Shippers Association, and has enjoyed political support from industry. ''I think the Bahena law is good insomuch as it does penalize unscrupulous contractors. . . . It can put them out of business,'' Poppell said. What of advocates' contention that the law does not go far enough? ''It's a good law, and after all, it's better than what we had, and you had to start somewhere,'' Poppell said. An industry spokesman said that it often takes more than a year to make substantive change, but that growers are aware that abuses occur. ''The industry is doing a much better job of recognizing that those are there, and for the most part, I think there's a much stronger part on the industry to stay away from those people,'' said Mike Carlton, director of production and labor affairs for Florida Citrus Mutual, an association representing 11,000 state citrus growers. Carlton believes that such abuses are ''rare'' but said: ``The goal for all of us is to make them nonexistent.''
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