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				Edición impresa de Agosto 21, 2018. WHAT WAS THE LIFE OF THIS GUEST WORKER WORTH? By David Bacon The American Prospect, August 15, 2018 While Washington state agencies reduce farmworker pay and find employers faultless for a death in the fields, Trump and congressional Republicans back proposals to turn farmworking into permanent indentured servitude. Farmworkers and supporters gather in the morning at the start of their 14-mile march. On Sunday, August 5, a group of 200 farmworkers and supporters began walking at sunrise along the shoulder of Benson Road, heading north from Lynden, Washington, toward Canada. The procession, chanting and holding banners, passed a succession of blueberry fields for the next 14 miles, finally reaching the official border crossing at Sumas. Pausing for a protest in front of the local immigrant detention center, it then continued on until it reached its objective one mile further on-the 1,500-acre spread of Sarbanand Farms. There, in front of the ranch’s packing and warehouse facilities, participants staged a tribunal. “We are here to assign responsibility for the death of Honesto Silva,” announced Rosalinda Guillen, director of Community2Community, one of the march’s main organizers. A year before the march, Silva, an H-2A guest worker brought from Mexico to harvest the farm’s blueberries, collapsed and later died. Silva’s death, however, came on top of growing anger among workers about their living and working conditions. “From the time we came from Mexico to California we had complaints,” Escobedo says. “There was never enough to eat, and often the food was bad. Some of the food was actually thrown out. Still, they took money for it out of our checks. They took out money for medical care, too, but we never got any. The place they had us stay was unsafe and there were thefts. Some workers in California protested and the company sent them back to Mexico.” Sarbanand Farms belongs to Munger Brothers, LLC, a family corporation based in Delano, California. Since 2006, the company has brought more than 600 workers annually from Mexico under the H-2A visa program, to harvest 3,000 acres of blueberries in California and Washington. Munger calls itself the world’s largest blueberry grower, and is the driving force behind the growers’ cooperative that markets under the Naturipe label. Marchers at daybreak. Lynne Dodson, secretary treasurer of the Washington State Labor Council, was one of the marchers earlier this month. As upset as she was to hear about Silva’s death, she says, she was even more outraged by what happened next. When they heard Silva had been taken to the hospital, 70 of his fellow H-2A workers refused to go into the fields, and instead demanded to talk with the company about the conditions. They were then fired. Because the H-2A regulations require workers to leave the country if they are terminated, firing them effectively meant deporting them. “If you get deported for collective activity,” she says, “that’s basically saying you have no enforceable labor rights. No right to organize. No right to speak up on the job. No right to question working conditions without being deported.” This creates a threat, she charges, that goes beyond farmworkers. “Because H-2A workers are vulnerable, employers bring them in rather than hiring workers living and working in the area. What’s to stop that from becoming the norm in every industry? Silva was only one of the many workers who die in U.S. fields every year-417 in 2016 alone. What has made his death stand out, however, is the way it has highlighted the conditions for H-2A guest workers at a time when growers and their Republican Party allies are seeking to expand the program. In that effort, they have the support of President Donald Trump, despite his otherwise sour anti-immigrant rhetoric. At a Michigan rally in February, he told supporters, “For the farmers it’s going to get really good. ... We have to have strong borders, but we have to let your workers in. .... We’re gonna let them in because you need them. ... Guest workers, don’t we agree? We have to have them.” Following the failure of the stand-alone bills, Republican Representative Dan Newhouse, a cosponsor of H.R. 6136, won a promise from House Speaker Paul Ryan to hold a vote on guest-worker expansion before the end of July. Newhouse then inserted one proposal into the budget bill for the Department of Homeland Security. His proposal would allow growers to employ H-2A workers without being limited to temporary contracts of less than a year. Critics charge that the change would make replacing current farmworkers with H-2A workers much more attractive to growers. Farm worker advocates call for a boycott of Naturipe, the label under which berries grown by Sarbanand Farms are sold. Honesto Silva was an H-2A farm worker at Sarbanand Farms when he died. In front of the ICE immigrant detention center in Sumas, Burien Mayor Jimmy Matta condemned the deportation of the strikers at Sarbanand Farms. In February, Sarbanand Farms was fined $149,800 by Washington’s Department of Labor and Industry for not providing required breaks and meal periods, an amount a judge later cut in half in July. The food was fine as well, apparently. “We were unable to substantiate the concern regarding the quality or quantity of the food provided,” ESD’s Craig Carroll wrote in an August 7 email. Assessing the size of the fine, march organizer Guillen told the workers’ tribunal by the entrance to Sarbanand Farms, “We completely reject the idea that Silva’s life was worth $75,000. No amount of money can pay for the life of a farmworker.” I Inicio I Locales I Internacionales I Nacionales I Columnas I Entretenimiento I Deportes I Clasificados I Publicidad I Escríbanos I Conózcanos I English Section I Advertise I Contact us I Archivo I Enlaces I El Puente, LLC. ©