Picking and Packing for the North: Agricultural workers at Empaque Santa Rosa

1. Picking and Packing for the North:Agricultural workers at Empaque Santa Rosa Presented by Erin Roder

2. Globalization from Above • U.S. takes a majority of tomatoes produced in Mexico and directs Mexican Agro export production from primarily U.S.-based multinationals • U.S. also draws in migrant workers as cheap labor • Whether on the Mexican side or the U.S. side of the border they are picking tomatoes for the North. • U.S. better wages and working conditions. • “Everything and Everybody goes North” • Why? • People cannot afford living from their own land, they need to work.

3. Empaque Santa Rosa: Primed For Export • 1of 3 largest tomato producers in Mexico • 1 of 5 largest in North America • Ran by 4 sons of the founder. While the 2 sisters “don’t get involved in the business” • Started small scale. Now very large corporation, 300 million sales in 1996. • Employs 12,000 temp workers and 850 full timers: 90% field-workers Plants and harvests more than 6 thousand hectares of field tomatoes, and 80 hectares of green house production. • One of few companies that has control over fruits and vegetable production in Mexico. • Supplies northern markets with 85% of its produce. • 90% going to the U.S. and 5% going to Canada. • Own trade center in Southern U.S. • Manages exports and imports of fresh produce as well as canned produce. • Deals with U.S., Canada, and other countries such as Ecuador and Korea. • Cultivates 2,550 Hectares of tomatoes, annual rate 165,000 tons.

4. Following the Sun • Agribusinesses take advantage of the diverse growing seasons within Mexico. • Known as Girasol (Sunflowers) because they follow the sun. • Recent years Santa Rosa has expanded its production capacity in three states: Baja California, Sinaloa, and Jalisco-maintaining tomato production all year round. • 70%of total production takes place in Sinaloa (richest tomato-producing state)

5. Globalizing from BelowFamily wages • Family unit is central agricultural production. • Migrating families often offer several family members as salaried workers to agribusiness. • Survival depends on combining income of several family members. • 1981- 2 minimum wage salaries covered basic needs • 1993- estimated that more than 5 family members’ salaries were needed to pay for basic needs. • Desperation has pushed them to move from harvest to harvest, country side to sties, and informal sector work to economic activities. • Become flexible. Ready to move day to day, place to place, whenever wherever if any kind of work is available. • Women at Santa Rosa reflect this constant movement for survival in their work and home lives

6. Sexual Division of Labor • Santa Rosa reproduces traditional notions of appropriate men’s work and women’s work…

7. Division said to be economic, political, and cultural. • Men: better at the heavier jobs (requiring physical strength), managerial jobs (requiring experience), access to technical info, and the “initiative and ability to exert authority” • Women: Are the majority of jobs such as planting, pruning, sorting, and packing. Make up majority of pickers. Claimed that women are more skilled at intricate tasks. Are more efficient, productive, and responsible than men. Seemed they are preferred because they are paid lower wages and seem to be more compliant. • 80-90% of labor force in packing plants are females. • Definitions do not recognize the social construction of these gendered tasks. • Women aren’t being offered the more highly skilled jobs because of their “lack of technical competence in operating machinery”

8. Job categories and division of tasks with in tomato production have evolved over the decades to reflect and reinforce institutionalized claims, sexism, racism and ageism. • 6 categories for women’s work with in 3 different work contexts. Each one is represented by a woman whose profile reveals both the commonalities and the differences among women and tomato workers. • Packing is important because gender ideology clearly reign. Here appearance is so critical to tomato exporters that there is at least some recognition of this work.

9. Sort and packers are drawn from two sources: • local girls living in the town • young girls hired permanently by the company to move from site to site, harvest to harvest. • Young see job as temp work. Good way to make $, travel, and perhaps find a husband. • Older women, who do not marry, have become virtually wedded to the company. No space or time for creating their own lives. • Packers and sorters make about 3-4 times as much as field workers, as well as enjoy better working and living conditions. They are required to work more hours. May work 12 hours or more a day, 6 or 7 days a week. • Companies flexible with rest days. • Some sick pay.

10. Packing VS Sorting • Note: Field workers make 28 pesos ($5) a day. • Male workers make on average 1200 pesos a week. (packers make600 to 900)

11. Benefits • Benefits are limited. • No paid vacation. (only fulltime employees…mainly men) • Worker claim no union (even though outside the plant mentions the CTM as the official union). • Get sick passes to social security clinic with doctor’s signature. Get paid for half a days work at a sorters’ wage. • No formal training offered. • Women learn by watching others or by being showed how by a friend of family member. • No orientation on equipment or chemicals. • People were getting sick from the wax that’s put on tomatoes. It made their hands peel. • In the end the appearance of the tomato is in some ways more important than the health of the workers.

12. Factories in the Fields; High-Tech Greenhouse Production • Future of tomatoes in Mexico seems to be in greenhouses. • Allows year-production • Total control of key factors. (climate, technology, & Labor) • Greenhouses are expensive. • Initial investment of infrastructure 30,000 • Santa Rosa only leases the land and brings in all the inputs from the U.S. Some equipment is from Holland. The only thing from Mexico are the table and carts made by local contractors. • Greenhouse production can be seen as the epitome of “maquila” model. (NAFTA moved from North to be applied to businesses in Mexico). • Maquila industries are characterized by 4 dimensions: feminizing the labor force, highly segmenting skill categories (majority unskilled), Lowering real wages, and introducing a nonunion orientation. • Only Mexican inputs are the land, the sun, and the workers. • 100% of produce is for export. (10% to Canada… most for the U.S.)

13. Most young people are taking the jobs. • Nothing else if available and their income is needed for their family wage. • New form of employment • Involves both planting and packing, falls somewhere between the field-workers and the packers at the larger plants. • Total of 650 employees from 14 different towns. • Less than 40% of workers are men. • Women have two roles: • Planting and picking tomatoes. • Working in the packing house.

14. Conclusion • There is an amazing load of discrimination going on Santa Rosa. • Racism is going on the indigenous migrant workers who are brought in packed trucks by contractors, without certainty of getting work, living and working conditions, electricity, stores, or transport. • Women bare the brunt of this lack of infrastructure- cooking, washing, taking care of the kids (even while working) and dealing with their exhaust and poor health. • Because their own regions offer even less opportunity, they are forced to endure these jobs and the racist treatment built into them.