Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times
The Mexican government and Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, have announced steps to improve the lives of the nation's farmworkers, two months after a Los Angeles Times investigation detailed labor abuses at Mexican agribusinesses that supply major U.S. supermarket chains and restaurants.
Mexico's secretary of agriculture, Enrique Martinez y Martinez, announced the creation Thursday of a "historic" alliance of produce industry groups that will focus on enforcing wage laws and improving housing, schools and healthcare for the more than 1 million laborers at export farms.
The group represents growers and distributors that handle 90% of Mexico's produce exports to the United States, which have tripled over the last decade and now exceed $7.5 billion a year.
The Mexican government and Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, have announced steps to improve the lives of the nation's farmworkers.
Striving for better working conditions
The Mexican government and Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, have announced steps to improve the lives of the nation's farmworkers.
Separately, Wal-Mart said it is taking action to ensure that workers are treated with "respect and dignity," reminding its in-house buyers that they should buy produce only from farms that meet the company's standards for decent treatment of workers.
Wal-Mart also said it will ask outside suppliers to certify that they have visited "any new facility they plan to use for Wal-Mart production" and that the facilities meet company standards.
Wal-Mart said it would send a team of senior leaders to attend meetings with growers involved with the new initiative, called the International Produce Alliance to Promote a Socially Responsible Industry. Senior executives have also been assigned to examine ways to partner with other groups to improve conditions.
"This effort is aimed at leveraging the work of a broader coalition to improve the lives of workers, including making it clear that Wal-Mart's standards do not tolerate working conditions as described in the L.A. Times," Wal-Mart said. "We do not want to work with suppliers unless they share this commitment."
The Times' "Product of Mexico" series, published in December after an 18-month investigation, revealed that farm workers were essentially trapped in squalid labor camps, often without bedsany , reliable water supplies or adequate food rations. In many camps, labor bosses illegally withheld workers' wages to prevent them from leaving until the end of the harvest season.
Martinez y Martinez called the formation of the alliance — which took place Wednesday at the Ministry of Agriculture in Mexico City — a special event for the agricultural sector and for the country, according to a summary of his remarks. Representatives of nine trade groups, including the Arizona-based Fresh Produce Assn. of the Americas, attended the event.
"We will continue making history in the sector with successful achievements like this one," Martinez y Martinez said.
Wal-Mart lauded the high-level involvement of government officials, saying it is vital toward making progress.
"We're optimistic and encouraged that the Mexican Ministry of Agriculture … seems to be taking a leading role in the [alliance] by working closely with producers in Mexico," Wal-Mart said.
Industry representatives gave few details about how the alliance would meet its goals and did not commit to establishing uniform worker-welfare standards.
But the actions, together with improvements already underway and the involvement of Mexico's Ministry of Agriculture, signal that the industry appears to be mobilizing to an extent not previously seen to improve the lives of farmworkers.
In recent weeks, industry and Mexican government officials have been preparing to open stores in labor camps to sell goods at discounted prices, breaking the hold of privately run stores known as tiendas de raya that charge inflated prices and where many workers run up huge debts.
Some of the largest export farms in Sinaloa, Mexico's leading agricultural state, have started remodeling rundown housing, supplying beds and establishing stable water supplies. Some farms that illegally withheld wages have switched to weekly pay schedules, as required by law, state and industry officials said.
State inspectors have been carrying out more camp inspections and cracking down on operators who transport children to the fields. The series also has helped jump-start the construction of several projects, including the opening of two soup kitchens and the remodeling of a day-care center, child welfare advocates said.
The Times found:
- Many farm laborers are essentially trapped for months at a time in rat-infested camps, often without beds and sometimes without functioning toilets or a reliable water supply.
- Some camp bosses illegally withhold wages to prevent workers from leaving during peak harvest periods.
- Laborers often go deep in debt paying inflated prices for necessities at company stores. Some are reduced to scavenging for food when their credit is cut off. It's common for laborers to head home penniless at the end of a harvest.
- Those who seek to escape their debts and miserable living conditions have to contend with guards, barbed-wire fences and sometimes threats of violence from camp supervisors.
- Major U.S. companies have done little to enforce social responsibility guidelines that call for basic worker protections such as clean housing and fair pay practices.
The farm laborers are mostly indigenous people from Mexico's poorest regions. Bused hundreds of miles to vast agricultural complexes, they work six days a week for the equivalent of $8 to $12 a day.
The squalid camps where they live, sometimes sleeping on scraps of cardboard on concrete floors, are operated by the same agribusinesses that employ advanced growing techniques and sanitary measures in their fields and greenhouses.
The contrast between the treatment of produce and of people is stark
Read the LA Times Report at: http://graphics.latimes.com/product-of-mexico-camps/
The difference [Chinese vs. Mexican wages]was about $1.50 to 40 cents (per hour) in 1996 and $3.50 to $3 now. Mexico is still more expensive, but not that much," Pascual said in an interview.