Transcripts For ALJAZAM Fault Lines 20151010

This was the first time in over a decade a strike like this has happened in mexico. In this episode of fault lines, we went to meet the people picking so much of the food we eat in the United States and asked what is keeping them at the bottom of our food system. Were about an hour away from the heart of where farmworkers have started to protest their conditions and were already coming up on a checkpoint, this could be an early sign the movement is starting to spread. Thousands of farm workers had been on strike for over a week here. With the fields empty and the main highway blocked off, theyd brought production to a halt at the peak of harvest in one of mexicos main agricultural areas, the valley of san quintin. Theyre asking drivers for donations to support their cause, because while theyre striking, theyre not getting paid. When they are paid workers here make an average of 120130 pesos a day or 89 dollars. For laborers, especially those with children, its hard to understand how they could get by on the wages theyre paid here. Which is why workers like ana joined the strike. Shes been picking in the fields since she was 12 years old. She works at a nearby raspberry ranch now, normally 6 days a week, but sometimes its everyday and even then, she says its not enough for her and her family. Because i dont know how much a carton of eggs costs here or milk, so im curious how that money spends, how do you make ends meet, how does that affect your budget . I dont see a refrigerator, so are you able to refrigerate food . Most of the people who live in anas neighborhood are also farm workers in the surrounding fields, working long hours where they pick produce mostly destined for the u. S. Ana told us she isnt sure how much longer her family can go without her paycheck but shes even more afraid of going back to the fields and to the same low wages. All that tension along the road is about whats happening right now in this building where protest leaders are meeting with authorities. With the strike entering its second week, workers finally got the meeting they had been asking for, with state officials. But even more importantly, with a representative of the farm owners, their bosses. After hours of negotiating, they reached agreements on a few points but everything stopped at one issue. On the average day salary, 6 would be less than fifty cents. Most of the workers in san quintin are actually paid more than mexicos minimum wage. But thats not difficult to do because the minimum wage here is only about 4. 50 a day. By this point, workers had been striking for more than a week and it had become a question of who would blink first them or their bosses and of how long workers could go without getting paid. Nights fallen and the negotiations are still continuing up the road, but workers have amassed here and there are hundreds of them, standing with their backs to the police who are just across the road. And they say that theyre going to stay here until they find out whats happening with the negotiations. As talks dragged on into the night and the next few days, workers lowered their demand from 300 to 200 pesos. But even that, they would find out, would be too much for growers. A source has just told us that the talks are about to stop these talks have been going on for days and the growers have offered a final offer of only 15 more which only breaks out to cents on the dollar. As we arrived, the representative for the regions growers had just walked out of the talks. Hey, why not take the workers offer of 200 pesos a day . Watch more faultlines on demand or visit aljazeera. Com faultlines. Its 5 30am workers are lining up to board buses that will take them to the fields for the day. After negotiations broke down, farm worker leaders moved on to talks with the federal government, to try and persuade them to help. And meanwhile, pickers returned to work, unable to go any longer without a paycheck even if it wasnt as much as theyd hoped for. With the strike over, we wanted to see what a day was like for workers in san quintin. So we went to visit the fields of one the largest growers in the valley berrymex. Better known to u. S. Consumers by their distributor driscolls. The workers hands are basically the starting line of the track that leads produce to its ultimate destination the consumer. In the states everything is so automated, you go into a Grocery Store and everything is just laid out with dozens of these boxes and all the food ready for you. You kind of forget that every single berry is picked by human hands, by a person and then is sorted and put into a box. And every box is opened up and every berry is looked at for Quality Control its really a human intensive process. I think weve forgotten that at todays Grocery Stores. Because its peak season right now, workers arent being paid a day rate but by the box so their earnings depend on how much theyre able to pick but that depends on how much fruit there actually is. Berrymex gave us permission to film on their ranches, but said we couldnt talk to anyone on camera. But as we walked through the fields, pickers told us how precarious a day can be for them when they have to rely on there being enough good berries to pick. Even with the small raise after the strike, it didnt seem like it was enough to help workers like theyd hoped. For everybody that thinks that farm worker is unskilled labor theyre wrong. I would challenge them to go to the fields for an hour and lets see if they can pick some strawberries. But the fact remains that the workers are some of the most marginal workers within mexico. Miguel is a strawberry picker for berrymex. Like the majority of farm workers here, he comes from oaxaca, one of mexicos poorest states. How was your day at work today, whatd you do . Most of his money goes towards renting this small room and paying for food and the rest is sent back home to his wife and family in oaxaca. Does that make it seem like its not worth it . Whats the hardest part about living here . How long do you plan on doing this . Berrymex has said that workers have the opportunity to make between 5 and 9 dollars an hour with the salary rise after the strike. Though the workers we met denied that. One misleading way to really say that workers make a lot of money is to measure wages at the peak of the season and what would a fast picker make. So you would really have 3 very strong months in which you can make a lot of money. However, remember that you dont need to eat only 3 months out of the year. The wages that are now set between 140180 it doesnt go a long way. Miguels words were echoed by other workers, like this raspberry picker who works for berrymex. She asked us to keep her identity anonymous because shes afraid of the repercussions for speaking out. For her, its not the pay alone but the long hours. And feeling pressured to work harder and faster. What time do you come home . We wanted to talk to berrymex to find out what it would take for them to come up to the rates that workers are asking for but they said no to our interview request. So we decided to head north to see if we could get an answer from the people that buy from berrymex their distributor. Berrymex and driscolls berries are two independent companies but theyre owned by the same family and in fact, berrymexs only customer is driscolls. So weve come to watsonville, ca to see if we can talk to someone at driscolls about whats happening with the workers down in san quintin. For weeks, wed asked them to speak to us about the situation in san quintin. We wanted to ask driscolls what they would say to the pickers in Baja California that claim that they cant make ends meet with what theyre being paid right now and what the company do to help raise their wages but driscolls says they wont talk to us on camera about this. All the investment, all the economic model is really for the attraction of transnational capital but how about the people who live there . Whats interesting though, the uprising in san quintin points to a big failure of this economic model and its the fact that you can work very hard and you will remain poor. They dont fear anything. Theyre consuming economically important species were offering something on our menu that noone else is offering. Gang life. This was our f gang life. Berrymex isnt the only company in san quintin of course. We wanted to see what it would take for growers in the valley to raise wages here. So went to los pinos ranch one of mexicos largest exporters of tomatoes to the us. Where we were given a tour by the ceo, Fernando Rodriguez and shown what a day was like for workers here. The idea seemed to be pick as much as you can and as fast as you can. Is there room within the profits of the company to pay the workers more than they get now . As a base, no. We did an increase of about 15 after the strike. But the margins are not so good, so increasing that amount can get us out of business. Rodriguez told us the costs of production and transportation make it too difficult to increase workers pay because of what his produce sells for up the chain. The margin of what i know is the margin on the supermarket its more than ours and more than the distributor and more than everyone. Why does our food system act the way it does . Its really about profits. And its really about these margins. And its really about who gets what at the end of the day. Moving up the produce supply chain, everything stops here at the retailer and the price they pay for a product is what trickles down to workers in the fields. The tendency of the industry is for the retailer to squeeze the supplier. So who does the supplier squeeze . The supplier squeezes the workers. And since the workers are the weakest in the value chain, theyre the ones who end up suffering the most when all this squeezing is said and done. This is a tremendously wealthy food system 6 trillion a year. Its just very poorly distributed. What do you think is at the heart of the strike, why do you think theyre striking . I dont really know its hard to tell because there is no interest on what the Company Think about it. It seems to us, having spent some time with workers, whats driving this is that they are having trouble making ends meet, that everything is going up around them except for their pay is what they feel like. Does that seem true to you . Because they tell us theyre having trouble making ends meet. Well in mexico, we are suffering inflation. Mexico is getting expensive, yes. Not just Baja California, its all of mexico. So that impacts our pocket. So you see how that impacts the workers . Mmhmm. Do you see how it would be hard to get by on their salary . Yeah. A month after the strike ended farm workers took the street once more. After leaders of the movement were able to convince the federal government to sit down to negotiations with them. And try to seal an agreement to bring day wages up to 200 pesos. A month and a half later, the government announced that theyd gotten growers to agree to pay a bit more but not the 200 pesos that the workers had been fighting for. Worn down and with their options exhausted too, they had no other choice but to accept the offer. The beauty for the retailer of growing in san quintin, mexico is 1 these people are not seen and the strike is not heard. I dont think that the retailers have to try very hard to obfuscate the source of the food that we eat. Thats the nature of this system when you pick up an apple, you dont see the labor in that apple but its embodied in that apple. You walk down the grocery aisle think about all this phantom labor embodied in all those products. We dont see it. For that big cup that you wear of raspberries, how much do you get paid for a cup . 9 pesos. In the United States those same raspberries will sell for 450 pesos. How does that make you feel . Ive seen people sittin there for 10, 11 months and not even know why they was in jail. If you dont have any money, youre finished. You get mental scars from this. How many kids have they thrown away . Faultlines. What do we want . Al jazeera americas hardhitting. Today the will be arrested. Groundbreaking. Theyre firing canisters of gas at us. Emmy awardwinning, investigative series. Another Horrible School shooting. We might not be able to solve the whole debate but there is something we can do. Im ali velshi. This is third rail. Russian intervention in syrias civil war is providing a fresh life line for Bashar Al Assads brutal regime