A 12-week strike by farmworkers in the San Quintin Valley of Baja California, 200 miles south of San Diego, disrupted produce markets across North America and forced concessions from powerful agribusinesses a year ago. The Los Angeles Times says the historic agreement by growers to raise wages and guarantee benefits for farmworkers “has played out unevenly across the 50-mile San Quintin Valley, with conditions often varying from field to field, grower to grower.”
BerryMex, the biggest grower in the valley and a major supplier to U.S. brand Driscoll’s, now pays some of the highest farmworker wages, $12 a day, anywhere in Mexico, says the Times. “And many growers now pay social security and other benefits. But others continue skirting the legally required benefits and resisting the [wage] increases … And government officials, who were supposed to enforce labor laws, have provided only spotty oversight, pickers, growers and labor leaders say.”
One grower, Rancho Los Pinos, raised its wages to $8 a day, despite claims by labor leaders that it should be $10 for a large farm like Los Pinos. But Los PInos says the lower raise is justified because it also provides housing and other benefits for 1,200 people. Critics say the farm is bringing in workers from impoverished areas as a way to hold down wages and replace local workers who want better wages. At a farm owned by the president of the trade group that represents most of the farms in the region, workers say they are paid in cash and do not receive benefits such as social security or vacation.