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By Jake Herron

In 1973 migrant farm workers, who move with the seasons, were families that worked under the supervision of a crew leader. But since the 1970s the family situations of people who do this kind of work have evolved as much as the farm itself.

The first migrant workers in Northeast Tennessee worked for Unicoi farmer Wayne Scott, who first started growing crops on his farm in 1958.

“I studied agriculture in college,” said Scott, who grew up in Carter County, where both of his grandfathers were farmers. “It was just sort of natural that I started farming. I was a teacher who had five babies. I started farming to supplement my income.”

When Scott first became a full-time farmer it was not difficult to find workers.

“We actually started on a small scale,” he said. “There was no real problem finding enough workers because we did not need that many.”

As the business grew, so did Scott’s farm, and finding enough workers became a challenge.

“At first it was not that difficult when we starting growing,” Scott said. “Our children would bring home their high school friends to work.”
However, as his children grew up it became even tougher to find local workers.

“One of the reasons we use migrant labor is the amount of local labor we needed was just not available,” Scott said. “Most local workers have to make a choice: Either work only part of a year on a farm, or work year-round in a factory.”

Scott employs 220 migrant workers. They help to work his 550 acres of tomatoes, strawberries, and other consumer foods. The season runs from May, for strawberries, to October, for tomatoes.
In the 1970s crew leaders supervised farm workers, Scott said. The crew leader was in charge of recruiting, housing, feeding and arranging for migrant farm workers.

“The first crew leader, Juan Valdez, had four children, and they came to work with him,” Scott said. “Then we started getting other workers.”

Valdez had a job in a bakery in Indiana, Scott said. He took a two-week vacation to visit his parents in Indiana, who worked on a farm picking tomatoes.

“He worked there for two weeks and realized he made more in those two weeks than he did in a year working in a bakery,” Scott said. “After that he moved to Florida and started farm work, where his goal was to be a crew leader.”

Valdez’s daughter, Elvira Valdez, still works for the Scotts as assistant office manager.

“My brother and father found out about the job from an employment office in North Carolina,” she said. “Wayne Scott needed a crew leader, and the employment office set them up to talk about the job.

“My dad was a crew leader in the fields and my family worked with him,” Valdez said. “When we first got here there were a lot of families working the fields with us. I remember the long summer days in the heat.

Valdez said her family worked on Scott’s farm from May to October. In the winter her family migrated to Florida and worked there.

What Scott has seen on his farm is mirrored in other areas in Northeast Tennessee, said the director of Telamon Corp. Migrant and Seasonal Head Start, which cares for children of migrant and seasonal workers in Unicoi County.

“According to our figures, more and more men with families in other places have started coming since 1999,” said Silvia Fregoso, who manages the Telamon center in Unicoi. “Since that year we have had many fewer kids.”

Scott said the makeup of migrant farm workers changed from families who worked together to single workers because of the U.S. Department of Labor’s H-2A program, which gives temporary visas to farm workers.

“Before H-2A we had more families working for us,” he said. “We used the family setup [with a crew leader] before and we thought it would be more stable. It just didn’t work out that way.

“H-2A is a federal program that helps us to recruit workers,” Scott said. “Other than that we do everything now that a crew leader used to do.”

The way the H-2A program works, migrant workers are brought to the U.S. from Mexico to work on farms during the growing season, according to the Department of Labor Web site.

When the work is done workers go back to Mexico, and then return for work during future growing seasons. Farmers must provide workers with meals, housing, transportation and other necessities.

Scott explained why he uses migrant labor. “Not as many people are looking for work nowadays,” he said. “Local people just don’t apply for jobs on the farm.”

Workers who come here have families to support back in Mexico, Scott said. They know they are supporting families so they work very hard, he said.

“It is surprising to me how fast they work with their hands,” Scott said. “They are efficient workers under any kind of circumstances.”

H-2A Program Facts

Growers must:
• Comply with all federal and state labor laws.
• Pay a special minimum wage, set at the aver¬age regional wage earned by farm workers.
• Furnish workers with free housing.
• Provide Workers’ Compensation for job-related injuries and illnesses.
• Reimburse workers for the cost of transporta¬tion from their home country to the place of employment and back.
_{Source: U.S. Department of Labor, Employment & Training Administration
http://www.foreignlaborcert.doleta.gov/h-2a.cfm}