The Community News Service is a program in which University of Vermont students work with professional editors to provide content for local news outlets at no cost. WCAX was not involved in the reporting or editing of this story.
BURLINGTON, Vt. (Community New Service) – Out of over 200 migrant dairy workers surveyed in Vermont this year, 77% say they have suffered an accident or injury at work and 87% make lower than the minimum wage, according to a report published recently by advocacy group Migrant Justice.
Those figures are among a host of problems immigrant workers say they face on dairy farms across the state, including poor wages, unsafe working conditions, inadequate housing and discrimination.
The survey, done with the University of Massachusetts Amherst Labor Center this spring and summer, focused on 212 Spanish-speaking migrants working on farms who haven’t joined Milk with Dignity, a Migrant Justice program that commits dairy producers to providing workers with better working conditions. The group says it covers about 250 workers across 54 farms.
The new study follows up on a survey the organization did in 2014, which helped spur the creation of the workers’ rights campaign.
Activists say that outside their program, migrants face human rights abuses — and the stats in the survey line up with expert opinion.
“Most workers face accidents, injuries and health issues related to work conditions,” the survey says. Almost half of workers surveyed have been hit or crushed by cows and almost one-third face exposure to chemicals, according to the survey.
“It’s a huge number,” said Marita Canedo, who coordinated the survey for Migrant Justice, pointing out that the rate of injuries has more than doubled since 2014.
In terms of wages and leave, 95% of surveyed migrants work six to seven days a week, and those who work six days spend an average of 72 hours per week at work, according to the survey. One-third of workers don’t receive pay stubs — which the state requires — and over a third never get a pay raise, the survey says.
On farms that partner with Migrant Justice, 96% of workers regularly receive pay stubs, and 88% make over minimum wage, according to data the group put out last year.
Outside work, almost all of the surveyed migrant dairy workers live in housing provided by their employer, according to the report. Over 80% of the workers in employee housing said they have safety, hygiene and structural concerns.
“I see a lot of trends that have been going on for a long time and, you know, are unfortunately all too common in workplaces,” said Teresa Mares, an anthropologist at the University of Vermont who researches labor conditions on dairy farms.
Over half of surveyed workers said they face discrimination based on language or country of origin. Forty-one percent said they lack access to translation services and 15% said they’ve been insulted or verbally abused by their employer.
Beyond discrimination at work, there’s a heightened “level of fear that farmworkers often experience,” said Mares, when it comes to living in a border state where federal authorities have broader scope.
“Being in public in Vermont as a very rural state, as a very white state, people are very visible,” she said.
Estimates of how many migrant dairy workers are in Vermont vary. Academic research from 2016 estimated between 1,000 and 1,200 migrant dairy workers of Latin American descent worked in Vermont, nearly all undocumented. The Vermont Migrant Farmworker Solidarity Project, which became Migrant Justice, put the number of migrant dairy workers between 1,200 and 1,500. According to a VTDigger story earlier this year, Canedo estimated between 800 and 900 workers, not including their families.
Activists want the survey to educate consumers, Canedo told Community News Service. The goal is to show shoppers “the power that they have while paying for products that are with violations of human rights,” she said.
Some farms in the survey are run by Agrimark, which makes Cabot Creamery products, and Dairy Farmers of America, Canedo said. Both sell to Hannaford Supermarket, the subject of a series of Migrant Justice pickets through October in Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine aimed at pushing the company to join Milk with Dignity.
To conduct the survey, the advocacy group used existing networks of current and former migrant farmworkers to interview people, said Canedo. The group sees the method as a way to promote leadership in the organization, get truthful testimonies and connect with more people, she said.
“We know that a worker is not going to share about a crappy housing situation, inhumane treatment, with someone they don’t relate,” Canedo said.
State agencies like the Vermont Department of Labor don’t consider populations like undocumented workers enough when collecting data and doing research, Mares said.
“These kinds of data are so few and far between, and it’s really important that they’re collected,” said Mares.