Editor’s note: This commentary is by John Freitag, who retired this summer after 33 years as facilities manager at the Newton Elementary School in South Strafford. His retirement plan is to farm (on a very small scale) till the money runs out.
[M]y views on undocumented migrant workers on Vermont dairy farms are colored by my own experiences.
During the summer of 1969, I took a job on the night shift at a corn canning factory in Wisconsin. The workforce was around one half Mexican migrant workers, one quarter black convicts bused in from jails, and whoever else they could get to do the repetitive, somewhat dangerous work. It was the only job I ever worked where you had your choice of getting paid in either U.S. currency or company script good at the company store, company restaurant, and for company housing. It was far from ideal working conditions and it was said the company kept a blacklist of potential union organizers. Anyone even suspected of being a troublemaker was quickly fired.
In the spring of 1976 I took a job on a farm in Vermont. My wife, infant son and I lived on the farm. It was a diversified operation, dairy, sheep and firewood, and I enjoyed the work and the rhythms of the seasons. But in the fall of 1982 I had to make a choice. By then we had three young children and were living off the farm in our own home financed with a mortgage from the Farmers Home Administration. I was working six 10-hour days, Mondays through Saturdays, and just doing the milking every other Sunday. I told the farmer I needed every Sunday off to be able to spend more time with my family. He said that was more than he wanted to give. The next week I found another job and gave notice. The fact that I had other options and could take them is something denied most undocumented migrants.
Indeed, farming can be the best or worst of occupations depending in part on how much choice, compensation and opportunity is involved.
Some good friends have, for over three decades, run a highly successful vegetable farm with greenhouses and farmstand in the Connecticut River Valley. They have employed many local people as well as documented migrant farm workers from Jamaica. While not ideal that these men must leave their homes and families for a good part of the year, it is a symbiotic relationship that in many ways works well for both them and the migrant workers. They get the skilled, hardworking help they need and the migrants get a well-regulated situation that includes requirements on pay, housing and working conditions. They are able to save enough money to own their own homes and land in their native country where they are among the more prosperous in their communities.
It would seem a far more just, equitable and legal way that would benefit both employers and employees to allow migrant workers on dairy farms to follow the model already established for fruit and vegetable farms. Like those farms there would be the chance first for qualified local workers for employment. If migrant dairy workers are indeed needed, they would have the same type of protection regarding pay, housing and working conditions provided for those working on fruit and vegetable farms. A time period of six months on six months off would ensure that these were indeed migrant jobs and those wishing to move full time to the United States would need to go through the established immigration process.
My father could never understand why I loved farm work. He had, while in high school during the Great Depression, been boarded off to a farm in order to help make a few dollars for his family. He use to tell me as far as he was concerned, “The only difference between jail and a farm was on one you had to milk the cows.” Indeed, farming can be the best or worst of occupations depending in part on how much choice, compensation and opportunity is involved. The proposal for having migrant dairy farm workers subject to the same laws as other migrant farm workers would definitely change the current power dynamics. While not ideal in many respects, this would be far better than the current illegal situation which is rife with the possibility of abuse.
