by Sid Holt
He expressed shock when told that workers had a receipt showing they had paid the company’s longtime foreman, who departed this summer, $296 a month to live in the school buses. “That is not our land,” Schwalls said. “I can only speak to those workers who choose company housing, which is at no charge to the employees.”
Hamilton Growers has consistently maintained that it uses foreign workers not because they are cheaper or more pliant but because there are simply not enough U.S. workers. “I would prefer to have an all-domestic workforce,” Schwalls said. “We hire 100 percent of the American applications we receive.”
But according to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Hamilton Growers fired or pushed out “the overwhelming majority” of the 114 American field-workers it hired in 2009—but “few to none” of the 370 Mexican guest workers. In 2010, the company hired 233 American workers and got rid of “nearly all” of them, yet almost none of its 518 Mexican H-2 employees lost their jobs. The story was the same in 2011, the government charged in a rare lawsuit.
In late 2012, the company agreed to pay $500,000, without admitting guilt, and entered into a consent decree, pledging to be “a model employer in the area of anti-discrimination and equal employment opportunity.”
Despite the settlement, Schwalls said the government’s claims were “completely inaccurate and false” and that it was only poor record keeping that prevented Hamilton Growers from proving that workers had voluntarily abandoned their jobs. “It’s just a family farm,” he said. “There was no understanding of the need for documentation.” Wal-Mart, which has been one of the farm’s customers, declined to speak for this story, while Green Giant didn’t respond to a request to comment.
By the time Derrick Green applied for the job at Hamilton Growers in 2012, he had heard rumors about troubles at the farm but was assured by staff at the local employment office that the company had mended its ways.
“They told me they was good now,” Green recalled.
He lasted just three weeks, he said, before he and a dozen other Americans were abruptly fired for not meeting production targets.
The workers protested, demanding to see some kind of accounting of their performance, but the company refused to provide it, Green recalled. “We had a big argument in that office,” he said. The dispute ended, he said, only after one manager pulled out a can of mace and another picked up the phone to summon the cops.
Schwalls said he could not comment on terminations of individual employees but insisted no one was ever threatened with mace.
This month, as part of their settlement of the suit brought by foreign guest workers, Hamilton Growers and Southern Valley agreed to pay thirteen American workers, including Green, $1,500 each for claims that they were wrongly fired.
After their time at Hamilton Growers, Green and Davis returned to the employment office and were referred to J&R Baker Farms, another big vegetable grower in the area that has come to rely heavily on guest workers. In 2012, the farm applied for 160 H-2 visas, arguing there were not enough Americans who wanted the job.
Davis and Green were both hired. For the first few days, they say, the company made it difficult for them to work—by not sending the bus that was supposed to transport them to the fields or by dismissing them after just a couple of hours. On Green’s fourth day, the bus made an unscheduled stop at the front office, Green recalled, and a foreman told the Americans—but not the Mexican guest workers—to get off the bus. Nine Americans were fired that day, according to a lawsuit Green and others later filed against the company.
J&R Baker too has been repeatedly accused of mistreating both its American workers and guest workers. In 2010, the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour division fined the farm $136,500 and said it should pay $1.3 million in back wages. The farm eventually settled with the agency, agreeing to pay a fraction of those amounts.
In 2012, two dozen black workers sued J&R Baker, alleging that they were held to different production standards than H-2 workers and that many of them were unlawfully fired for not meeting quotas. The grower settled that case in February 2014, agreeing to pay up to $2,200 to each of the terminated employees.
Six months later, in a case similar to the one it filed against Hamilton Growers, the EEOC filed suit against J&R Baker in federal court, accusing the grower of giving American workers fewer hours than guest workers and then firing them.
Among the plaintiffs who received $2,200 in the 2012 case is Fuller, the woman who said she wound up homeless after being laid off. Fuller said her firing was particularly painful because of her long relationship with the Baker family. She grew up on the farm, she said, and her grandmother was a nanny for the family. She said she took care of Jerod and Rodney Baker, the two current owners, when they were kids.
Back then, she said, they were “sweet little boys.” Sitting on a rickety lawn chair in front of her tiny home in Moultrie, Fuller frowned. “They grown now. They can do what they want.” She paused. “They mean.”
In an interview, Jerod Baker said his former workers’ allegations were false. They weren’t fired, he said—they quit.
“They’ll say anything, believe me. Half of them was either on drugs or coming to work late or smelling like a brewery,” he said. “They literally come out here with baggy pants, and they have to hold their pants up, and the other ones either have a cigarette in their mouth or a cell phone. How are they going to be able to work like that?” He added, “Eighty-five percent of them told me, ‘Screw this, we’ll keep getting our government check.’”
Baker vowed never to settle the lawsuit filed by the EEOC, even though, he said, fighting it is costing him a fortune. “The word on the street is go get a job with J&R Baker or Southern Valley, work for a few days, and quit—you can go sue them and then get you a check. That’s exactly what’s going on.”
As for Fuller, he said the idea that she was his babysitter was “the craziest bull sense of crap I ever heard.”
The heart of the issue, Baker said, is that domestic workers “can’t keep up with the Mexican workers. It’s just a disaster,” he said. “We would much rather hire American people in our own country to work, but they will not work.” Without legal guest workers or “illegal people” to work the fields, Americans are “either going to have to buy all our food from another country, or we’re going to have to all starve to death.”
• • •
The H-2 program often pits one vulnerable group against another.
Last year, the South Carolina watermelon and blueberry producer Coosaw Farms was sued in federal court by black workers who allege their bosses told them “colored people just don’t work as fast as Mexicans.” The suit charges that Coosaw officials called its American employees “niggers” and made it easier for Mexican workers to meet production quotas. The farm also gave its H-2 workers access to nicer bathrooms, letting them wash their hands before lunch, the lawsuit claims.
Angela O’Neal, who helps direct the H-2 program at the farm, said she could not comment on the litigation, which is still pending, but added, “I can say that we do not, nor would we ever, tolerate a work environment that is anything less than respectful toward each and every employee.”
She added that “independent, third-party audits”—performed on behalf of buyers—“confirm that the company has a strong record of providing a positive and fair work environment for our employees, regardless of their nationality.” She declined to provide the audits, saying, “We do not own them and do not have the legal authority to share them.” In 2013, Labor Department investigators looked into a complaint that Coosaw had displaced domestic workers in favor of guest workers but found it was unsubstantiated.
Around Moultrie, the resentment goes both ways. Inside a sweltering school bus near the Hamilton Growers labor camp, Mexican workers complained that U.S. workers don’t have to work as hard as they do, aren’t required to work on Sundays, and often get released early—apparently unaware that the American workers want m
ore hours, not fewer.
Many American workers, meanwhile, are resentful because they claim guest workers are stealing their jobs. But some Americans note that the workers who replace them get a raw deal too.
“It ain’t hard to see. As long as they out there on that farm, they must work, and they never get to leave. I felt bad for them,” Green said.
His uncle-in-law, Davis, said he feared that the lack of jobs might eventually force him to leave his home. Standing next to a trailer he is refurbishing on a family plot of land, Davis gestured out at the lawn and the quiet country roads slicing through green fields that stretch to the horizon.
“This is my country,” he said, “and I can’t get a break for nothing.”
Cosmopolitan
FINALIST—PUBLIC INTEREST
The result of a year-long investigation, “‘Pregnant? Scared? Need Options? Too Bad’” was one of three stories written by Meaghan Winter and published by Cosmopolitan that examined the practices of crisis pregnancy centers (the other stories—“‘Save the Mother, Save the Baby’” and “‘I Felt Set Up’”—are posted in the Politics section of Cosmopolitan.com). Often operated by religious organizations opposed not only to abortion but to any form of sexual activity outside heterosexual marriage, these centers are frequently disguised as medical clinics, largely unregulated, and supported by a network of pro-life donors, lobbyists, and legislators. The Ellie judges described Winter’s reporting as “relentless” and her discovery of federal and state funding of crisis pregnancy centers “troubling.” This was Cosmopolitan’s sixth Ellie nomination in the last three years and its first for Public Interest.
Meaghan Winter
“Pregnant? Scared? Need Options? Too Bad”
Three hundred fifty miles of cattle pasture and cornfields and single-stoplight towns separate Rapid City, near the western edge of South Dakota, from Sioux Falls, near its eastern border. That distance takes on new significance when a woman living in Rapid City needs an abortion.
The state’s only abortion clinic is in Sioux Falls. In 2011, state lawmakers began requiring women to wait seventy-two hours between pre-abortion counseling and procedures. That means women who live in the state’s western reaches must make four drives, totaling twenty-four hours, or be away from home for at least three days—weekends and holidays don’t count toward the waiting period. Women pay for a hotel, miss school or work, find child care or bring kids. South Dakota doesn’t have any doctors who do abortions; physicians fly in from surrounding states. With limited scheduling, the Sioux Falls Planned Parenthood is often booked weeks in advance.
In Rapid City one Thursday last summer, a twenty-six-year-old bartender and student I’ll call Nicole—her middle name—had a positive pregnancy test. Usually even-keeled, almost unflappable, Nicole says that afternoon, “I was just bawling.” But as soon as she “got over the initial shock,” she knew she wanted an abortion. She was committed to finishing school, and her boyfriend had recently moved to another state.
Nicole drove to a childhood friend’s apartment, where they began making phone calls. She knew her best option was the Sioux Falls clinic—the next-closest option was 400 miles away, in Colorado. It didn’t have an appointment for three weeks. Nicole wasn’t sure she could wait that long; she wanted to use the abortion pill, which can’t be taken after nine weeks of pregnancy. She knew an ultrasound would reveal exactly how far along she was, but she got conflicting information on whether her insurance would cover it. Later that night, her friend sent her an instant message with a link to the website for a nearby Care Net center that advertised free ultrasounds alongside information on “emergency contraception” and “abortion education.”
“Just to let you know, they’re probably going to be pro-life,” her friend typed.
The next morning, Nicole called Care Net. “I didn’t have anywhere else to go,” she explains. On Tuesday, Nicole drove alone down Main Street, to a one-story office in a shopping center with a credit union and a KFC.
Inside, a receptionist behind a counter instructed Nicole to provide a urine sample in the bathroom. Then a nurse and a younger woman, about Nicole’s age, brought her to a small room with a couch. For forty-five minutes, they showed her Bible verses and pamphlets on adoption and an embryo’s development. Nicole says, “The nurse really, really slowed down during the fetal pain part. She said, ‘Here are the fingertips. The baby feels everything you’re feeling.’” They told Nicole having an abortion might complicate future pregnancies and cause suicidal thoughts—both common myths. This is BS, Nicole kept thinking, but you’re trying to make me think it’s true.
During the ultrasound, the nurse said the images weren’t clear and she needed to do a transvaginal scan. “She didn’t explain anything or say, ‘We’re going to stick this cone inside you,’” Nicole says, agitated. The nurse displayed the embryo on a screen, pointed to its features, and printed the images. The younger women prayed over Nicole and asked to be invited to her baby shower. The next week, ultrasound results in hand, Nicole drove more than six hours, following a two-lane highway across Wyoming and staying overnight in a hotel, to reach an abortion provider in Denver.
Stacey Wollman, CEO of the Care Net center in Rapid City, says all clients are informed that the center is a faith-based Christian ministry and can opt out of discussing faith, being prayed over, or receiving follow-up calls. She disputes that the staff would ever point out fingertips while explaining fetal development, discuss a baby feeling the sensations the mom feels, or ask to be invited to a shower.
Nicole says the nurse from Care Net called her every day for two weeks. Then once a month, she called from a restricted number and left messages saying, “I just want to chitchat.” Annoyed, Nicole never answered or complained. The calls kept coming all the way until February—around when she would have delivered.
Every year, thousands of women like Nicole seek help at what appear to be secular medical clinics but are actually Christian antiabortion centers. Throughout the United States, there are at least 3,000 crisis pregnancy centers, many of which belong to two religious antiabortion organizations—Care Net and Heartbeat International. Some women arrive at those centers in search of Christian counseling or free diapers, but the vast majority are looking for professional advice to help them navigate unplanned pregnancies.
Increasingly, pregnancy centers are what’s available. Around the country, access to abortion has eroded dramatically. As abortion regulations shutter medical clinics offering the full range of options, a woman facing an unplanned pregnancy finds herself in a very different landscape, one in which a pregnancy center is her most visible, most affordable—and sometimes the only—place to turn.
This isn’t happening only in red states. Nationwide, antiabortion centers now outnumber abortion clinics three to one. They’re in all kinds of towns, from Beverly Hills, California, to Shreveport, Louisiana. You’ve seen their ads on highway billboards and online: “Pregnant? Scared? We offer confidential counseling.” Search Google Maps for abortion help in almost any town and you’ll find local centers with pro-choice-seeming names and websites that say, “Need someone to talk to about your options? Contact us,” or, “We inform. You decide.”
Centers increasingly look just like doctor’s offices with ultrasound rooms and staff in scrubs. Yet they do not provide or refer for contraception or abortion. Many pregnancy-center counselors, even those who provide medical information, are not licensed. And even some workers who are licensed, such as nurses and ultrasound technicians, repeat myths about abortion and contraception. Last year, I attended Heartbeat International’s annual conference, where nurses told me that birth control “introduces too many chemicals into your body” and that women “never recover” emotionally from abortion.
The antiabortion movement regularly presents pregnancy centers as a scattering of kindly women working with shoestring budgets. In the press or on websites, center directors use language about being small, humble grassroots
organizations, without explaining national affiliations. Pro-life strategy documents reveal how, historically, the pregnancy-center movement “purposely remained underground, avoiding the limelight and the controversy of the pro-life political activism.”
Many pregnancy centers are, in fact, run by religious women who want to help. But they also are an arm of a sophisticated political movement. A yearlong investigation of crisis pregnancy centers—including dozens of interviews with center staff and volunteers, antiabortion and reproductive-rights advocates, lobbyists, elected officials, and women who have visited centers across the country—reveals that behind the scenes, an orchestrated network of donors, lawyers, lobbyists, and state representatives supports the individual centers. The national organizations Care Net and Heartbeat International train thousands of center staff to attract and dissuade “abortion-minded women.” Online for Life, a deep-pocketed tech nonprofit funded by Texas billionaire Farris Wilks, helps pregnancy centers market themselves to “abortion-determined women” searching online for abortion-related terms, according to an Inside Philanthropy report.
At the Heartbeat conference, pregnancy-center staff referred to centers as “ministries” and discussed their underlying goal—shepherding spiritually “broken” women toward Christ. The majority of pregnancy-center staff I’ve met are Evangelical Christians who say they’re dedicated to helping women escape a cycle of premarital sex and spiritual pain. Yet at the conference, Heartbeat speakers coached center staff to scrub their websites of Christian references. Speakers also recommended pregnancy-center staff to discourage women and girls from not only abortion but also contraception by emphasizing disproven “negative consequences” and encouraging “sexual integrity,” meaning sex only within heterosexual marriage.
