On the Road to Albany in the Footsteps of Chavez

ALBANY, May 3, 2004 - At dawn, the worker hand-feeds 370 ducks, one at a time, before he sits down to his own breakfast, and then he returns twice each day to fatten up their livers for some of the finest foie gras in the Hudson Valley.

But after four years on the job, the worker, an immigrant from Puebla, Mexico, says the birds are treated better than he is. He earns $6 an hour, with no regular days off, no overtime pay and no benefits. "It's not enough for us," said the 50-year-old man, who asked that his name not be used because he cannot afford to be fired. "We eat, we clothe ourselves, and we send to our families the little that remains."

Four decades after Cesar Chavez rallied the grape pickers in California, farm workers are borrowing from Mr. Chavez's tactics in their own fight for better working conditions in New York. Just as Chavez led a historic march to Sacramento, the man who feeds the ducks and hundreds of other farm workers, church volunteers and college students trekked toward one another from opposite ends of the state, beginning in Harlem on Easter Sunday and Seneca Falls the next day. They converged on the steps of the Capitol on Wednesday.

Along the way, they wound through rural villages and towns, relying on local hospitality for food and shelter. In Schenectady and Amsterdam, they woke up to find their sweaty clothes had been freshly laundered. Churchgoers in St. Johnsville interrupted Bible class to make the marchers coffee and sandwiches. Massage therapists rubbed their feet in Oneida and Canajoharie.

"The workers take a grave risk when they march because they could lose their jobs," said Aspacio Alcantara, director of the Independent Farm workers Center, which helped organize the march. "But every time that people get together from their hearts, something good has to happen."

In New York and elsewhere, farm workers have long demanded the same kinds of benefits and legal protections that are taken for granted in other industries: overtime pay, health insurance, at least one day off every week and the right to form unions. Federal and state labor laws, dating as far back as the 1930's, have routinely excluded farm workers from such guarantees, largely because of pressure from the agriculture industry.

Since the mid-1990's, though, the Legislature has passed a series of measures to improve working conditions for farmers. The new laws, for instance, require employers to provide field workers with drinking water and access to toilets. A 1999 state law strengthened the federal minimum wage rule by requiring even small farms, which had been exempt, to comply with its provisions.

The Democratic-led Assembly approved a bill that would grant farm workers several benefits, ranging from overtime pay to the right to collective bargaining. But Republican Senate leaders failed to support the bill after farmers lobbied against it. This year, the bill's prospects are uncertain, although, for the first time, four Republican senators are backing it. Senator Olga Mendez, a Republican who represents northern Manhattan and the Bronx, said the issue was one of parity, not politics. "This is about equal treatment under the law," she said.

But many farmers argue that they simply cannot afford to provide the same kinds of working conditions as other employers. They say that they are mostly family run operations, and that their work loads are dictated by season and weather. They also say that because their crops are perishable, they could lose them if workers suddenly went on strike.

In addition, they say, many farm workers are already paid far more than the minimum wage of $5.15 an hour to compensate them for the hard labor, irregular hours and lack of benefits. In the Northeast, field workers earn an average of $10.02 an hour, and livestock workers make an average of $8.36 an hour, according to a 2004 report by the National Agricultural Statistics Service.

"You can't compare working in agriculture, which is a very unique industry, with a corporate job," said Chris LaRoe, a spokesman for the New York Farm Bureau, which represents nearly 34,000 farmers. "The workers are not going against the big corporate monster, they're going against the family farmer."

Mr. LaRoe said that farmers often provide housing for their workers, and that they have lobbied for other benefits, such as extending in-state college tuition to migrant and seasonal workers. "We need to keep the labor force content," he said. "We need to make sure they're willing to come back year in and year out to work on our farms, but we can't offer them things that would basically put us out of business."

Many farm workers and their advocates say such gestures are not enough. Brian O'Shaughnessy, director of the New York State Labor-Religion Coalition, questioned how farmers could cry poor when they receive regular infusions of federal and state aid: "How can they take, with both hands, millions of dollars in subsidies and then with their foot, step on the necks of farm workers?"

While most farm workers have little money, and even less political clout, they have increasingly attracted powerful benefactors. On May 15, for instance, a coalition of churches, synagogues, unions and civic groups will sponsor a $125-a-ticket fund-raising dinner at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City. The state attorney general, Eliot L. Spitzer, is expected to speak.

The farm workers have also found support in unexpected places far from the fields and barns where they labor. A Kentucky man, who said he learned about last week's march in his local newspaper, immediately decided to take part. He flew to New York City, boarded a train to Hudson, and hired a taxi to drive along Route 9W until he found the marchers.

People opened their homes to the workers, and they dropped a total of about $3,000 in small bills into a baseball cap that was passed around along the route. In the village of Sleepy Hollow, in Westchester County, the marchers came face to face with a line of police officers. They feared a confrontation until the deputy mayor stepped out to present them with a plaque.

When the marchers finally reached Albany, after 11 days on the road, a mariachi band played while supporters banged on drums and chanted in Spanish, "Long live Chavez, long live the struggle."

Dolores Huerta, who marched with Chavez in Sacramento, praised them. "Your feet hurt, but you know that march you did was not just a march," she told them. "It was actually a prayer that you took throughout New York, a prayer for the farm workers."

The farm workers themselves were far outnumbered by supporters, and seemed to shy away from all the attention.

Leonel Rosario, 21, a Mexican immigrant who picks apples for an orchard near Rochester, did not want to talk about himself, "I'm here for all the farm workers, not just me, who work from sunrise to sunset, and deserve equal rights."

The man who feeds the ducks every morning marched only five miles, on the last day, because he could not afford to take any more time off.

"First the ducks, then us," he said. "We're always the last ones. That's why I'm here to change that."