"They have no alternative but to accept work under these conditions," Reinaldo Ledesma, a leader of the Unión Solidaria de Comunidades del Pueblo Diaguita Cacano – an organisation representing the Diaguita Cacano indigenous community in the northern province of Santiago del Estero. He describes the conditions they work in as "servitude."
The conditions faced by casual farm workers have remained exploitative while industrial-scale plantations have grown in size and number, harvests have reached nearly 100 million tons, and more than 30 million hectares – 11 percent of the total land area in Argentina – are farmed. Santiago del Estero, whose capital of the same name is located 1,150 km northwest of Buenos Aires, is one of the main sources of seasonal rural labourers who clear land, weed, manually spray or harvest crops for big agricultural corporations. Nearly all of the members of the Unión Solidaria de Comunidades del Pueblo Diaguita Cacano depend on temporary farm work to survive.
The seasonal migration of farm workers is a centuries-old phenomenon in Argentina, one of the world's major agricultural producers. But in recent years it has taken on new characteristics, with global human resources firms operating as intermediaries for agribusiness corporations. The recruiters offer the workers a contract for a fixed amount. But later they learn that the payment is conditioned on the entire group of workers earning a certain amount of arbitrarily set "points" based on performance and behaviour.
"The entire team has to work between 10 and 14 hours a day, Monday to Monday, even when it's raining, and without complaining because if someone protests, points are docked for every member of the group," Ledesma said. In addition, the contractors discount the cost of transportation, clothing, work tools and food - at higher than market prices - from the worker's pay. Ledesma said it is difficult for unions The worst jobs are the potato, asparagus, blueberry and olive harvests, he said, along with clearing out stumps and roots with picks, shovels and bare hands after the bulldozer has knocked down the trees and brush.
"They sleep on the ground under plastic roofs," he said. Most of the camps have no running water, electricity, toilets or showers. And in some cases, the workers are not allowed to leave the compound, under the threat of losing points. This was found to be the case in most of the camps visited in different provinces by inspectors.According to the Labour Ministry, 50 percent of rural workers are not enrolled in the social security system. Labour and living conditions are especially harsh among unregistered migrant farm workers from impoverished northern provinces like Santiago del Estero and Tucumán, and from the neighbouring country of Bolivia, who find seasonal work in provinces such as Sante Fe, Misiones, Buenos Aires, Córdoba, Mendoza and Río Negro. But the situation of registered workers is not much better. The great majority earn less than the minimum wage.
The Centre of Research and Training of the Argentine Republic (CIFRA), reports that in the last decade, agriculture has enjoyed "extraordinarily high profit levels, in historic terms." Not only have international agricultural prices soared, but production costs have gone down and the value of land has risen 4.5 times in the most fertile land in central and northern Argentina, the authors report. The study notes that during the 2002-2010 period, the primary agriculture sector accounted for 8.7 percent of GDP, while industry directly linked to agriculture contributed another 6.4 percent.
One of the companies whose workers are housed in these conditions is the local unit of Netherlands-based agribusiness company Nidera, one of the world's largest grain dealers. The labourers were found to be packed into trailers, sheds or plastic tents, where they sometimes slept next to pesticide containers. But the Dutch grain exporter, which is also a leading seed producer and distributor, is not the only company implicated. The Argentine agribusiness firms Southern Seeds Production and Status Ager and global employment agencies like the U.S.-based Manpower and the Switzerland-based Adecco have also been accused of labour exploitation.
"The same companies that push peasants and native people off their land to expand monoculture plantations later employ them as slave labour," Ledesma complained..
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