H-2B

Scranton , N.C.— Georgina Ramirez and Brenda Cota came to the Carolina coast to work in a crab house. The bus trip took five days and nights from their home in Juan Jose Rios, Mexico, but they were excited by the journey. It was their first time in the United States, and they planned to make enough money picking meat from blue crabs to support their families back home.

After all, that’s what Monica had promised them in Mexico. They knew Monica Del Crois from the crab house where they worked in Los Mochis, and she told them they could make $1.30 a pound picking crabs for Carl Doerter in North Carolina—triple their Mexican wages. Carl came to Mexico, loaned them each $200 for the bus trip, and accompanied them to the border.

But not long after they arrived at Capt’N Carl’s Seafood, Ramirez and Cota found themselves snared in a modern-day version of indentured servitude. Doerter put them to work from four in the morning to two in the afternoon, six days a week, with only a 10-minute break for breakfast each day. He housed them above the crab factory, two to a room, with plywood walls and curtains for doors. He took their passports and forbade them to leave the camp.

“We once had a meeting with Carl about going shopping or dancing,” recalls Ramirez, speaking in Spanish. “He told us to give up on the idea of leaving. He told us if we left we would be picked up by immigration or shot on sight by Americans, because Americans do not like Mexicans.”

When it came time to collect their first paychecks, the women were in for an even bigger shock. After working a 60-hour week, Ramirez found $30 in her pay envelope. In addition to tax deductions, Doerter had charged the women money for food, rent, toilet paper, travel expenses from Mexico—even $2 for the gloves and $5 for the knives they used to pick the crabs.

Brenda Cota fared even worse. “I was not paid at all that first week,” she says. “We were supposed to be paid $1.30 per pound, but I never really made enough money to send any home.”

What happened to Ramirez and Cota is part of a recent and dramatic shift in the Southern seafood industry. Each spring, 42 crab houses in North Carolina employ approximately 1,750 workers—and today more than 500 of them are Mexican, up from only 30 in 1989. Most are young women trying to support their families. They stand at long tables all day from April to November, cutting heads off shrimp or scraping meat from crabs. Most are paid by the pound, many earning far less than minimum wage.

In fact, the hours are so long and the pay is so low that many Southerners say they simply cannot afford to work in the seafood factories. But instead of forcing the industry to improve wages and working conditions, a federal program known as H-2B allows owners who claim they can’t find anyone to fill their jobs to import foreign “guest workers” for up to a year.

Unlike agricultural workers from Mexico, the crab pickers and other factory workers receive no written contracts, no set hours, and no guaranteed wages. They are essentially prisoners of their employers: If they leave to look for other work, they can be deported. Quitting their jobs means quitting the U.S.

“These workers are at the total mercy of their employers,” says Pam DiStefano, an attorney with Farm Workers Legal Services of North Carolina. “The H-2B program enables seafood owners to displace local workers with people from Mexico who are desperate for any kind of work. It is a prescription for abuse.”

 

Four Hours of Sleep

Mexican workers aren’t the only ones suffering. While other Southern industries have abandoned their workers by moving their plants to Mexico, crab houses have hurt local labor by bringing Mexican wages and hours to the South. Seafood jobs—once the domain of black women from small towns along the coast—are slowly being filled by Mexican women forced to work longer hours for less pay.

Viola Davis has seen the change. A mother of three, Davis has picked crabs for nearly a quarter of a century, including 17 years at Sea Safari, Inc. in Belhaven, North Carolina—“the Blue Crab Capital of the World.” When she started working at a crab house at age 16, the plant was full of other black women. “At first I wouldn’t pick half a pound all day long,” Davis recalls. “But my aunt kept encouraging me and pushed me and pushed me. Then my pounds kept going up and up. Now I can pick 90 pounds of crab a day. You just sit there and do it.”

Working conditions are miserable. The crab plants are cold and wet; workers must dress in layers of clothing to stay warm. Cuts from knives and the razor-sharp edges of crabs are common, and many workers suffer from infections. “My hands sting at the end of the day,” Davis says. “Most of us soak our hands in bleach when we go home after work to make our hands stop stinging.” The high-speed, repetitive motion of the processing line can also cause crippling diseases of the hands and wrists known as cumulative trauma disorders.

Although federal law requires all employers to pay at least minimum wage, crab workers are paid a piece rate so low that only the strongest and fastest can hope to pick enough pounds to earn $4.50 an hour. Low piece rates combined with a short crab-picking season mean paychecks too small to support one person, let alone a family. Many crab workers earn as little as $4,500 a year—among the lowest manufacturing wages in the nation.

But over the years, Davis and other working mothers managed to carve out a significant amount of autonomy for themselves. They controlled the pace of their work, setting their own hours to care for their families. “I’ve seen women just walk out of the factory at eight-thirty in the morning to take their kids to school,” says David Cecelski, who helped crab pickers to organize in the early 1980s. “Then they could leave again at four to take their Mom to the doctor.” Crab pickers have protested workplace policies by vacating the factory for “extended cigarette breaks.”

Sea Safari, the crab house where Viola Davis works, is especially notorious for mistreating workers. Employees have complained regularly about harassment, unhealthy conditions, and unfair layoffs. The U.S. Department of Labor fined the company for failing to pay the minimum wage and for using child labor.

By the late 1980s, conditions were so bad that many local blacks preferred to commute 30 miles to other crab houses or fast-food restaurants rather than work at Sea Safari. Unable to recruit enough local pickers, the company received support from an unexpected source—the U.S. Department of Labor. Under the H-2B program, Sea Safari simply declared a “shortage” of domestic labor and began importing Mexican workers. The result was fewer hours for local women like Viola Davis, and more workplace control for the company.

To make ends meet, Davis works a second job as a nurse’s assistant at Pungo District Hospital. “I work from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. at the hospital, then I come home,” she says. “My youngest child is a diabetic, so I get her up, give her her shot, and get her ready for school. I get to Sea Safari about 8:30 and knock off about noon. When I get home, I take a nice long shower, take a couple of Advil, and then sleep about four hours. That’s all I need to keep going. With children, you just got to push yourself to do it.”

 

 

 

Time Clocks and Control

Sea Safari is “more or less typical,” says David Cecelski, who recently investigated the industry in the Pamlico Sound area of North Carolina. “Local workers are not being fired and replaced by Mexican workers, but their hours and shifts are being reduced. Since they are paid by the pound, most local women can’t get enough hours to make a living wage.”

Workers who don’t make minimum wage often quit, or are fired by their employers. Capt’n Neill’s Seafood in Columbia, North Carolina had no problem recruiting local labor when it opened for business in 1987. Unemployment in Tyrrell County consistently ranks among the highest in the state, and local workers gladly accepted minimum wage jobs during a six-week trial period.

But all that changed when the trial period ended. “For the first couple of weeks the company paid the minimum wage,” says Priscilla Ricard of the Tyrrell County Economic Improvement Council. “But after that they paid by the pound.” Disappointed by the low wages and poor conditions, local workers drifted away, often commuting more than 50 miles to service jobs in motels and restaurants. Capt’n Neill’s declared a shortage of local labor, and hired more than 50 Mexican workers under the H-2B program.

Observers also say the state has helped the industry create the illusion of a labor “shortage” by fostering racial and sexual segregation in crab houses. Local offices of the state Employment Security Commission (ESC), for example, reportedly grant white workers unemployment benefits even when jobs are available at crab houses. When Carl Doerter applied for H2B certification, the ESC office in Hyde County wrote a letter attesting that there was “very little in the way of labor for industry needs.” The local unemployment rate in Hyde County is currently 13.5 percent.

Replacing local employees with Mexican workers gives owners more than a source of cheap labor—it gives them greater control over the entire workforce. Gone are the flexible work hours and wildcat labor protests organized by Viola Davis and her co-workers. The arrival of Mexican workers was accompanied by time clocks and strict breaks. Since crab house owners control the housing and off hours of H-2B employees, they are ensured a ready supply of workers at a moment’s notice.

Such complete control has led to widespread abuse. Mexican workers at both Capt’N Carl’s in Scranton and Capt’n Neill’ s in Columbia tell similar stories of mistreatment. According to Ramon Ramos of Texas Rural Legal Aid, who interviewed workers at both plants, the women started picking crabs each morning before dawn, but were never allowed to see their own time cards. They were paid less than minimum wage, and the owners kept their passports “to prevent the workers from skipping out on them.”

Living conditions were crowded and smelly. The housing provided by Capt’N Carl’s “seemed a bit raunchy,” Ramos reported after visiting the factory. “It was right above the processing plant, on the water’s edge, and didn’t look too healthy.”

Carl Doerter disputes such descriptions. “This is the best migrant housing in the state of North Carolina,” he boasted to one reporter. Whatever the conditions, it may well be the most expensive housing in the state. Last year, Doerter packed 30 women into 15 tiny, windowless cubicles and charged them each $25 a week for rent— pocketing $3,000 a month in rent money for one large room divided by particle board and curtains. Officials are investigating whether Doerter is charging too much for rent.

Doerter insists that he confines his workers to the barracks for their own safety. Some of his employees are as young as 16. “These girls have never been out of the Mexican villages where they live,” he told the Raleigh News and Observer. “They can easily be beguiled and used by wolves. I made a vow to their parents that I would protect them.”

To many workers, however, Doerter’s paternal promise belied his true intentions. Alicia Asuna says she remembers one night when Doerter came into the communal kitchen. “We were having a little party for ourselves,” she says. “One woman was playing with him and inviting him to dance. He laughed and went over to turn out the lights. He called her and told her to come over and was making obscene movements. She told him to go to hell.” Other women report that Doerter offered them more money if they would sleep with him, and say he deported one worker who refused.

 

Hours and Pounds

Fifteen Mexican women are suing Doerter and others in federal court in Maryland, saying they were paid less than minimum wage, forced to live in substandard living conditions, and “held in virtual involuntary servitude.” Doerter acted as labor broker for the crab house named in the lawsuit. The U.S. Secretary of Labor has also filed a complaint against Capt’N Carl’s for withholding back pay and for failing to pay overtime.

Pay stubs show that the company paid workers on a piece rate. Under the “Hours” column, Doerter recorded the number of pounds of crab each worker picked that week. Although most employees worked at least 60 hours a week, they seldom collected more than $50 in wages.

“While I began slowly, I was among the faster pickers at the end,” Alicia Asuna swore on a Labor Department affidavit. “I’d pick 33 to 34 pounds a day.” But even at that rate, Asuna seldom made much money after deductions for rent and other expenses. “I left because I was not making enough money to have anything to send home,” she added. “Only twice did I send money orders home.” Georgina Ramirez told investigators that “one week we worked from 3:30 a.m. until 6 p.m.—four days in a row. We told Carl we were tired. We couldn’t keep working these hours. He said from then on we’d stop between 2:30 and 3:30.”

Workers say Doerter and his recruiter, Monica Del Crois, told them to lie to inspectors about their hours and wages. “Carl and Monica got all of us together and said inspectors would come around,” recalls Brenda Cota. ‘They told us what to say. If the inspector spoke English, we were to tell them we didn’t speak English. If they spoke Spanish, we were to say we worked 40 hours a week. Carl said if he were fined, he would make us pay for it out of our paychecks.”

Brenda Cota and Georgina Ramirez say Doerter fired them for protesting the long hours and low pay. “Carl told us we would have to leave, but we had no place to go,” Ramirez says. “So Carl drove us to Raleigh, put us on a bus, and gave the driver instructions in English.” The women had no idea where they were being sent.

A Mexican passenger heard Doerter tell the driver not to let the women off the bus. She advised them to stay in the area and to contact friends. They got off the bus in Fayetteville and made their way back to Raleigh. “Fortunately, we had the number of friends who had worked with Capt’N Carl,” says Ramirez. “We called them and found out the same thing had happened to them.”

 

Shake Out

Ramirez is still in North Carolina, waiting for the case against Capt’N Carl’s to go to trial. She stays with friends in a Mexican community and works at a textile plant, where she earns $6.70 an hour. Sitting in a crowded mobile home, she comforts her friend’s son, younger than her own children back in Mexico. She wears a t-shirt from work under a worn flowered apron and fingers a thin gold necklace which her boyfriend gave her for Valentine’s Day.

Since she filed the lawsuit, Ramirez often has nightmares about Doerter. “I am afraid of him,” she says. “My mother told me he might hire someone to hurt me. Brenda tells me to forget about it, but I cannot.”

Crab pickers may have good reason to be afraid, especially as competition in the seafood business heats up. Demand for blue crabs is rising steadily, and the industry is profiting from the boom. A pound of crabmeat can cost $15 at the supermarket—10 times what workers are paid to process it. But the U.S. supply is threatened by overfishing, pollution, and coastal development. As overseas competition from China and Mexico increases, industry insiders are predicting a “shake out” that will bankrupt several U.S. firms in the next few years. With tougher times ahead, crab houses in Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, and Louisiana are likely to speed up their transition from local crab pickers to H-2B workers.

But some observers say the industry would be better off if it organized a stable, domestic workforce instead of importing less experienced foreign labor. The problem, local workers say, is that crab picking simply doesn’t pay enough to attract good employees.

“To me, it seems the slow pickers need to be put on the hour instead of being paid by the pound,” says veteran picker Viola Davis. “They aren’t going to make enough right at first. A lot of young girls get that check at the end of the week and see $50 or $60, and they think they should have a lot more. So then they don’t come in as much.”

Pam DiStefano of Farm Workers Legal Services says the abuse will continue unless employers are required to provide written contracts and pay minimum wage to all workers, local or foreign. Until then, she says, crab house owners will continue to use the H-2B program to treat workers like machinery.

“They don’t recognize that workers are human beings with families and obligations,” she says. “Instead, they just import people from Mexico, a country so poor that people will work for anything. They bring in people who will work and work and work like mules until they’re spent—and then they replace them with the next 16-year-old who’s willing to try her luck.”