June 25, 1998
For Margie Pitter and Louise Seay, the future is unstable and uncertain.
After over 30 years of hard work, neither knows where her next paycheck
will come from or even if they can ever expect a paycheck again. For a
middle-aged African-American women who have known only one kind of work for
most of their lives, a change at this stage is frightening and unsettling.
They are just two of many workers, a large percentage of them over 50 years
old, who are experiencing similar disturbing feelings.
Over 1,500 workers are facing the loss of their jobs and will be the next
to be added to the state's unemployment rolls. A massive lay-off in Central
Florida is slated for June 30 - just a few days away. The
$60-to-$70-million dollar industry that is shutting down will leave a
gaping hole in the area's economy. Some families will find themselves with
no homes and no livelihoods. Environmental legislation costing taxpayers
$91 million and aimed at cleaning up polluted Lake Apopka is to blame.
The labor force being impacted consists of low-income, minority laborers.
These Lake Apopka farmworkers will find themselves high and dry when the
state implements its plans to flood the vegetable farms on the lake's north
shore.
In its 1996 and 1997 sessions, the Florida Legislature passed laws
mandating the clean-up of Lake Apopka, the state's fourth-largest and most
polluted lake. The St. John's River Water Management District was charged
with the buy-out, within a specified time frame, of the 13 highly
productive vegetable farms on the north shore of the lake and their
restoration to marsh lands. (These "muck" farms were created by draining
marsh lands during World War II.) The legislation included a mere $200,000
for job retraining for the displaced farmworkers.
The victims of this legislation are Haitian, Hispanic and African-American
men and women who toil every day in the fields and the processing
houses - planting, harvesting, packing and shipping the produce to market.
Defying common stereotypes, many of these people are year-round residents
of Central Florida. This population contains individuals and families of
all age groups, including the elderly, some with as many as 15, 20 or even
30 years of work on the farms and with no pension monies to rely upon. Some
are paying home mortgages, others live in farmworker subsidized housing,
some live in company-owned labor camps, and others rent homes or apartments
in the surrounding communities. Many do not own their own means of
transportation. The majority are people of color, all are low-income, and a
large percentage are immigrants. Approximately 40 percent are women.
The job loss problem of the Lake Apopka farmworkers goes beyond
unemployment. Child care, transportation, housing, communication,
occupational skills and limited education, limited English proficiency and
the need for relevant retraining programs are all factors that make this
problem a unique and extraordinarily challenging one. At the same time that
the state implements welfare-to-work programs, it is stripping historically
hardworking farmworkers of their livelihoods. The ramifications of the farm
closures could include farmworker dislocation, family disintegration, an
increase in spouse abuse, widespread unemployment, an escalation in crime,
homelessness and hopelessness, overburdened public and private assistance
programs, health care problems, home forclosures and community disruption.
Recent studies on and interest in endocrine-disrupting chemicals in the
environment pose some serious questions about the long-term effects on the
health of the people working in the contaminated fields around Lake Apopka.
Studies on the lake's alligators have revealed reproductive problems linked
to a 1980 pesticide spill, but no studies have been conducted to determine
what the consequences may be for the people who were regularly exposed to
pesticides in their working environments.
While the scope of the Lake Apopka restoration project is of massive
proportions, there has been hardly a word from the mainstream environmental
community about the farm buy-out. And, while the problem of pollution to
the Everglades from sugar farm run-off has gotten statewide attention, Lake
Apopka's pollution issue has remained somewhat of a local mystery, unknown even to some
residents of the area.
|
