Overview:
Watsonville resident and former farmworker Woody Rehanek is tired of berry giant Driscoll’s lack of accountability. He says the $3 billion company operates like oil and mining companies of the past – mistreating its workers, endangering their health and only making piddling community donations. He calls on the company to go organic near schools and to financially bolster Assembly Bill 3035, which seeks to build more affordable housing for farmworkers.
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Watsonville is experiencing a renaissance in the arts – from lowrider creativity to films and film-making, music, traditional dance, artesania, painting, poetry, murals and much more. In the glow of Watsonville rising, it’s taken me 25 years to realize that in many ways Watsonville is still a classic company town.
Like timber, mining, and oil companies of yesterday, Driscoll’s makes significant donations here and there in Watsonville, yet, as the head berry company and a $3 billion operation, it fails in its duties to build and maintain infrastructure or care for its workers.
Roads, housing, and human health are especially hard-hit in our community, as are soil, air, and water quality by conventional berry operations.
“No, it’s not us,” Driscoll’s claims. “It’s the contract growers who are responsible.”
Nice try.
If you live in Watsonville, as I do, you may notice that on evenings and weekends, the streets are lined with cars. In neighborhoods near me, like Vista Montana and Wagner Avenue (across from Reiter Berry at Nugent Ranch), multi-generational families live jammed together in single-family units. The abundance of vehicles demonstrates how many people (basically everyone) has to go to work to make the rent or mortgage. Across the river, lower-lying Pajaro suffered a major flood and loss of housing last year. Even before the flood, people were camping on the Pajaro riverbanks.
I see shades of shantytowns and Hoovervilles, those camps where homeless Americans came together to survive the Depression.
Research in 2018 found that farms in the Salinas and Pajaro Valleys need 90,000 workers, and that we were 45,560 units short of adequate farmworker housing. Only 10% of that has been built in the last six years.
“Employers have a business imperative to help create more workforce housing,” the study states.
When it comes to housing shortages, why can’t Driscoll’s use some of its $3 billion valuation to underwrite decent farmworker housing?
Instead of buying silence on so many issues with generous donations, why isn’t Driscoll’s investing real money in improving farmworkers’ quality of life by helping provide attractive, affordable housing with dignity?
Why doesn’t berry picking pay a living wage so that farmworkers do not have to triple and quadruple-up on housing to be able to live and work here?
The above study found that the average farmworker in our valleys earns $25,000 a year. About 89% are renters, with an average of 4.5 persons per bathroom. On top of that, 16% sleep in living rooms and outbuildings. Among renters, 54% take on extra tenants. And 56% of farmworkers live with both a parent and minor child.
Although Driscoll’s spreads money around buying local support, the company is not universally loved.
In 2016, labor practices in Baja inspired a boycott, and the Organic Consumers Association has one underway now because of land and water abuses in mainland Mexico. At a recent event in Watsonville, Dolores Huerta stood on the Mello Center stage and proposed a boycott of Driscoll’s because of its environmental practices.
It’s time for the company to step up and go organic near homes and schools, to sponsor decent, affordable farmworker housing and to help ensure that farmworkers are paid living wages and benefits so they do not need food banks to make ends meet and so that our aging agricultural workforce can retire in dignity.
When farmworkers’ needs are met, co-benefits include a more stable workforce and improvements in overall housing availability and affordability. As a company with international growers and multinational reach, it’s high time for Driscoll’s to invest deeply and systematically to sustain local communities, instead of milking them for profit, and then trickling down donations.
There is one bright spot of hope.
Assembly Bill 3035 (sponsor: Rep. Gail Pellerin) “would streamline approval to allow developers to build up to 150 units of farmworker housing on land within 15 miles of grazing or farmland” in Santa Clara and Santa Cruz counties.” The 15-mile rule would allow housing to tap into existing water, sewer and electrical infrastructure in already developed areas.
The bill specifically targets farmworker housing needs in Santa Clara and Santa Cruz counties. It is moving through the state Assembly and is co-sponsored by Assembly Chair Robert Rivas, and Assembly Members Ash Kalra and Alex Lee.
A 2018 Santa Clara County study found that 700 more units are needed to house year-round farmworkers and 1,400 units for migrant farmworkers there. Only 62 farmworker units have been built since then and renovation of five existing buildings has been planned to house 200 migrant workers.
AB 3035 is a great step forward, but its key missing element is full funding.
Driscoll’s can and should be part of the answer. Email your assembly members and Gov. Gavin Newsom to support this bill and add the suggestion that in the Pajaro Valley, Driscoll’s should underwrite funding not provided by the bill.
It’s time for the company to take responsibility for the town.
Woody Rehanek was a farmworker in Washington state for 18 years and a special education teacher in the Pajaro Valley Unified School District for 18 years. He is a member of Safe Ag Safe Schools and a founding member of the Campaign for Organic and Regenerative Agriculture. He lives in Watsonville.