Farming, American style.
(Getty)
  • In 2014, a major farm in Mississippi started hiring South Africans – always white – for seasonal work, according to a new US lawsuit.
  • The South Africans replaced local black workers, in a predominantly black area, and were paid more than those locals, the plaintiffs say.
  • Now six black workers are demanding compensation for discrimination.

Pitts Farms, a very large producer of cotton, soybeans, and corn in Mississippi used to have a largely black workforce, drawn from an area that is more than 70% black, according to a complaint filed with a US district court this week.

Then, in 2014, it started using imported labourers from South Africa. They were always white and, say the plaintiffs in the suit, better paid than were the local black workers – who in some instances trained them.

Now six of those local workers want to be compensated in a case their representatives, from the Mississippi Center for Justice and Southern Migrant Legal Services, say is just one example of the exploitation of black workers in the American South.

The South Africans were paid a standard state rate that started at $9.87 per hour in 2014 and rose to $11.83 (the equivalent of around R170 at current exchange rates) in 2020, the complainants say. At the same time the black locals were lucky to make $9 per hour for driving heavy trucks, while ordinary labourers got $7.25 per hour, and an extra dollar per hour for work on weekends.

The farm "intentionally paid its Black workforce less than its white foreign workers for the same or similar work. The white foreign workers were also given other benefits not provided to Plaintiffs and other Black domestic workers," says the complaint.

While some black workers were charged for using accommodation on the farm, the white South Africans lived rent free, in better housing.

Workers also say their supervisor on the farm "frequently used racial slurs, including the n-word, when speaking to or about" black workers.

According to the complaint, the South Africans were formally hired as "agricultural equipment operators" between roughly February and November every year, with duties that included driving tractors and repairing farm equipment. Some delivered water around the farm, or drove trucks to auction sites. 

The South Africans worked on H-2A visas, specific to temporary agricultural workers. In order to obtain such visas, their employers must "[d]emonstrate that there are not enough US workers who are able, willing, qualified, and available to do the temporary work", and show that American workers would not be adversely affected.

South Africans are very popular among H-2A employers in the USA, and special provisions were made to ensure they could enter the country for the 2021 harvest season.

https://www.businessinsider.co.za/trending/a-mississippi-farm-is-being-sued-for-discrimination-in-its-use-of-white-south-african-labour-2021-9