Contratistas: Work Providers or Abusers?
             My problem is the contratistas (labor contractors) continual abuse of immigrants that come from Mexico to California; I believe it is wrong. I am trying to address any reader of this essay in order to further educate and make clear that the abuse of immigrants is not right. The immigrants' wages have fallen while the profits have hit a record high. The immigrants' are also continuously cheated out of their wages by the contratistas. Farmers' medical benefits have decreased and in some places disappeared, and the laborers are forced to live in overrun and overcrowded houses. According to a San Jose Mercury News article called Farm workers face hard times; Middlemen maximize profits by paying as little as possible written by John Hubner published on July 8, 2000 "30 years ago, 80 to 90 percent of seasonal farm hands in California worked directly for growers,"(Hubner) however today only half do while "the rest are employed by about 1,200 farm labor contractors, or contratistas" (Hubner).
             The federal minimum wage is $5.15 an hour, however half of the labor contractors fail to pay that and "...20 percent of the grape growers who hire their workers directly sometimes failed to pay minimum wage" ( Hubner). In an article called U.S. puts growers on notice: labor contractors don't meet pay, safety rules written by Christine Hanley in the San Jose Mercury News, Hanley writes that "The majority of minimum-wage violations occurred when piece rates were paid, and in some these cases, employers tried to mask the low wages by recording the work of several workers on one worker's time sheet" (Hanley). The wages of laborers have also fallen in the past decade. The United Farm Workers or the UFW stated in an article published in the Jinn website called A Frontier Town in the Strawberry Labor Wars written by David Bacon, that ".....