Pledge Award Winner: Improving Safety and Creating Opportunities for the Local Workers in San Quintin, Mexico
In 2007, Seminis San Quintin set a goal to improve human rights conditions for its work force and reduce migrant worker dependency. Not only did they accomplish that goal, but they did it one year ahead of schedule.
Seminis San Quintin, a site that produces vegetable seeds in Baja California, México, became aware of its dependency on migrant workers and all the risks related to it: the site lacked a consistent, well-trained labor force, there were many accidents and quality mistakes, and the costs of maintaining the housing system were too high. As a result, by 2009, the San Quintin site aimed to completely reduce migrant worker dependency, reduce worker turnover by 10 percent and reduce the workplace injuries, illnesses, and fatalities by 50 percent.
“From the beginning, it was clear that the project represented a cultural shift for the San Quintin site,” Manuel Lopez, Seminis station manager said. “For decades, the living, hygiene and safety conditions at the site were better than those provided to many workers at neighboring commercial farms. And that was good enough. But the Pledge is not relative. It is absolute, making it clear that what is not consistent with the Pledge must be made so.”
In previous years, the site’s workforce was made up of 60 percent migrant workers and 40 percent local workers -- and had 53 recordable accidents. The quick turnover rate that goes hand-in-hand with a migrant labor force made it challenging to roll out and embrace safety initiatives. Despite weekly safety meetings, a formal tracking for safety observations didn’t exist, making it difficult to engage employee participation.
The team also faced two acute hurdles: 1) they would have to repair their image with the local workforce by upgrading the payment structure that made it difficult to recruit locally, and 2) they would have to overcome skepticism from colleagues that this lofty goal could be met in a scant two years -- previous endeavors to fix this problem hadn’t been successful.
After only one year instead of two, the team successfully introduced an updated salary strategy and engaged community leaders to establish an effective local recruiting strategy which completely erased the need for migrant workers -- something the site had never seen in its 40 years of operation. They also discovered a surprise they hadn’t counted on. They saved the site $100,000 a year in recruiting, transporting and housing costs for migrant workers. Additionally, employee turnover was reduced from 64 percent in 2007 to 14 percent in 2008. Lastly, after setting up a specific team to handle and track safety observations, address specific department safety issues, and tailor warm-up exercises related to the specific worker activities, the accidents and injuries were reduced from 53 in 2006 to 1 in 2008.
“The Seminis San Quintin site is located in the San Quintin Valley of Baja California which has numerous commercial farms, many of them relying on migrant seasonal labor and many providing very poor living conditions,” Lopez said. “We hope our project and the example we are setting can be a model to other growers in the region. We want to add value to the community and we are willing and prepared to help local commercial farms understand that Human Rights and profitability work hand in hand and that major improvements often require more commitment than funding.”
