“The day of a pine worker can be rough and complicated,” says Israel, a migrant farmworker in Southwest Virginia. “Sometimes it is hard to even get up from bed because of how exhausting the day before was.”
With the holidays quickly approaching, many of us are heading to the store to pick out this year’s Christmas tree, but we rarely think about where it came from.
Christmas tree production is a growing industry in Virginia—we are one of the top ten producers of trees in the country—and that’s only possible through the labor of migrant workers. These workers come from across the East Coast as well as from Mexico, Central and South America, and beyond.
Two pine workers stand on a trailer loaded with harvested Christmas trees.
The work is hard, and workers can be taken advantage of by unscrupulous employers, resulting in wage theft, injuries, illnesses, and poor working and living conditions.
Click the link below to read a multimedia essay about how our team of community organizers and attorneys support pine workers and fight back against unlawful and inhumane treatment.
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