Have you hugged your farmer today?
Erin McCarthy
Issue date: 4/1/09 Section: Opinion
Many of you might not know this, but March 29 - April 4 is National Farm Worker Awareness Week.
In the second stretch of spring semester, we are all feeling the stress of difficult exams, lengthy papers and group projects. Most of us are having a hard enough time concentrating on ourselves, let alone farm workers hundreds of miles away, but we've absolutely got to.
Why?
Because farm workers made it possible for you to have tomato on your Big Mac, lettuce on your Cheesy Gordita Crunch and onions on your Whopper - all in the dead of winter. The people who planted and harvested those vegetables are mainly low-paid immigrants, and they lack the decent working conditions most Americans have come to expect.
Protections such as overtime pay and unemployment insurance are unheard of to these farm workers, and federal law does not even protect them when joining a union. According to www.gormet.com, law enforcement officials have freed more than 1,000 men and women in seven different cases of modern slavery in Florida since 1997, and those are only the instances that resulted in convictions.
Farm work is the third most dangerous job in the U.S., and as consumers of food, I think we owe it to farm workers to acknowledge their presence in society and work to improve their rights to live and work in acceptable conditions.
As college students, many food companies view us as their target demographic for marketing. We can use this information to help our poorest farm workers and demand reasonable living and working conditions for farm workers and put an end to unfair treatment under the law.
The Coalition of Immokolee Workers is an organization of tomato pickers in Florida who have been working for over a decade to improve their working conditions. Despite organizing, many of them still face exploitation and oppression.
A study performed by the Labor Research Center of Boston and Miami, Inc. concluded that in order to keep pace with inflation since 1980, the piece rate for tomato pickers would have to be 73.5 cents per bucket of tomatoes. It is presently at 45-50 cents per bucket, which means many of them are earning less than $8,000 annually.
In the second stretch of spring semester, we are all feeling the stress of difficult exams, lengthy papers and group projects. Most of us are having a hard enough time concentrating on ourselves, let alone farm workers hundreds of miles away, but we've absolutely got to.
Why?
Because farm workers made it possible for you to have tomato on your Big Mac, lettuce on your Cheesy Gordita Crunch and onions on your Whopper - all in the dead of winter. The people who planted and harvested those vegetables are mainly low-paid immigrants, and they lack the decent working conditions most Americans have come to expect.
Protections such as overtime pay and unemployment insurance are unheard of to these farm workers, and federal law does not even protect them when joining a union. According to www.gormet.com, law enforcement officials have freed more than 1,000 men and women in seven different cases of modern slavery in Florida since 1997, and those are only the instances that resulted in convictions.
Farm work is the third most dangerous job in the U.S., and as consumers of food, I think we owe it to farm workers to acknowledge their presence in society and work to improve their rights to live and work in acceptable conditions.
As college students, many food companies view us as their target demographic for marketing. We can use this information to help our poorest farm workers and demand reasonable living and working conditions for farm workers and put an end to unfair treatment under the law.
The Coalition of Immokolee Workers is an organization of tomato pickers in Florida who have been working for over a decade to improve their working conditions. Despite organizing, many of them still face exploitation and oppression.
A study performed by the Labor Research Center of Boston and Miami, Inc. concluded that in order to keep pace with inflation since 1980, the piece rate for tomato pickers would have to be 73.5 cents per bucket of tomatoes. It is presently at 45-50 cents per bucket, which means many of them are earning less than $8,000 annually.
Viewing Comments 1 - 1 of 1
Tim Hobson
posted 4/06/09 @ 8:58 AM CST
Dear Erin,
I just wanted to send my appreciation to you from Tucson, AZ for writing this article. I'm often overwhelmed by the news, and think that an issue is too big for me to make any valuable difference on. (Continued…)
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