Workers toiling long hours in the sun for low wages -- exploitative working practices that mean they sometimes go home with nothing. Employers who say they cannot pay workers an agreed rise because of red tape. Multinationals who want to make big publicity from a token effort. This all sounds familiar. We pity the workers who have to live in such inhumane, exploitative conditions in the developing world. But this isn't the developing world. This is the USA in 2008.
Burger King and the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange push back on a plan to raise the wages of tomato pickers by one penny per pound. Advocates liken conditions in the fields to sweatshops. ... In November, the [Florida Tomato Growers Exchange], which represents producers who grow about 90 percent of Florida’s tomatoes, announced that its members had chosen not to participate in any pact in which a third party set wages for their employees. And if growers won’t participate, neither can the food chains that buy the tomatoes. "We are a cooperative, and we have a number of legal opinions that indicate there are serious legal consequences for participating in the penny per pound scheme elaborated by CIW,” said Reggie Brown, executive vice president of the exchange. He ticked off potential violations of anti-trust and racketeering laws as examples. For growers, defying the exchange has consequences: According to the Associated Press, the exchange intends to charge a $100,000 fine to any member who violates that November decision. -- Oxfam America
In the wild world of American fast food, paying workers more than $10,000 to harvest tomatoes is the forefront of an economic battle to weigh people against profits. McDonalds and Taco Bell have agreed - get this - to a one penny per pound increase for workers, whereas Burger King have said it is too difficult, illegal, unethical, pointless and a few other things they found at the bottom of a trash can. The farm hands earn on average 45 cents per pound picked, and need to pick 2.5 tons to get the minimum wage. These wages apparently have not increased in 30 years -- and this for people that take enormous risks so that we can eat cheap tomatoes. They are arguing over one penny, lest anyone should have the impression that McDonalds are the good guys in this story. For any European smugly reading this, there are plenty of stories of exploitation here too. In Britain, agricultural work is often undertaken by low paid migrants. They are paid below the minimum wage, charged outrageous rent for disgusting housing and generally kicked around by ruthless 'gangmasters' - men with vans who take workers to work wherever and whenever they are needed. The situation is so bad that the government has formed a Gangmaster Licensing Authority following the deaths of more than twenty illegal Chinese immigrants picking cockles in 2004. In Spain, African migrants work on building sites, with few working rights and many deaths.
Our culture is built on the web of poverty, and few of us are willing to attempt to contemplate untangling it. We would rather profit from the sweat of the unseen slaves -- even when they live amongst us -- than face the realities. If there is a global recession caused by the system readjusting from dependency on the everyday unthinking exploitation which allows people to live in poverty whilst our pensions are paid in blood money, then I say good. Bring it on.
