Say NO to Sweatshop Tomatoes!

While I fully support the CIW, I do need to put two of your "facts" in perspective. First, the CIW is explicit in their distinction as a workers' organization, not a union. This substantially decreases the risk they expose themselves to. Second, picking two tons of tomatoes is not as much as it sounds. According to the USDA, average acreage yields are approximately 30 tons. 2 tons of tomatoes covers an area of approximately 320 square yards - equivalent to 6 yards on a football field, for the entire width of the field. I've done my fair share of field work (I work in bean fields every summer for 8-10 hours a day, 7 days a week), and this is not that difficult. These misrepresentations substantially detract from a fair evaluation of CIW's real mission - eliminating the virtual enslavement of these workers. These human rights violations are despicable, and everyone should see the need to improve their working conditions. Please don't hurt the cause by using misleading scare tactics.

Dear anonymous: I am glad that you support the CIW, and that you agree that conditions in the fields are despicable and need all of us to join in improving them. I hope to meet you at one or more of these events. And, of course, everyone has their perspective. However, I have to take issue, on CIW's behalf, with a couple of your characterizations. You allege "misrepresentations" but you don't actually challenge any of the facts in the article. First, it is not a "misleading scare tactic" to point out that farmworkers do not share the legal protections for joining a union that most other workers have, at least to some degree. In reality what this means is that any agricultural worker in the US, member of a union or any other organization, is employed "at will" under the law: that is, they can be fired legally "at any time for any reason or no reason". The only exceptions are the few prohibited discriminations of race, gender, etc., which are very hard to prove. The average worker, not having studied labor law, may not know this legal doctrine, but we all live it, and I'd bet most of us know it. So your rather idyllic claim that not declaring one's organization a union "substantially decreases the risk they expose themselves to" gives reality a pretty wide berth. Only the legal protections associated with union activity, which agricultural workers do not have in the US, can make any worker (besides those very few with specific individual contracts that say otherwise) anything but "employed at will". Second, I believe it is your "perspective" on the piece rate (if it is indeed yours) that is misleading. Your argument looks suspiciously like one being promoted at the moment by McDonald's, which did a seriously flawed study -- and which has been soundly criticized, by the way, by independent economists and labor researchers. (They found the McDonald's report "So riddled with errors both large and small that it cannot be accepted as factually accurate on virtually any measure".) At any rate, the point of explaining the piece rate and the fact that it has not changed in decades was how low the pay is. A worker would have to pick two tons of tomatoes THREE HUNDRED SIXTY FIVE DAYS A YEAR to earn $18, 250, which is about midway between the (too low) federal poverty guidelines for a family of three and for a family of four. If you really do work in the fields, you'll understand that keeping this rate for 365 days in a row is not even possible. Once again, if you are sick one day, you do not get paid. If you stay home with a sick child or because of a hurricane or for any reason at all, you do not get paid. The piece rate is not as easy as you make it sound, either. A football field is 55 yards wide. Why you specify the shorter dimension and describe the longer without attaching a figure to it I'll leave to others to speculate. Another way to understand the area we are talking about is to picture a square patch of hot, densely planted tomato rows 32 yards long by 10 yards wide. If you work 10 hours day, that means you'd have to pick approximately one 32-yard row every hour of every day, without taking breaks. You could do it some days, sure. But it's backbreaking work, and people are not machines. Some days you just wouldn't make it. But once again, even if you do, you still get subpoverty wages. And the conditions in the fields, which you acknowledge are "despicable", do affect a worker's rate. The temperatures (I know from personal experience working on a railroad in Mississippi) are gruelling -- and without drinking water, downright dangerous. But once again, the point is that human beings deserve better pay for this work -- as well as much better working conditions. Chipotle's claims that it monitors "conditions" all the way back up the pipeline applies only to its stated concerns for animal rights and the environment. These are laudable sentiments, but they should alos apply to human workers.

Ricky, It sounds very much like one of our local trolls. It's the old, "say I'm on your side, while introducing red herrings" scam. Plus, it's his habit to attack anything you post, all the more so if it's a Feature. That's a pattern that has happened over and over again, going all the way back to when he was alloed to call himself JR. For instance, can ANYONE explain just WTF anonymous means by this: "First, the CIW is explicit in their distinction as a workers' organization, not a union. This substantially decreases the risk they expose themselves to." Unions have very little protection in this country and farm workers have even fewer, a legacy of racism originally meant to exclude largely black and brown farmworkers when America's weak labor laws were implememnted in the 1930s. The labor laws that do exist usually go unenforced and the Bushies are trying to gut what's left. If you're a workers' organization, you have even less than the minimal protection extended to unions. Whoever anonymous is, they know NOTHING about the reality of labor rights in this country. Or they are purposely trying to spread BS. Sorry, that kind of fertilizer won't grow any tomatioes, just little fat Rush Limbaughs. What is more, anonymous doesn't sound like he ever picked up a hoe himself. I worked walking beans myself many long days in summers past. Although it was a family operation, I can tell you there are _no_ 8-hour days on the farm and very, very few 10-hour days. And this is for a family operation. Thus, I doubt that anonymous has done anything on the farm, other than drive past a bean field. If you're just a hired farmworker, things will only be worse, as you'll be in the field at dawn, instead of an hour afterwards, and you'll work until dusk. Hoeing beans is nothing like picking tomatoes, to boot. It's all stoop and then lug increasingly heavy containers. No one needs the kind of back-handed "support" that anonymous offers, except him, as cover for his trolling.

Do you actually think that working conditions are UNRELATED to pay? If you're not an ignorant fool to say something like that, then you're a scoundrel. Do you actually know that people are scammed by piecework in almost every case? Do you really think that somehow every calculation a grower makes is not based on money? That workers should just suck it up and accept poverty level wages? Do you really think making sure workers are paid a fair wage would really make a big difference in the price of a burrito? That somehow consumers shouldn't consider whether the worker who produced what they consume received a fair wage, good working conditions, etc.? BTW, farmworkers would like to have a 250-day year like some American workers do. But they're too poor not to work 7 days a week when they have work available. There are NO paid days off. And where in the US can a farmworker get 365 days of work? Remember, we have growing seasons and climates that differ greatly across this country. These workers have to travel, chasing the crops. They sure aren't being paid for that time or mileage to get to the next job. And sometimes there just isn't work, but it is usually spent looking for the next job or scrounging the necessities of life since they can't afford to shop for them. It's also now very obvious that you never set foot on a farm, unlike your claim in the original comment.

Anonymous, what do you actually do for 8-10 hours a day in bean fields? I'm not going to diss working in bean fields as opposed to picking tomatoes, because both are hard work. They're very different types of hard work, though, and they really aren't comparable. I used to work on a local vegetable farm, so I've picked a lot of fresh market tomatoes. Frankly, I'd rather pick the fresh ones; they're easier. They're usually staked.* Processing tomatoes are not, so the person picking them has to crouch and pick through folliage on the ground to find tomatoes, and do it fast, all day long. While they don't have to be as picky as they would for the fresh market, I'm sure they do have to excercise some judgement about what to take and what to leave. And as a bonus, the longer you pick out of a field, the more tomatoes start to rot. The stench of tons of rotting tomatoes on a hot, stagnant day is not something you want to smell. Your calculations don't factor in that not everything is picked; a lot is left behind. And tomatoes on the ground are not nice and upright like beans; they sprawl, even determinate varieties. So the actual acreage that a picker has to cover is going to be greater than what you've calculated, although how much is going to vary depending on the crop conditions. It can vary greatly from week to week, assuming that each field is picked more than once. So yes, crouching and hauling a a 32-bucket of tomatoes all day, every day, with no breaks, is much harder than you're making it out to be. FWIW, the most tomatoes that I know I picked in one day was 340lbs of heirlooms off out of a 60-foot, 6-row greenhouse. *At least, on small farms where quality matters, they're likely to be staked. Most big farmers are going to have little financial incentive to stake large fields of tomatoes.

Details now confirmed. 6:30pm in the IMC basement, Broadway and Elm. Come and bring a dish to share - and af riend with a dish :-) We'll talk a bit more intimately about the CIW Fair Food Campaign. Local activists who want to eat lunch with the farmworkers, too, call me: 328-3037. And thanks, Babs, for the reality check!

hi, i couldnt find the original ny times article i read about a month back about mcdonald's selling of chipotle's shares, but here some other links: http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4155/is_20051026/ai_n16511342 http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE1DE1630F93BA1575AC0A... http://www.boston.com/business/markets/articles/2006/10/12/mcdonalds_com... http://www.licenseenews.com/news/news50.html