Compelling Photograph of modern farmworker in the US

[Lucky Luciano]

This is in Immokalee, FL where the tomato picking slave camps are:



So, you thought you had a hard days work, huh?

The entire photoessay is pretty compelling and heartbreaking too. This should be against the law - slavery was eliminated if I recall correctly...or was it not?

http://ciw-online.org/images/images.html

Photos by Shiho Fukada

I am much more centrist than most of DU...and even I can see that this is so wrong.

Edit: I should have made it clear that the workers will get paid by the pound. Every 32 pound bucket gets them 40 cents. So, if they pick two tons of tomatoes for the day, they earn $50. The live in dingy two bedroom trailers for $1200 per month...probably split 4, 5, or 6 ways maybe. No way to live.

[babylonsister]

1. Just wow! Compelling and heartbreaking; you said it. Those photos

are wonderful, and the story is dreadful. Thanks for posting.

[oldtimecanuk]

2. Ok but lets be clear on this... Are these illegal Aliens or legitimate...

authorized workers, that are allowed to be in the US? Cause there is a very distinct difference here!

ww

[Kali]

4. uh - they are human beings working their asses off so we can eat cheap tomatoes yeay round.

just exactly what is the big difference?

[noamnety]

9. Thank you! (n/t)

[oldtimecanuk]

10. The big difference is that they are lowering the standards for the rest of the...

working US citizens, thats what the difference is.... They are probably working for $3.00 per hour and lowering the wages for US middle class "Citizens" of this country.... Tell them to get their fucking asses back to Mexico where they belong and fight there own Government to better there working conditions.......

ww

[Kali]

14. I think you are addressing the wrong entity.

The workers are not fucking anybody. It is the the assholes that own the "farms" (multi-national agribusiness is a far cry from agriculture and it has arrived in Mexico too, so they are twice as fucked at "home"). And we are all complicit in that we enjoy our cheap food and take it for granted. It is a circular and complex problem but blaming the bottom of the hierarchy, the dirt workers, is pretty contemptible.

[eggplant]

5. And what would the difference be?

Are you saying that mistreatment of illegal aliens is somehow less bad than mistreatment of citizens and aliens with visas?

[oldtimecanuk]

13. I think that you read my post most accurately..... Get the Fuck back...

to your own country, and fight your battle down there to better your situation.... Stop trying to Fuck up the middle class American wage just because you have a problem with your own Government..... That is not the problem of the American citizen... I spent a great deal of time watching the Mexican elections this last round, and although the Mexican people did not let injustice happen in the election, injustice did happen with a President supposedly voted in that was not elected legally, but rather stole the vote IMHO....

ww

[Kali]

15. you really didn't address the question

what if the workers ARE legal? Give a shit now? Or are they still somehow fucking over the American middle class by willingly working for such low wages and shitty living conditions?

[NashVegas]

16. I Really Think You Don't Understand This Issue - At All

Whether or not these immigrants are illegal or not is irrelevant - the people who elect (and get away with!) treating laborers to slave-like conditions is the primary issue. To them, it wouldn't matter what nationality the workers are, they simply want the cheapest labor they can get, and (if these are illegal immigrants) will skirt laws to get that cheap labor.

[phusion]

18. how progressive of you...

:eyes:

[roguevalley]

22. I hope you were sarcastic. Frankly, given the conditions of his

hands, who gives a damn. He's a human being. This is the sickest foto I've ever seen. What the hell have we become?

[Mojorabbit]

3. This is honorable work

If the pay is decent and the working conditions monitored and ok. When I was a kid (fourth grade)I rode my bicycle and sold tomatoes from my family's garden. I had bags of them in the basket of my bicycle and sold a bag for one dollar. My dad was in the air force with five kids. My mom took in ironing and worked in a child care center part time. It was a different world then and I am only fifty.

[Lucky Luciano]

6. In order to earn $50 per day, they have to pick and haul 2 TONS of tomatoes.

They have no cars and can only live in trailers provided by the companies or other local rogues. The rent for these dingy trailers is $1200 - all per the essay.

[Mojorabbit]

7. As I said in my post

as long as the pay is adequate and the working conditions good. I was commenting on the work itself.

[oldtimecanuk]

12. This may sound very calous, but that's not my problem, nor is it the problem...

of the middle class American that is being sacrificed for the plight of the Mexican worker! Get your asses back into Mexico, and fight it from the front.... Don't make this a US citizen issue, because it's not.... If the average Mexican is happy with earning $1.00 per day, well that's their problem... GWB would be very happy to allow this to happen in the US, but it ain't gonna.... So get your ass back to your own country, and fight it there.... Don't lower the US standard of living because you are unhappy with how things are going in Mexico......

ww

[WillyT]

21. Yep... That's Pretty Fucking Callous Of You !!!

Speaking of callouses, what do you do for a living?

:shrug:

[Warpy]

8. I read somewhere that paying a decent wage would drive up

the cost of a head of lettuce by one lousy dime.

This is criminal.

[oldtimecanuk]

11. Just because the life of the average Mexican sucks... does not give...

them the right to come across the US border and inflict that suffering on the middle class American that is fighting for survival as it is. I understand that the average Mexican worker has it tough in Mexico, but don' inflict that on the American people...

ww

[Vanje]

19. Suffering of the middle class

Rising gas prices at a time when oil companies make the biggest profit of all time, ever,while paying almost NO taxes.

No minimum wage increase for over a decade.

Medical costs out of reach of most,while employers are cutting back insurance coverage.

Bankruptcy laws changed to give credit-card companies more teeth to shake down to debt-burdoned citizens.

Most privte citizen bankruptcies are due to soaaring medical bills.

Company retirement benefits stripped.

Pension funds raided.

College tuition rates out strip inflation.

The middle class is struggling to keep head above water.
Working harder, Getting poorer

The rich keep gettting richer and richer, and richer.



The steady unrelenting erosion of the US Middle-class is NOT caused by Mexican tomato pickers.

[Kali]

20. well said

[Morgana LaFey]

26. you are blaming the wrong damn people, bub

and it's kinda sickening.

Molly Ivins wrote a sterling column a few months before her death, when this whole "illegal immigration" debate cropped up (because it was election time). She pointed out that there is one simple thing we could do that would stop ALL illegal immingration cold, in its tracks: enforce laws and penalties against those companies who HIRE illegal aliens. They'd stop hiring; there'd be no jobs; illegals would stop coming.

She was dead right. YOU, sir, are dead wrong. The Repubicans WILL NOT enforce laws against hiring illegals because Republican-owned companies LOVE being able to pay slave wages to illegals.

[PATRICK]

28. A sucker perspective

in which the hungriest has the most valid justification- necessity. The loose border is a safety valave that inhibits social change AND wages in Mexico while ruining weages and social change in America on behalf of American corporations(whocap
Meanwhile the joival byproduct is the American and Mexican victims are tossed aginst each other in senseless rivalry. This is a collusion of two corporate influenced governments working against their own people- successfully, profitably. It is not the America but its leaders that have maintained and cultivated this situation.

The Meixicans in order to have hope risk their lives in the desert and with illegal traffickers and middlemen and employers dunning them every step of the way and back again. The massive inequities enabled by the safety valve actually make this profitable for the Mexican migrant worker. Working in a Mexican Ford plant might not be much safer or as easy to obtain and is paid in pesos nationally valued around underpaid cheap labor. Meanwhile Americans are counter intuitively encouraged to resent the flood allowed by the disingenuously weak American border and trade policy and by Mexican wage standards cannot compete for base jobs they are reluctant to fill at any wage anyway. We have jobs in our workplace that certian unions righteously shout for only to have the veteran members quickly slough off the assignments to the low seniority newbies. Not the workingman's finest quality work ethic. it is a top system problem and the few individuals at fault are business and political leaders in bed with each other and gaming the system sconstantly in their favor and increasingly aggressive against all working families on both sides of the border. Mexicans can retreat back to Mexico and build large homes near the border. Americans can bully and wall up the border and abuse the workers and never go near a vineyard except for a wine tasting tour. As long as no one simply holds the employers(the vulnerable, unmoving few) and the governments to real policy change in my book all the commoners are a bunch of rubes and saps to be fleeced- EACH thinking it is fighting for a personal advantage that actaully inhibits social change where it counts.

In moral math though, the one taking the most risks, working hardest, having the least with fewer choices is technically one over the middle class American(better educated???informed?hah) taking the consequential economic hit from behind where he ordinarily would not even look.

[NotGivingUp]

17. nobody should be living like this. why are we....the 99%...allowing this to go on?

[OneBlueSky]

23. one of my most vivid childhood memories is the death of six migrant children in a fire . . .

at the time, we were living in upstate New York in a community that included a good number of farms . . . every Fall migrant workers would arrive, and their children would be enrolled in the local schools, where they were often teased for their worn clothing and their accents . . .

when I was in 7th grade, a fire destroyed one of the huts that the workers and their families lived in on one of the larger farms . . . all six children in the family perished, and the parents were seriously burned . . . the tragedy had a great impact on the me and my friends, since one of the kids was our classmate . . .

[LWolf]

24. One more good reason

to produce as much of my own food as possible, and to haunt my local farmer's market, and buy as much locally produced food as possible.

These photos brought to mind, for some reason, "Ishmael" and it's sequels. Producing too much food, too many people. Factory farming and human enslavement. Not only are the workers living in slave-like conditions. What would the millions of city people eat if there were no one to work at these "farms" to get the food to them?

How much would a meal made from fresh food cost, if it were produced sustainably, responsibly, and ethically?

[lumberjack_jeff]

25. An important point from the essay

The Coalition of Imokalee workers has been around for 14 years, yet despite the union, their wages and working conditions haven't changed since 1980. Why is that?

Because there's an inexhaustible supply of labor. The value of labor remains near zero when it is infinitely renewable.

We can't pretend that social pressure or government intervention can have meaningful effect if we won't do anything about immigration. Our and Latin America's economies are both seeking the lowest level.

I argue that ending immigration would benefit both countries. If the tomato growers had to pay what the labor was worth, the price of tomatoes would go up. The value of tomatoes would go up on both sides of the border, and the farm economy of mexico would be better able to afford the local labor.

Essentially, the mexican farm economy would be subsidized by raising the costs of American produce. I'm fine paying more for chow. I'm not fine being unable to find work with which to pay for it.

[Blue Meany]

27. Back in the 1970s,

I spent some time picking tomatoes around there.while I was hitch-hiking around the country. The living and working conditions I witnessed (and experinced) became seared in my memory. They were truly Third World conditions--worse than what is depicted in those pictures and as bad as anything I have seen in poor areas of Central America and Asia.

Back then all of farm workers were black (I was the only white guy in the fields) and they all told me that, being white, I could get a better job at one of the vegetable warehouse in the area. The fastest workers then could make $20 to $30 a day, but most of them made less than $20 and I think I made around $10. What really galled me was that the farm owner would drive out to the fields in his air conditioned Cadillac around lunchtime to sell food and cold drinks to the workers at twice the price they would go for in stores. Since the workers had to get up before dawn to catch the bus out to the fields, and got late at night there was no opportunity for them to get to a store.

The rooms they rented to the farmworkers were overpriced too, though I don't remember the weekly rates. I wasn't willing to pay them. But I remember they were absolutely filthy and had no toilets, sinks or running water. There may have been a hose on the outside of the compound but that was it for clean up. And, at night, the owner of that place would go around and sell bottles of hard liquor to the workers at jacked up prices.

Even today I still get pissed off think about this gratuitious exploitation.