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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] Food industry abuses workers as matter of course
  • Date: Sun, 07 Sep 2008 14:41:39 -0600


"Working conditions get little play in sustainable-agriculture discussions.
Organic standards make no mention of labor practices; and when foodies swoon
over heirloom tomatoes or a fabulous wine, they've learned to obsess over
where the fruit was grown -- but they rarely consider the folks who actually
picked it."

Slow Food Nation: Farmworkers at the table
Schlosser: Food industry abuses workers as matter of course
Posted by Tom Philpott at 12:47 PM on 04 Sep 2008
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/9/3/1515/06648

Of all the panels I attended at Slow Food Nation's series, the most powerful
for me was the one convened by Eric Schlosser on creating a "new, fair food
system." It featured labor-rights advocates from California and Florida --
the poles of industrial fruit-and-veg production in the U.S.

Working conditions get little play in sustainable-agriculture discussions.
Organic standards make no mention of labor practices; and when foodies swoon
over heirloom tomatoes or a fabulous wine, they've learned to obsess over
where the fruit was grown -- but they rarely consider the folks who actually
picked it.

Schlosser -- author of Reefer Madness (which contains a blistering section on
California strawberry pickers) -- is doing his part to change that. Again and
again at this massive foodie confab, Schlosser drove home the point: our food
industry thrives on nearly unchecked human exploitation. (Watch soon for
Grist's interview with him.) Indeed, Schlosser emphasized, the very foods
that we're constantly urged to eat more of because they're healthy -- fruit,
vegetables, nuts -- are typically grown and harvested under downright brutal
conditions.

He set up the panel with a series of stark statements.

* "Slavery has returned to Florida." Over and over again over the last
decade, Sunshine State growers have been caught holding workers against their
will, underpaying paying even by the rock-bottom standards of the area, and
often physically abusing them. Just on Tuesday, five residents of Immokolee,
Florida plead guilty of "enslaving Mexican and Guatemalan workers,
brutalizing them and forcing them to work in farm fields," the Fort Myers
News Press reports.
* Slavery is the extreme case; but the average situation is appalling,
too. According to Schlosser, the 1.2 million workers who staff the nation's
farms bring in a median annual wage of $12,000. The poverty line for annual
wages is $17,000.
* In the meat-packing industry -- which, as I rarely tire of pointing
out, is dominated by a few very large corporations -- inflation-adjusted
average wages have fallen by half in the last 25 years. Half.
* Schlosser says the restaurant industry employs some 12-13 million
workers -- more than any other industry in our services-dominated economy.
"No industry has done more to fight raises in the national minimum wage," he
adds.

After Schlosser's brief, pungent setup, the labor organizers took over. I
couldn't stick around for presentations by Maricela Morales of the Central
Coast Alliance United for A Sustainable Economy or Agustin Ramirez of the
International Longshore and Warehouse Union (who talked about working
conditions in California's multibillion-dollar almond industry).

But I did get to hear from Lucas Benitez of the Coalition of Immokalee
Workers and Jose Padilla of California Rural Legal Assistance.

Lucas revealed some news I'll report in a separate post; look for my video
interview with him on conditions in Florida's tomato fields soon. One
metaphor from Lucas: Florida agriculture is like a hamburger in a bun,
squeezed from the bottom by input/machinery suppliers like John Deere and
Monsanto, and from the top by mega-buyers like Wal-Mart and the fast-food
chains.

"Who pays the price of this double-squeeze? Workers," Lucas said. Beautifully
put.

Padilla of California Rural Legal Assistance gave a devastating talk on the
state of farmwork in California. According to Padilla, 97 percent of
California farmworkers are foreign-born, and 38 percent -- two in five --
live in poverty. He reckons their average median income is between $10,000
and $13,000.

In terms of fatalities, farm work is the second most-dangerous job in the
United States, outpaced only by mining. In terms of disabilities, farm work
trails only construction.

Padilla went on to lay out, naming names, the six farm workers in the last
four months who have died of heat exposure in California -- typically picking
table grapes in heat well over 100 degrees.





  • [Livingontheland] Food industry abuses workers as matter of course, Tradingpost, 09/07/2008

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