Letter: A harsh life

Summer traditionally grants vacation time, recuperation and rest. However, migrant workers get no such vacation, and travel north with the changing season.

A typical day begins at about 4 a.m., when workers eat a skimpy breakfast before heading out to “The Lot,” a parking lot where workers attempt to find work for the day. The 10- to 12-hour day continues with a long drive out to the fields where they will pick tomatoes, one of Immokalee’s staple crops.

Earning 40 cents per 32-pound bucket of tomatoes picked, a worker must pick 4,800 pounds of tomatoes, filling 150 buckets, to earn $60 in a day. However, workers very scarcely fill 150. This totals less than minimum wage. In fact, the average worker earns less than $10,000 annually. Working every single day of the year that work can be found, the life of a farm worker contains virtually no relaxation.

Why are farm workers paid so little for such plentiful, difficult work? Supplying corporations such as McDonald’s and Yum! Brands, growers need huge quantities of produce to meet the fast-food market need. To keep production costs down, growers have not given price increases to workers since 1980. Huge corporations such as these keep farm workers from a good life, from a life they expected when coming to a “free” land.

Please join the Coalition of Immokalee Workers in its campaign against McDonald’s, Chipotle, Burger King and Subway to help farm workers gain a brighter future.

Visit www.ciw-online.org for more information.

Eric Poeltl/Naples