One Penny More

My next big writing project for PRISM (tentatively slated for the May/June 2012 issue) is one that I’m really looking forward to researching. I’ll be taking a look at the lives of migrant farmworkers in the US and at the work of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, a group with these (modest) aims:

a fair wage for the work we do, more respect on the part of our bosses and the industries where we work, better and cheaper housing, stronger laws and stronger enforcement against those who would violate workers’ rights, the right to organize on our jobs without fear of retaliation, and an end to involuntary servitude in the fields.

Here’s a video CIW produced for its One Penny More campaign:

If you’ve ever thought you deserved a raise for the work you do, you should be able to sympathize with the very modest request this campaign makes. Currently, a 32 lb bucket of tomatoes earns the worker 45 cents, a rate that has apparently remained flat for 30 years, while as we all know the cost of everything around us has risen exponentially. At the current rate, a worker would need to fill more than 16 buckets (at 32 lbs each) per hour just to reach minimum wage. That’s more than 500 lbs of tomatoes per hour, all day, every day.

All they’re asking for here is one more penny per pound of tomatoes, which seems to me like quite a modest demand.