Farm Labor in the U.S.

Over three million migrant and seasonal farmworkers form the base of the U.S. food system. They are among the nation's worst paid and least protected laborers.

Farmworkers toil on both conventional and organic farms in dangerous conditions that routinely include stagnant, sub-poverty wages and the denial of fundamental labor rights. In the extreme, workers face situations of modern-day slavery.

More specifically:

• Sub-poverty wages: Florida tomato harvesters are still paid by the piece. The average piece rate today is 50 cents for every 32-lbs of tomatoes they pick, a rate that has remained virtually unchanged since 1980. As a result of that stagnation, a worker today must pick more than 2.25 tons of tomatoes to earn minimum wage in a typical 10-hour workday -- nearly twice the amount a worker had to pick to earn minimum wage thirty years ago, when the rate was 40 cents per bucket. Most farmworkers today earn less than $12,000 per year.
  
  
• Denial of fundamental rights: As a result of exclusion from New Deal-era reforms such as the National Labor Relations Act and Fair Labor Standards Act, farmworkers do not have the right to overtime pay, nor the right to organize and collectively bargain with their employers.
  
  
• Modern-day slavery: In the most extreme conditions, farmworkers are held against their will and forced to work for little or no pay, facing conditions that meet strict legal standards for prosecution under federal slavery statutes. The Department of Justice has successfully prosecuted seven slavery operations involving over 1,000 workers in Florida’s fields since 1997. In 2010, federal prosecutors indicted two more forced labor rings operating in Florida.

These conditions stem from the historic imbalance of power in U.S. agricultural labor relations, as well as more recent changes in the procurement practices of global food corporations. Major buyers -- companies such as Publix, Ahold, Kroger, and Walmart-- purchase a tremendous volume of fruits and vegetables, leveraging their market power to demand the lowest possible prices from their suppliers. This, in turn, exerts a powerful downward pressure on wages and working conditions in these suppliers' operations.

A study released by Oxfam America, "Like Machines in the Fields: Workers without Rights in American Agriculture," concludes: "Squeezed by the buyers of their produce, growers pass on the costs and risks imposed on them to those on the lowest rung of the supply chain: the farmworkers they employ" (2004:36). The Campaign for Fair Food aims to reverse this trend by harnessing the purchasing power of the food industry for the betterment of farmworker wages and working conditions.