What is most surprising is not all of Mississippi is poor, or last in every development category. There are regions in Mississippi that rank on par with the richest state in America (Connecticut), and there are regions that rank on par with the least developed countries in the world.
This study illuminates the sharp disparities in opportunity between regions and between races within the state. The report forces us to acknowledge who is thriving, and who is being shut out. It is clear that we cannot forge ahead while leaving so many people behind.
"In Mississippi, where we work with 13 state and local organizations such as the NAACP, this report clearly illustrates the conditions residents were struggling with even prior to the hurricanes of 2005—limited access to education, lower incomes, and shorter lives—and argues for a comprehensive solution for recovery," said Raymond C. Offenheiser, president of Oxfam America.
Given the profound economic and social challenges facing Mississippi, and more broadly working families in the US today, this report comes at a crucial time to help policy makers use precious resources to ensure all Mississippians have access to the American Dream.
]]>Velasquez is president of the Farm Labor Organizing Committee, or FLOC, which is both a social movement and a labor union focusing on migrant farm workers. What he learned during those five and half days in the field is now fueling a campaign to bring justice to farm workers across the South's tobacco farms. Its target is RJ Reynolds, one of the major buyers of the product. Launched by FLOC and funded, in part, by Oxfam America, the campaign's aim is to convince the cigarette giant to come to the negotiating table to work out an agreement that will offer union representation to tobacco workers, providing them with better wages and improved working conditions.
"It ranks up there with the hardest work I've ever done," said Velasquez a few weeks after returning from North Carolina. "It's very hard and it's dirty. Add in the heat and humidity, and it's as bad as anything you get. The stalks grow over your head and block the breeze. It's like an oven."
Farm workers in the United States are among the lowest paid in the nation. The majority earn less than $7,500 a year. For tobacco pickers, the work is not only grueling, it can also be dangerous, especially if their employers fail to take basic safety precautions to protect workers' health. Summer heat in the south combined with poor air circulation among the shoulder-high plants create hazardous working conditions if there are few breaks in the picking pace and not enough drinking water available. Those conditions took a toll during the 2005 and 2006 harvests: Seven farm workers died from heat stroke.
"Those tragedies could have been prevented if there had been adequate scrutiny of conditions and compliance with safety requirements," said Guadalupe Gamboa, an Oxfam America program officer focusing on workers' rights. "RJ Reynolds has the money and buying power to improve those conditions. We see this campaign as a way to begin righting some of the severe inequities that leave marginalized workers with little control over their lives and livelihoods."
Before July, Velasquez, who has an undergraduate degree in sociology and an advanced one in practical theology, had a gap in his education: the tobacco fields. He knew about picking potatoes; it's some of the hardest farm work there is. He has harvested more than his share of tomatoes. He has picked cotton and oranges and berries of all kinds. And as the founder of the Farm Labor Organizing Committee, he can speak from experience about the hardships of each task. What he didn't know was tobacco.
"I represent tobacco workers. I've got to know what I'm talking about," Velasquez said. "It's a principle I have: Never ask someone to do something I wouldn't do first."
So, in late July, he joined a crew of hard-working men for a week of "topping and suckering"—a method of lopping flowers from the tops of tobacco plants and snapping off the new shoots before they become flowers to allow the leaves to grow as fat and green as possible.
But it was those lush green leaves that Velasquez worried about the most: Coated with nicotine that easily soaks through clothing and gloves, they are the source of "the green monster,"—a temporary sickness that strikes many workers laboring in the hot sun.
"Like poison ivy, you catch it through the skin. It's like a serious flu. You start vomiting," said Velasquez, adding that pesticides sprayed on the leaves can compound the effects of the illness. Farm workers wear long sleeves and pants to protect themselves as best they can. But when the leaves are wet with rain or dew, the nicotine sinks through quickly. On those days, workers will often don makeshift rain coats fashioned from garbage bags for a bit of extra protection. But there's a personal cost to that, too: They're sweltering.
"Even by 8 in the morning it's hot and humid," said Velasquez. "You're in that black plastic bag and within an hour you're soaked from sweat."
Velasquez was spared the misery of the green monster, but on the third day of work, his hands began to bother him. They felt tingly and numb.
"I asked the workers about it," he said. "They said all our hands are like that. By Saturday, after working all week, I couldn't close one of my hands without a lot of pain." Repetitive stress from the topping and suckering had caused the problem.
The day-and-night camaraderie of companions—with nicknames like Chemo, El Caballo (The Horse), Panza (because of his belly)—helped ease the exhaustion of the long days. But when the week came to an end, Velasquez was left with one overriding thought: "Surely there must be a way to grow our crops in a more just manner."
That's where the collective bargaining agreement comes in.
With tobacco being the number one crop in North Carolina, tens of thousands of workers are employed in harvesting and cultivating it. Many of them are immigrants whose undocumented status leaves them exposed to exploitation, including near servitude to crew leaders. But others have come to the state under the US Department of Labor's H2A guest worker program—and most of those workers are contracted through the North Carolina Growers Association.
However, Velasquez says that many farmers in North Carolina won't hire the H2A workers because of the expenses associated with their employment. Not only are there paperwork costs that can add up to $900 per worker, there is also the obligation to pay the H2A employees the prevailing wage, which can often be $3 or $4 an hour more than federal minimum wage. Instead, farmers opt for the undocumented workers. Changing that scenario—making it affordable for farmers to hire H2A workers—is going to cost money.
"There's an economic reality to all of this, and that is who's going to pay for the improvements? My feeling is RJ Reynolds needs to do that," says Velasquez. "The first challenge is going to be to negotiate with them to offer a subsidy to the growers through a union contract that will cover the cost of bringing these workers in legally."
This will not be the first time FLOC has negotiated contracts between large companies and farm workers at the bottom of the supply chain. With the support of Oxfam America, the organization won an historic collective bargaining agreement with Mt. Olive and the growers association in 2004 that brought about 8,000 guest workers under the protection of a union contract. Prior to that the workers had had few labor rights.
Now, FLOC wants to see the same kinds of benefits—better wages, improved working conditions—extended to migrant tobacco pickers. And the participation of RJ Reynolds, with the tight control it helps to exert on the prices growers can get for their crops, is the key to that plan.
FLOC is employing a number of tactics to achieve its goal—starting with requests to meet with the company. FLOC also secured enough votes at a recent meeting of RJ Reynolds shareholders to keep alive a resolution calling on the company to improve conditions for workers in the field. It has enlisted the support of more than 190 religious leaders around the country to sign a letter to the company's CEO. And, to put some extra pressure on RJ Reynolds, FLOC is planning to launch a country-wide boycott of a product—yet to be decided—owned by company shareholders.
"What's important is fighting the good fight for the rights of people,"" says Velasquez.
]]>Although the force of the storms was an act of nature, what the American people have since witnessed—an uneven and often incompetent recovery effort—is the result of deliberate human acts. If we refuse to address this as a nation, it will go down in history not only as a failure of leadership, but also as a failure to hold our government accountable.
Two fundamental indicators, housing and jobs, provide stark proof of the stalled recovery. Full recovery is possible only when affordable homes are coupled with secure, decent jobs. Without quality jobs and affordable housing, low- and moderate income families are unable to return to their former lives. Decent wages allow people to return home and recreate vibrant communities by providing the necessary workforce to rebuild the region.
The situation grows increasingly critical, but despite challenges, there is a way forward. We face a historic election; the next president of the US must guarantee a just, equitable, and complete recovery. America must take immediate action to ensure that people struggling to rebuild their communities get the support that their hard work and innovation demand.
]]>But with fuel prices rocketing and dock amenities still in short supply, making a living from the ocean has become next to impossible for the couple. They depend on their social security checks and Geneva's schoolteacher's pension.
"I ain't made a profit in three years," said Joseph. "The boat supports itself, but that's it. It's so hard to make a living."
Disaster has compounded that challenge for the Rosses and countless others on the Gulf Coast. But they are not alone. Millions of Americans face similar struggles trying to earn a living, to stay healthy, and to educate their children in a country where the American dream has become more myth than reality for many people.
That truth emerges—sharp and stunning—from the pages of a new report that, for the first time, provides a human development rank for each state, congressional district, and ethnic group in the US. Called "The Measure of America," and supported by Oxfam America, the report takes tools long used to analyze the complexities of developing countries and applies them to one of the richest nations in the world. The report was written by Sarah Burd-Sharps, Kristen Lewis, and Eduardo Borges Martsin. Its goal is to deliver a clear picture of what life is really like for many of the 305 million Americans in a country where the average income among the top fifth of US households in 2006 was almost 15 times that of those in the lowest fifth—or $168,170 versus $11,352.
"The American Dream has drifted beyond the each of many, while fading from view among others," say the authors in their executive summary. "To reinvigorate it, to make it real for millions of middle-class and poor Americans, the stagnation and decline of middle and low incomes must be reversed, and opportunity must once again reach down to the lowest rungs of society."
That mission—to give poor people a fair shot at opportunity; to ensure their basic rights and dignity—lies at the heart of Oxfam America's US regional programs in the southeast. One of them is concentrating on helping the Gulf Coast recover from the devastation caused by back-to-back hurricanes in 2005.The second program seeks to reform the food system so that those who produce the food that feeds our nation—the low-wage farm and meat-processing workers—can secure their rights to decent work and improved conditions in their communities.
When Katrina and Rita barreled into the Gulf Coast, the damage they left was enormous—and indiscriminate. Regardless of their means, everyone in the paths of the storms got slammed. But not everyone has benefitted from the multi-billion-dollar recovery—funded by American taxpayers—that slowly has been restoring what the wind and water swept away.
In Mississippi and Louisiana, many of the region's poorest residents continue to struggle toward recovery. The persistent inattention of state and federal policy makers to meeting the needs of the most vulnerable people has compounded the storms' destruction.
Walk through storm-battered Biloxi, Mississippi, and the disparities in the recovery become clear. Remodeled hotels glimmer and luxury condominiums have sprouted just blocks from narrow streets where many people still live in temporary trailers.
"We need affordable housing: not projects, but homes that people can pay for on a living wage in Mississippi," says Sharon Hanshaw, a lifelong resident of the city who longs for the old neighborhoods to come alive again. She's executive director of Coastal Women for Change, an Oxfam partner organization founded following the disaster. Its goal is to empower local women to participate in the recovery. "New houses mean new life."
After the hurricanes hit, Oxfam's first response was to work with its local partners and provide emergency assistance to people. That response has now grown into a five-year, $12-million program focused on Mississippi and Louisiana. Working through local organizations, the program's goal is two-fold. The first is to ensure that the regio's most vulnerable people have access to safe and affordable housing. And the second objective is to ensure that workers in the hospitality industry—including those employed by restaurants, hotels, and casinos, as well as the construction workers now rebuilding those facilities—can land jobs that will allow them to achieve a decent standard of living.
By working with local communities to understand, demand, and ensure their rights, Oxfam's objective is to influence the outcome of the recovery and to help bring equity to the country's poorest states.
To the authors of "The Measure of America," it's a job that will require an investment of both will and financial resources on the scale of the Marshall Plan—a multi-billion-dollar reconstruction effort that helped to rebuild Western Europe following World War II. According to the report, about 12 million people live in Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi, and together their three states have the lowest human development index scores of any region in the country—and that was before the consequences of the storm were factored in.
"On key measures of human development, the region today is at the level of development the country as a whole experienced 18 years ago. It has the nation's lowest levels of educational attainment, shortest life expectancy, and lowest incomes," say the authors.
"A Gulf Coast Reconstruction Plan, encompassing far-reaching humanitarian, social, political, and economic aims would expand choice and opportunity for the people of Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi."
Expanding choice and opportunity for farm and meat processing workers is also going to require some far-reaching change. Oxfam America's program to improve conditions for some of the country's lowest-paid workers in the rural southeast employs a number of tactics including consumer campaigns that pressure employers to offer workers better pay.
"By working at multiple levels, the program addresses the issues of declining wages, low union density, gender and racial discrimination, high rates of occupational injury, and abuse due to the immigration status of workers," said Guadalupe Gamboa, Oxfam's worker rights program officer.
Farm workers, of whom there are an estimated three million, are among the poorest laborers in the country. Half of all individuals earn less than $7,500 a year, and half of farm worker families earn less than $10,000 a year—wages that are well below the US poverty threshold. Most workers get paid on a piece-rate basis, and because of their poverty they often live in overcrowded and substandard housing that routinely violates federal regulations. Food processing workers—there are about 800,000 of them in the US—face similar stressful economic and social conditions.
Besides poverty wages, both groups of laborers face dangerous working environments. Accidents and exposure to toxic pesticides are among the regular risks for farm workers. Meat packers are often forced to work at blinding speeds using razor-sharp knives, risking accidents and cumulative stress injuries.
But momentum for change is building. Oxfam-supported campaigns against some of the biggest names in the food industry—Yum! Brands (owner of Taco Bell), McDonald's, Burger King—have coincided with the public's increasing concern about food safety, motivating people to mobilize in support of farm workers. All three companies have agreed to pay some of the field hands in their supply chain a higher wage.
Building on those successes, Oxfam is now supporting a major campaign to organize 5,000 workers at Smithfield's Tar Heel, North Carolina pork processing plant—the largest of its kind in the country.
"Low-wage workers in the rural southeast, particularly people of color, immigrants, and women working in agriculture and food systems have a right to decent work and improved conditions," said Gamboa. "And we'll know they've secured that right when we see their increased power through collective bargaining, fair compensation, and worker leadership."
]]>Almost a year after the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, or CIW, launched its campaign to get the fast food giant to join McDonald's and Yum! Brands in paying field hands in their supply chain a penny more for every pound of tomatoes they picked, Burger King relented.
On Friday—along with an apology for negative statements its employees made about CIW—the restaurant chain announced its plan to work with the coalition to improve wages and working conditions for Florida tomato harvesters.
For Burger King, a multi-billion-dollar corporation, the deal reportedly costs it just $300,000 a year. But for farm workers, who earn an average of 45 cents for every 32-pound bucket of tomatoes they pick, that penny represents a near doubling of their wages.
"Today we are one step closer to building a world where we, as farm workers, can enjoy a fair wage and humane working conditions in exchange for the hard and essential work we do every day," said CIW's Lucas Benitez in a press statement. "We are not there yet but we are getting there and this agreement should send a strong message to the rest of the restaurant and supermarket industry: Now is the time to join Yum! Brands, McDonald's, and Burger King in righting the wrongs that have been allowed to linger in Florida's fields for far too long."
For Oxfam America, which has long partnered with CIW and launched an on-line petition on its behalf, the agreement is proof that consumer pressure can bring about positive change. More than 37,000 people signed the petition calling on Burger King to work with CIW to improve the wages of farm laborers and enforce a code of conduct for human rights in the field.
"It once again proves these seemingly almighty corporations have to respond to consumer pressure," said Guadalupe Gamboa, and Oxfam program officer working with CIW. "Consumers want farm workers treated fairly and getting a just wage. And they want global corporations held responsible for acts of injustice in the supply chain."
Burger King got that message loud and clear—not only from fast food fans, but from an array of global activists concerned about the conditions in the hot Florida fields.
"We engaged Burger King at the highest levels," said Gamboa. "Oxfam America's president, Ray Offenheiser, sent a series of letters to the CEO of Burger King. The company also started to get letters from Oxfam affiliates in other countries. And Oxfam partner organizations in Mexico started to get active around the issue, too."
The agreement Burger King has endorsed goes beyond the penny-per-pound increase CIW and consumer activists around the country sought. It also aims to encourage the broad participation of growers by paying them a half cent extra per pound of tomatoes. That money will help them cover the additional payroll taxes and administrative costs associated with the wage hike.
"Today, we turn a new page in our relationship and begin a new chapter of real progress for Florida farm workers," said John Chidsey, Burger King's chief executive officer, in a prepared statement. "We also encourage other purchases and growers of Florida tomatoes to engage in a dialogue."
Whether that will happen is still unclear. In November, the Florida Growers Exchange, which represents producers who grow about 90 percent of the state's tomatoes, announced that its members had chosen not to participate in any pact in which a third party set wages for their employees. Reggie Brown, the executive vice president of the exchange, said he was concerned about the legality of the arrangement and its potential for violating anti-trust and racketeering laws. According to CIW, the exchange even threatened to fine members $100,000 if they participated in the penny-per-pound plan.
Brown was out of the country and not available for comment following Burger King's announcement. But maintaining its earlier position on the wage hike will likely be difficult for the exchange.
"We're sure the Florida tomato growers are decent, hardworking people who want to see the industry prosper," said Gamboa. "I think it's going to be harder for the exchange to hold the growers in line because the extra money they will get—the half cent which averages out to 16 cents for each buck of tomatoes—will allow them to participate in the wage hike without incurring extra costs."
And it's not just the growers—exchange that might find it hard to hold back the rising tide of justice. It could start to improve the conditions for workers at the bottom of every food supply chain.
"We are exuberant about this," said Gamboa. "We're probably at the tipping point. When you get three major fast food companies agreeing to accept responsibility for improving wages and working conditions, it sets a very important precedent that other food buyers and retailers will have to follow. It says that getting decent pay and respect on the job is a basic human right."
]]>"I am 54 and I thought that I was too old to learn anything new," says San Van, a grandmother and farmer in a nearby village. "But I came here and see this movie and it is easy. I will try this new way and save seeds and grow more rice. It is exciting."
Pov Cham shakes her head in agreement. "I am very excited because with the old method of farming I could not have such a surplus like I can with this," Cham says. "I like how easy this was to learn and it was from people like me."
What has excited these women to change the way they will farm?
An instructional movie released today by Oxfam America and the Cambodian Center for Study and Development in Agriculture, or CEDAC.
The new movie, titled "Do You Speak SRI?" was developed to assist Cambodian farmers to easily and effectively grow more rice to support their families and to teach them new ways to farm. It takes a different approach of the traditional educational movie by using real farmers rather than actors to tell their own story and successes in using the new practices. The movie follows the journey of a young farmer as he learns each of the 12 practices from more experienced farmers.
In a recent viewing in Kampong Chhang, audience members were excited to see real farmers in the movie—most of whom were unscripted. The farmers showed off their natural enthusiasm for the practices.
"I like that I could see someone like me," says Van. "They are so happy and have grown so much rice using less seeds."
The movie is an addition to the other training tools CEDAC uses to assist farmers in implementing the practices.
"We hope that farmers will learn how to implement their choice of 12 practices into their own farming practices and realize that this can improve their yield and thus their quality of life," says Dr. Yang Saing Koma, President of CEDAC.
System of Rice Intensification (SRI), which was first introduced to Cambodia in 2000, has helped more than 80,000 Cambodian families grow more rice by using a selection of up to 12 simple practices. By adopting these steps, Cambodian farmers can increase rice yields from 50 to 150 percent, compared to yields harvested from traditional methods. Many farmers use this surplus of rice to feed their families, generate extra income and make improvements for other agricultural ventures.
"Boosting the farming community's skills so that they can grow more rice is about more than feeding Cambodian families,"" says Brian Lund, Regional Director of Oxfam America's East Asia Office in Phnom Penh. "It also is about boosting the farmer's confidence so that they take control over their life now and in the future."
To better empower farmers and sustain their self-reliance, Oxfam America and CEDAC recently combined the SRI training with a savings-led microfinance program called Saving for Change, which enables farmers and community members to better retain and manage the improved wealth they are achieving from their crops.
CEDAC plans to teach the SRI method to farmers in the 13,000 villages in Cambodia over the next five years.
As for Cham and Van, both said the movie convinced them to try SRI practices on a small part of their rice field to test it and see how it works for them.
"I am going to try it out," says Cham laughing. "Then I will let you know if I will be ready to be in the next movie to show my surplus of rice."
]]>Yum! Brands, Inc., one of the world's largest restaurant companies with 34,000 establishments, recently agreed to pay a penny a pound more for the tomatoes four more of its chains buy from Florida growers. The increase nearly doubles the amount workers can earn for each 32-pound bucket of tomatoes they pick and sell to Yum! The going price now is between 40 and 45 cents a bucket. This new agreement will hike that by 32 cents.
Yum! Brands' decision comes two years after one of its chains, Taco Bell, agreed to a similar hike in the face of intense national pressure. Others that will now be included in the deal are Pizza Hut, Long John Silver's, A&W All-American Food Restaurant, and KFC. In April, mega-chain McDonald's also announced an agreement to boost the pay of Florida pickers by a penny a pound.
"If two of the largest restaurant chains are doing this, it's only a matter of time 'til others follow," said Julia Perkins, of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, or CIW , which has spearheaded the drive for better pay and working conditions for tomato pickers. CIW is one of the local partners with which Oxfam America works.
"This is an important precedent that's being set," said Guadalupe Gamboa, a program officer in Oxfam America's US regional office. "And it also furthers CIW's strategy to go after other major buyers of tomatoes and eventually get them all to pay a higher price that will be translated into higher wages for a lot more farm workers."
During the winter months, about 90 percent of the fresh tomatoes consumed in the United States come from Florida, said Perkins. According to the Florida Tomato Committee, the state shipped more than 1.2 billion pounds of tomatoes in interstate commerce during the 2005-2006 growing season. During the peak season, Florida growers hire about 33,000 people.
CIW has been working with many of them since 1993 when it first began organizing in a borrowed room at a church. In 2001, it launched a national boycott of Taco Bell, which had long denied responsibility for the bad working conditions and below-poverty-level wages at the farms that supplied it with tomatoes. Students, religious groups, and labor organizations all got behind the boycott, galvanizing support for CIW's cause.
"It's a good model for other organizations to follow that are trying to improve wages and conditions for workers," said Gamboa. "It shows you can get concrete and positive results for the poorest workers in the country."
And there is no good reason for companies not to embrace the campaign.
"It's doable from a financial perspective, an administrative perspective, and it's good for your company's marketing," said Perkins, who has high hopes that other corporations will follow the lead set by Yum! and McDonald's. Burger King is on her list.
"Consumers have really gotten behind this," said Perkins. "Burger King has promised consumers you get to have it your way. It's just a matter of time before they have to make good on that promise."
]]>The petition urges Burger King to work with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), an Oxfam America partner, to commit to improving the wages and working conditions in an agreement nearly identical to ones already signed by Yum! Brands and McDonald’s.
“It is disappointing that Burger King continues to reject overtures to ensure that the rights of workers in your supply chain are protected,” Oxfam America President Raymond C. Offenheiser wrote in a letter accompanying the petition to Chidsey. “CIW’s call for fair food, which has been widely supported by the broader public, is eminently reasonable and not cost-prohibitive. Major corporations throughout the world have recognized that corporate social responsibility, instead of being a burden, is in fact good for their business.”
Since 2001, CIW has worked with fast food producers to improve working conditions for workers in its supply chains by paying one penny more for each pound of tomatoes a worker picks and agreeing to core labor standards. Yum! Brands reached an agreement with CIW in 2005, followed by McDonald’s Corporation in 2007.
CIW has worked with Burger King since 2005 to reach an agreement with CIW, with no success. Burger King officials have cited legal and technical hurdles as reasons for not entering into such an agreement.
“If there were any real legal problems with the agreements Yum! Brands and McDonald’s would have refused to sign,” said Guadalupe Gamboa, Oxfam America Senior Program Officer. “If Burger King truly has concerns about these agreements, the best way to address them is to engage in a constructive dialogue with the CIW.”
On March 13 CIW will launch a campaign in DC calling on its supporters to pressure Burger King to reach an agreement with CIW to increase wages and end forced labor in agriculture.
According to its website, Burger King is “the second largest fast food hamburger chain in the world, recoding $2.23 billion in revenue in fiscal year 2007.”
It is estimated the proposed agreement would cost Burger King $300,000 per year.
Florida laborers pick nearly the entire US winter crop of field-grown fresh tomatoes, earning an average of 45 cents for every 32-pound bucket of tomatoes they pick. In order to earn minimum wage, a worker must pick nearly two-and-a-half tons of tomatoes each day.
US farm workers do not have the protection of many US labor laws, including laws protecting the right to organize. This has led to intolerable conditions in the fields, including at least seven documented cases of forced labor and human trafficking mainly in Florida and the Southeast.
A 2004 Oxfam America report, Like Machines in the Fields, found the annual wage for the 3 million US farm workers is between $7,500 or $12,000 per family with no benefits.
]]>"This represents economic relief for farm workers and gives them real participation and a voice," said the coalition's Lucas Benitez.
"The significant thing is that McDonald's is the largest restaurant chain in the world and the second largest employer of workers in the United States," added Guadalupe Gamboa, a program officer in Oxfam's US regional office. "And so, for a little group like CIW to take them on and beat them is pretty significant. It shows the power of consumer pressure."
Starting in the 2007 growing season, McDonald's will pay an extra penny per pound for Florida tomatoes offered through its produce suppliers to its US restaurants. The farm workers will receive the increase directly for the tomatoes McDonald's buys. The agreement also lays out a plan for CIW and McDonald's to develop a new code of conduct for Florida tomato growers and calls for the creation of a third-party mechanism to monitor conditions in the fields and investigate workers complaints about abuses.
Typically, Florida field workers earn between 40 and 45 cents for each 32-pound bucket of tomatoes they pick—a wage that has not gone up significantly since 1978, according to CIW. At that rate, working a 12-hour day, laborers would have to pick nearly two and a half tons of tomatoes to earn the federal minimum wage of $5.15 an hour. With the penny-per-pound increase, workers can earn 32 cents a bucket more.
An Oxfam America report released in 2004, Like Machines in the Fields: Workers Without Rights in American Agriculture, documented the harsh conditions farmworkers endure and how big buyers, like institutional food services and fast food companies, are buying increasing volumes of produce at increasingly cheaper prices.
"Like machines, nearly two million workers in America's fields labor without rights, earn sub-living wages, and exist in dehumanizing conditions," said the report. "Already, farmworkers are among the poorest—if not the poorest—laborers in the United States."
Added Gamboa, "In the past 20 to 30 years, farm workers' wages have been stagnant. It may not sound like much, but for poor farmworkers in southwest Florida, McDonald's decision to increase by a penny a pound the amount it pays for tomatoes could translate into nearly a doubling of wages.
They have lost value in real dollars. But the profits earned by the retail industry have gone up tremendously, and it has been profiting from the sweat and labor of the workers."
And that has translated into profound hardship for field workers, whose average annual salary in 2005 was between $10,000 and $12,499, according to the National Agricultural Workers Survey. The federal government considers an individual earning less than $10,210 to be living in poverty. The income guideline for a family of four is $20,650 a year—more than the average farm worker household earns. That figure ranges from $15,000 to $17,499, according to the agricultural survey.
Since 1993, when CIW first began organizing with a small group of workers in a borrowed room at a church, the coalition has worked hard to address the injustices farm laborers face. The message is now getting heard—at the highest levels of corporate America.
"CIW has publicized the terrible conditions of farm workers," said Gamboa. "People who pick the food don't have enough to eat. They endure terrible living conditions with between 10 and 15 people in a single trailer. And in real terms, their wages have gone down in the last 20 years."
That was the reality CIW set out to change when, in 2001, it launched a national boycott of Taco Bell, another fast-food giant that purchases great volumes of tomatoes. The company had long denied responsibility for the bad working conditions and below-poverty-level wages at the farms that supplied it tomatoes. Students, religious groups, and labor organizations all got behind the boycott, galvanizing support for CIW's cause and putting intense national pressure on the company.
Two years ago—in March 2005--CIW and Taco Bell announced an historic agreement guaranteeing Immokalee tomato pickers a penny a pound extra for the produce supplied to the chain.
"We are laying the groundwork for real change," Benitez said at the time, "both in the concrete conditions of farmworkers' everyday lives and in the market itself."
On Monday, with the McDonald's agreement in hand, those farmworkers have marked a another victory in their long, slow struggle toward equity and justice.
"Today, with McDonald's, we have taken another major step toward a world where workers can enjoy a fair wage and humane working conditions in exchange for the hard and essential work we do every day," said Benitez. "We are not there yet, but we are getting there, and today's agreement should send a strong message to the rest of the restaurant and supermarket industry that it is now time to stand behind the food they sell from the field to the table."
]]>And he's just one reason why Oxfam America recently gave the United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW) a $25,000 grant to hire a community organizer to help make that happen. There are about 5,500 other reasons, too—one for every single employee at the sprawling plant in Bladen County where 32,000 hogs a day are slaughtered and processed.
"In the past 20 years, the meat packing industry has turned from a decent-paying industry with benefits to a dangerous, low-paying one where workers move at almost impossible speeds and injuries are frighteningly frequent," said Guadalupe Gamboa, an Oxfam America program officer who focuses on workers' rights. "The conditions in these plants—Smithfield included—clearly violate the basic human rights of their workers."
Gene Bruskin, a UFCW campaign director who has been helping workers organize at the Smithfield plant, put it in even blunter terms: "You're literally chewed up and spit out."
But in Bladen County, where more than 19 percent of the residents live in poverty and unemployment rates hit nearly 10 percent in 2002, people have been hungry for work, and take jobs at Smithfield, despite the grueling conditions.
"If you're working in that plant, you're killing 1,000 pigs an hour on two lines. That's 16,000 in eight hours," Bruskin said. "If I'm working on the line, I'm doing 1,000 of whatever I do every hour. If I'm the one who stabs the pig in the throat and kills it, or I pull the brains out, I do it 1,000 times an hour. It's one every three to four seconds, so it's extremely dangerous. People work at blinding speeds with very little training."
Part of the problem, said Gamboa, is an absence of regulations that would help protect workers.
"There is no law in the US that governs the speed at which a hog processing plant can run its killing and cutting lines and that's why companies are allowed to get away with horrible conditions," he said. "International human rights laws are broader than US law. We have an obligation to meet that higher standard."
Twice, workers at the plant have tried to unionize to improve their working conditions—once in 1994 and again in 1997 when they lost the election by a small margin amid union-busting activities, including threats, intimidation, and violence against workers. In 2000, a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) administrative law judge found Smithfield liable for those actions and ruled the election invalid. In 2006 a federal appeals court upheld that decision.
"Rather than subjecting themselves to the ordeal of another election, the workers are asking the company to recognize their union by an alternative procedure under the NLRB—one in which workers can choose a union by having a majority sign union cards. Smithfield has refused this alternative procedure," said Gamboa.
And there it stands. With no union and no protection, employees like Melvin Grady face a mountain of challenges.
Grady's hardships are detailed in a Human Rights Watch (HRW) report released last year called "Blood, Sweat, and Fear: Workers' Rights in U.S. Meat and Poultry Plants." Grady started work at Smithfield on the kill floor where he spent 18 months before moving onto a job sharpening knives. One day, returning to his station after a meal break, he slipped on the greasy floor and tumbled to the bottom of some steps where he heard a pop. It was his Achilles tendon, severely torn and requiring surgery and convalescence.
Grady's nightmare had begun.
In the end, said the HRW report, Smithfield told him he wasn't eligible for workmen's compensation and fired him when he couldn't get clearance from his doctor for unrestricted work. The final blow came a few months after the accident when the bank foreclosed on Grady's house: The temporary jobs he was able to pick up for $6 an hour couldn't match the $11-an-hour-plus-overtime he had earned at Smithfield. His income had plummeted by more than half.
Grady's fate could have been the fate of any Smithfield worker. But the tide may be getting ready to turn, if a recent two-day walkout by hundreds of workers is any indication of what the future holds.
In November, the workers—Hispanics and blacks alike—decided to walk off the job to protest the firing of dozens of immigrant employees whose documentation the company questioned.
The step took great courage, said Bruskin.
"It was historic," he said, "for immigrant workers with all they have to risk to walk out of the plant like this—a company of this size."
But as important, the walkout could also be signaling a shift in race relations among workers at the plant—a critical step in building momentum for their collective rights.
"Smithfield has a long history of using race to divide the workers," said Leila McDowell, the communications coordinator for UFCW's "Justice at Smithfield" campaign. "They would tell African-Americans, 'if you stand up for a union we'll replace you with Latino workers.' And they tell Latino workers, 'blacks are getting more than you.' The union organization has been working to overcome that."
And the show of solidarity during the walkout was proof.
"It was very important for immigrant workers to see the African-American workers support them," said Bruskin. "It was also a tremendous opportunity for them to see the power they have."
In the end, following thousands of phone calls from religious organizations, civil rights groups, and immigrants rights agencies urging the company to respect the rights of its workers, Smithfield agreed to hire back the ones it had let go and not to discipline those who had participated in the walkout. Additionally the company agreed to allow employees time to respond to questions about their documentation.
While workers savor that bit of victory, the organizer the UFCW has hired with Oxfam's grant will begin to focus on African-American communities in the area, particularly churches and civil rights groups.
"This outreach will provide crucial community support for workers seeking to organize against a notoriously anti-union and anti-worker employer with a long history of violations of the legal and human rights of these workers," said Gamboa. "About 40 percent of the workers at Smithfield are African-American, and the majority of the others are Latino.
"The Justice at Smithfield campaign has close community and religious ties with the Latino population already. Building strong ties with the African-American community will help the campaign build the alliances between the two groups as well as support the workers in their struggle to protect their human rights through a union contract."
]]>This examination of three communities emblematic of longstanding poverty and exclusion— the urban neighborhoods of East Biloxi, Mississippi, and the rural communities of Vermilion and Plaquemines parishes in Louisiana—reveals that government neglect at all levels extends beyond the well-publicized failures in New Orleans to encompass an entire region in distress.
Access to opportunity remains unequal—and unfair. In Biloxi, government officials acted first to save the city’s battered casinos by convincing state lawmakers to allow gaming on land. Not ensuring that the low-income residents of East Biloxi shared in the economic benefits, however, has made them victims of an enormous land squeeze, forcing them out of their neighborhoods and homes.
False assurances undermine future visions—and current optimism. The self-reliant residents of Erath, a mostly Cajun community in rural Vermilion Parish, began rehabilitating their houses the moment they returned after Hurricane Rita’s flood waters receded. After confusing signals about new flood elevations, plans for the town’s future, and possible homeowner grants, their progress has slowed and in some cases has been reversed by the agencies meant to facilitate it. Institutional neglect leaves communities at risk of losing everything—even their way of life.
Few state or federal funds have assisted the recovery of independent commercial fishers, who for generations have made Plaquemines Parish the center of their trade. Their inability to continue is draining Louisiana’s usually robust commercial fisheries, normally second in the nation only to Alaska.
These communities, and many like them, teeter on the brink. They are being rendered invisible.
Left behind. Forgotten.
The pattern of inequity in receiving recovery assistance from the government has been well established by past disasters. Federal disaster assistance tends to favor people who have economic assets at risk—that is, the affluent. Though the pattern may be familiar, it need not be inevitable.
Making sure the billions designated for recovery benefit the region’s most vulnerable communities remains a matter of political will. Action can and must be taken immediately.
It is, after all, what the nation promised them. That they would be rendered whole. Get ahead. Thrive.
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