Have it your way

Something I ran across on the Sojourners site…

“Farm workers who pick tomatoes for Burger King's sandwiches earn 40 to 50 cents for every 32-pound bucket of tomatoes they pick, a rate that has not risen significantly in nearly 30 years. Workers who toil from dawn to dusk must pick two tons of tomatoes to earn $50 in one day.”

This doesn’t mean that they receive $50; it only tells you how much work they would have to do to get that huge sum of money. Let’s see…100 buckets a day at 50 cents is only 3,200 pounds for the $50. Now try an 8 hour day. 100 divided by 8 equals 12.5 buckets per hour. 60 minutes divided by 12.5 equals 4.8 minutes per bucket. Every hour for 8 hours. And if you were to double the price per bucket; to $1 – that would raise the cost of a hamburger to how much? If 32 pounds of tomatoes equals about 100 tomatoes, I would bet that the price of a hamburger would increase by a cent or even two. Disaster! (Of course I’ve mistakenly used 8 hours as the average work day for these workers. 8 hour days are for the ‘white folks’. No ‘white folks’ in those fields!)

More… “Worse yet, modern-day slavery has reemerged in Florida's fields; since 1997, the U.S. Department of Justice has prosecuted five slavery rings, freeing more than 1,000 workers. As a major buyer of Florida tomatoes, Burger King's purchasing practices place downward pressure on farm worker wages and put corporate profits before human dignity.”