http://www.naplesnews.com/news/2007/sep/22/phil_lewis_its_all_how_you_add_tomato_pickers_pay/
Phil Lewis: It's all in how you add up tomato pickers' pay
By PHIL LEWIS
September 22, 2007
An e-mail made it to the editor’s desk first thing
Wednesday morning carrying the title:
"Educating Naples News Re****ters on Tomato Industry Facts."
It was from a member of the Florida Tomato Growers
Exchange, a statewide cooperative of farmers and
vegetable producers.
The gist was that we got our facts wrong this past
Wednesday when we published a story about a
local farm labor group that is planning demon-
strations at various Burger King restaurants in the area.
The Coalition of Immokalee Workers is urging
Burger King, which has its cor****ate offices in
Miami, to pitch in some money to help supplement
the pay of farm workers who pick the tomatoes that
might end up on hamburgers and in salads. The
CIW has targeted Taco Bell & McDonald’s in the past.
In the story we quoted farm worker wage and
hour figures provided by the CIW.
Our story stated that tomato pickers in Florida
fields are paid 40 cents to 45 cents for every
bucket picked.
The Florida Tomato Growers Exchange told us
it’s more like 50 cents a bucket.
Our story stated that farm workers regularly
work 10-hour to 15-hour days.
The tomato growers told us the average field
hand only picks tomatoes 25 or 30 hours a week.
Our story said a farm worker would have to pick
125 buckets of tomatoes (each bucket holds 32
pounds) to earn $50 a day.
The tomato growers told us the average field hand
makes $12.46 an hour. If that’s true, you could
make $50 in slightly more than four hours.
Wow, we thought, something’s wrong.
Who’s right?
Both sides. It all depends on how you use the
figures and the terms.
Here’s what we found:
Tomato pickers do make between 40 cents
and 45 cents for every bucket picked, but that’s
typically during a field’s first picking. Fields are
picked more than once because the vines
produce fruit over the course of weeks. Tomatoes
that are too small for picking the first time a crew
works a field are left to grow. At a later date, the
field is picked again. Many times, there’s a third
picking as well.
The bucket price for a second picking is about
50 cents. The grower has to pay more to get
enough workers. That’s because there are fewer
tomatoes in the second go around so it takes
longer to fill a 32-pound bucket. Sometimes
during third pickings, the growers’ group claims,
the price is 55 cents a bucket. That’s how the
growers come up with the average bucket price
being close to 50 cents, instead of 40 cents.
How about the hours worked?
The growers say field hands usually don’t start
picking tomatoes until after the dew dries in the
field. Tomatoes need to be dry before they are
pulled from vines and dropped in a bucket. That
usually doesn’t occur until 10 a.m., then picking
continues until 4 p.m. or 5 p.m. That adds up to
about 25 or 30 hours a week.
However, there are tasks performed before and
after the picking. There’s the ride out to the fields
and the preparation of the buckets. Workers are
needed to set stakes for the plants and help lay
black plastic over the sandy soil to block weed
growth. Then, they are needed to pull stakes and
pull plastic from the ground as one field gives way
to another during the winter growing season.
All in all, a farm worker can expect to put in an
honest 10 to 15 hours a day, even though only
about half of that time is devoted to picking
tomatoes. Farm work during the height of season
is a dawn-to-dusk job.
How about the amount earned in a day?
To sort through that, we had to take a crash
course in exactly how a farm laborer is paid
when it’s time to pick tomatoes.
Growers are required to pay workers minimum
wage. In Florida, that’s $6.67 an hour, slightly
higher than the federal minimum wage of $5.85.
The $6.67 rate is how much a worker makes
when he starts work each day, even if the worker
is performing farm tasks while waiting for the
dew to dry and the picking to start.
When the picking starts, the bucket rate kicks in.
Let’s say it’s a field’s first picking and the grower
is paying 40 cents a bucket. A worker picking
16 buckets or less in an hour, would make $6.67.
For each bucket over 16, a worker would receive
a 40-cent bonus on top of the hourly minimum
wage. If you picked 32 buckets in the first hour,
you would make $12.80.
The growers say they have federal payroll records
showing that the average picker in Florida makes
$12.46 an hour when they are actually picking.
The pay per picker ranges between $7 and $14
an hour.
The labor group says that a worker has to pick
125 buckets in a day to earn $50. That’s true if the
grower is paying 40 cents a bucket. The growers
say that the fastest, most experienced tomato
"harvester" - that’s what they call pickers - can
make $100 a day just picking tomatoes. That’s
because the average bucket rate is higher than
40 cents and because most "harvesters" pick
more than 125 buckets a day.
A few minutes with a calculator shows that most
skilled "harvesters" pick upwards of 28 buckets
an hour, which adds up to 168 buckets in a typical
six-hour picking period.
So, it all depends on how you look at it.
The growers group defends its pay practices
showing that pickers can make $65-$70 during
the six hours of picking, plus a wage for any farm
work done before the picking starts and after it
ends. If there’s work six days a week, field hands
can make more than $400 a week. Where else
can you make $400 a week without an education
or formal training?
The labor group decries the pay practices,
pointing out that farm labor, by law, does not have
to be paid overtime and the workers get no benefits.
Plus, to make $400 a week, you’re going to have to
pick between 150 and 170 buckets a day. At 32
pounds per bucket, that adds up to nearly three tons
a day. That’s a lot of tomatoes.
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"Endeavor to persevere"
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