A penny for tomato pickers

We started our boycott of Taco Bell in April 2001, at a time when people were hearing a lot about sweatshop labor abroad. This was an issue of sweatshop labor right here in America, but the sweatshops were in our fields, not overseas in garment factories.

Most of the fresh tomato harvest in this country comes out of Florida, where workers were earning the same wages they earned in 1978. Pickers are paid by the piece — 40 to 45 cents for every 32 pound bucket picked. In order to make $50 in a day, they’d have to pick 125 buckets of tomatoes — that’s two tons of produce in a day.
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Finally on March 8, 2005, we reached a resolution with Taco Bell. They met our demands, and pickers who were formerly paid 1.2 cents per pound are now earning 2.2 cents per pound.

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