As I left St. Peter's noon Mass today, I heard music, drumming and chanting. It turned out to be a well-planned protest march with about 200 members. Most carried signs shaped like Golden Arches with a "no" slash through them. I had read about this: the farm workers who pick tomatoes for huge fast-food companies are asking to be paid one cent more per pound for the tomatoes they pick. Considering the back-breaking labor involved, and the generally horrific working conditions migrants face, this is a step in the right direction.
I mentioned my encounter to Sr. Margaret (the provincial), who commented that when she was stationed in Ohio in the 80's, she used to spend weeks on the road doing mission trips, visiting migrant camps. There were 300 migrant camps in Ohio alone. Sometimes the workers were worse off than slaves. Sometimes they were just poor, hard-working people (families, too) living in tents and shacks, but with evenings to gather and watch the movies the sisters brought, and choose little prayer books and things. Sr. Margaret said that the sisters used to pick strawberries along with the workers when they got to a camp while people were still working. (It was generally night-time mission work, given the circumstances.) I hadn't even known that.
So, anyway, bottom line is, your Big Mac is worth an extra cent for the people who brought you that juicy tomato.
1 comment:
Almost all fast food establisments purchase their produce from a consortium that buys from farmers who utilize migrant workers. These workers are very poor, moving from farm to farm with the season, depending on what is ripe at the time.---harv681
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