Category: Poverty

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“The migrant farm workers who harvest tomatoes in South Florida have one of the nation’s most backbreaking jobs. For 10 to 12 hours a day, they pick tomatoes by hand, earning a piece-rate of about 45 cents for every 32-pound bucket. During a typical day each migrant picks, carries and unloads two tons of tomatoes.”

-Eric Schlosser, The NY Times 11/29/07

Burger King is one of the largest purchasers of tomatoes, used as garnish, for its industrial produced, fatty meat burgers. They have refused, unlike McDonalds or Taco Bell, to pay an extra penny per bucket to the migrant pickers, so that they can earn more money. It would cost Burger King only about $250,000 a year extra for some human compassion.

“This month the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange, representing 90 percent of the state’s growers, announced that it will not allow any of its members to collect the extra penny for farm workers. Reggie Brown, the executive vice president of the group, described the surcharge for poor migrants as “pretty much near un-American.”

More sickeningly, among the largest shareholders of Burger King stock is Goldman Sachs whose top twelve executives earned bonuses of $200 million last year, more than the entire yearly salary of the 10,000 tomato pickers in Florida combined.

Be sure to check out (the graphic on right) how much the US has spent in Iraq, so far: $472 billion. Think about what that money could buy right here at home.

The Catholic Church, which did so much to hide the scandal of priests abusing young boys, is now trying to pay off the many millions of dollars it owes in lawsuit settlements, by evicting some elderly and disabled nuns from their Santa Barbara home.

The “Sisters of Bethany” is an order which has administered to the needs of the poorer residents of Santa Barbara since at least 1950. The city is one of the wealthiest in the nation, and counts among its residents Oprah Winfrey.

The sisters, who will be forced out of their $750,000 home, include a diabetes sufferer and another one with partial blindness. Meanwhile, Bishop Thomas Curry lives in a $3 million dollar (church bought) home in an elite section of the city, and will continue to live there rent free.

These nuns took vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. But after a lifetime of work and sacrifice, their reward is to be thrown out of their home, and to deprive a poor community of caregivers, so that a wealthy church can keep its most powerful bishops housed in palatial splendor.