COLUMN: Strawberry fields forever

From Delia Vallejo's, "Journey to Aztlan," Fall '97 From Delia Vallejo's, "Journey to Aztlan," Fall '97If you are stranded on a deserted island, who would you rather have with you -- a lawyer or a farm worker?" is a question Dolores Huerta posed to the audience in her keynote address during Festival Latino de Penn. Huerta is currently secretary-treasurer of the United Farm Workers of America, a labor union she co-founded with the late Cesar Chavez. The union is currently working diligently to organize workers of the strawberry fields in California. Her speech made us aware of the abuse that occurs in the fields of California's $22 billion agribusiness. Labor unions -- the enemy of capitalism, right? Wrong. They are the protector of the worker who does not have a voice when he or she stands alone. It is so easy to condemn that which may result in lower profits for business, but for one minute, let's put ourselves in the shoes of a farm worker. Imagine working in the sun for 12 hours, constantly stooped over short strawberry plants. Would you be able to bear the abuses of not having clean drinking water and bathrooms in the fields? How about living on $8,000 a year without job security or health insurance? This $650 million-a-year business is controlled by only a few corporations. They thrive on the sweat of 20,000 workers who often ruin their backs while picking the strawberries -- making the corporations rich. Furthermore, strawberry pickers' average hourly wage has actually fallen in real terms from $9 an hour to only $6 an hour, while production and profits in the strawberry industry have grown. Why would fair compensation be a problem? Certainly, the workers should not take such abuses, but when one doesn't have a choice since one needs to feed one's family, there is not much else to do. An estimated 60 percent of berry pickers are immigrants; they become an easy target of labor exploitation because often they do not speak English and are simply trying to survive. Constant threats from growers discourage union organization, so the workers have no protection from mistreatment. People like Huerta and the hundreds of organizers, seek to stop those abuses. A campaign called "Five Cents for Fairness" is currently underway all over the country. It asks supermarkets not to purchase non-union strawberries even if they have to charge an additional five cents per basket to cover the additional costs of paying higher wages to farm workers. So if you have to pay an additional penny for your pint of strawberries at Pathmark, know that it probably means someone across the country is able to drink clean water or maybe go to the doctor if they are ill. Thinking about the plight of farm workers in California makes me wonder about what exactly is social justice. Is it ensuring everyone is treated equally and taking advantage of people with less power does not occur? Well then, social justice definitely does not exist in the strawberry fields of sunny California. Labor unions seek to mobilize the farm workers so they may exercise power as a collective voice. The UFW seeks to organize peacefully, yet they are often met with violence and threats from the growers. Messages such as "Asegure su trabajo, vote NO a la union," -- "Secure your job, vote no to the union" -- are prevalent in the fields. And I thought there was freedom in the United States. As consumers, we have the power to impact the strawberry industry, or any other business that exploits human beings, by not buying from them. If profits are what drives the growers to treat people so inhumanely, then perhaps it will be profits that will make them give the farm workers the rights they deserve when they notice that we are not buying from them. Boycotts and demonstrations in California may work, but people are often met with violence. By taking action at the consumer level, perhaps no one will have to get hurt. We may think California is really far away from us, especially the strawberry fields that we simply cannot relate to. But, as Huerta said, "farm workers are not ever far away. They are with us every time we sit down to eat." Social justice -- I define it as people having the right to be treated as humans and compensated fairly for a hard day's work.