FLORIDA FARM WORKERS FAST FOR BETTER WAGES;

5 ENTER DAY 24 OF HUNGER STRIKE TO FIGHT PAY THEY SAY IS LOWER THAN IT WAS 20 YEARS AGO

DONALD P. BAKER
WASHINGTON POST STAFF WRITER
Tuesday, January 13, 1998 ; Page A03
IMMOKALEE, Fla. -- Blue-and-white buses straggled into the potholed parking lot about 5 p.m. and disgorged hundreds of migrant workers from Mexico, Guatemala and Haiti, their hands and clothes stained green from another day of picking tomatoes under the hot Florida sun.

Augustin Soriano, 24, walked to a nearby pickup truck and joined a line of workers waiting for their daily paychecks. Soriano, who came to Southwest Florida from Oaxaca, Mexico, in 1992, shrugged when he looked at his check for $51.72. It said he had picked 140 buckets of tomatoes, at 40 cents each, in six hours. Including the bus trips to and from a field operated by B & D Farms, plus waits in the field for the plants to dry from rain showers, it had been another 12-hour day.

In the view of many migrant workers here -- encouraged by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers -- that is too long for too little. Five of the farm workers are in the 24th day of a hunger strike, protesting wages they say are lower than they were 20 years ago and demanding talks about a raise from the growers who hire them and their fellow migrants.
The strikers got a boost Friday, when Cardinal William H. Keeler, the Roman Catholic archbishop of Baltimore, stopped by to pray with the striking workers. "It was a chance to pray and to bless," said Keeler, who was accompanied by Bishop John Nevin of nearby Venice, Fla., also a supporter of the fasters.

One of the fasters, Domingo Jacinto, 32, said the cardinal "made me feel we should continue on with the struggle." But Jacinto, who had just been released after a two-day stay in a Fort Myers hospital, was so weak that he gave up his fast on Saturday. He vowed to stay with the remaining five, whose ages range from 24 to 47. "I want to be with my companions," he said softly.

With the cardinal and accompanying reporters gone, the strikers stretched out on the cots where they have been living for 3 1/2 weeks and discussed their struggle. They began drinking only water and juices Dec. 20, a couple of weeks after more than 1,900 of their co-workers signed documents demanding a meeting with the region's 10 leading growers. The workers' goal is 60 cents for each 32-pound bucket they pick.

According to the nonprofit coalition, workers in these sprawling tomato fields at the edge of the Everglades made about 50 cents a bucket 20 years ago. That rate was cut to 45 cents 10 years ago and now is 40 cents.

Growers say the lower rates are offset by improved working conditions, such as staked plants, that allow the workers to pick more tomatoes in a day.

"Tomato workers make a lot more than other farm laborers," said Larry Lipman of Fort Myers, an owner of Six L's, one of the biggest growers in a region whose abundant fields have led 2,500 migrants to make their home base in Immokalee, the most of any town in Florida.

In the early days of their protest, the fasters went to Tallahassee, the state capital, and won a meeting with Gov. Lawton Chiles (D), who subsequently urged that "growers begin a meaningful dialogue with representatives of these workers."
In a letter to Chiles, Michael J. Stuart, president of the Orlando-based Florida Fruit and Vegetable Association, said, "FFVA sincerely regrets that these individuals have chosen to endanger themselves." He said "tomato growers, as a matter of course, communicate with their employees each working day" in the fields "to stay informed about worker issues and concerns."

Stuart said "southwest Florida tomato harvesters compare very favorably with farm workers in other states, earning from $6 to $12 an hour, or more."

Yet, Stuart said, because of "increased competition from foreign producers . . . more than half of Florida's tomato growers have folded in just the past five years and thousands of farm jobs have been lost."

Greg Asbed, an activist who grew up in Bethesda and helped organize the nonprofit workers group five years ago, conceded that while a picker can make $80 a day at the height of the season, on many days, particularly rainy ones, the workers get nothing. The important figure, Asbed said, is that the workers average only $9,000 a year.

The coalition also wants to eliminate a pay system used by some growers called "a day and a dime," which it contends punishes the best workers. Under that plan, workers are paid the federal minimum wage of $41 for an eight-hour day -- they get no overtime, regardless of how long they are in the fields -- plus 10 cents a bucket.

A chart on the wall, titled "No More Day and a Dime," illustrates what the workers describe as the scheme's shortcoming: A worker who picks 140 buckets in a day, as did Soriano, earns $1 less than if he had been paid the straight piece rate of 40 cents a bucket; at 160 buckets, the loss is $7; at 200 buckets, $19.

One of the major growers, Garguilo Co., of Naples, Fla., accepted the coalition's invitation to meet with the workers. Following the meeting, it agreed to a 10-cents-an-hour raise for the current season and is considering another 10-cent raise next November. The other growers have refused to meet with the coalition.

"We did what we thought was the fair thing for our workers," said Gerry Odell, head of Eastern operations for Garguilo.

Picking tomatoes is "hard work, and no one wants to do it," he added. "The only labor force available for harvesting fruits and vegetables are migrant laborers."

And the best of the workers find better jobs, in fast-food restaurants or in tourism, or head north for other fields after the peak picking season here, Odell said, leaving growers with less-experienced workers for the equally important jobs of planting, staking and tying the tomatoes.

Those who stay here year-round go three months without work, crowding into overpriced shanties or trailers that rent for $1,000 or more a month.

Augustin Soriano, who lives with his wife, a couple of brothers-in-law and several other men in a rickety triplex for which they pay $154 a week for two bedrooms and a tiny kitchen, said he is counting on the fasters to win concessions from the growers.

"You have to kill yourself" in the fields, he said, "and some days, it's not enough to make your day."

Cutline: Tomato pickers fast at Coalition of Immokalee Workers headquarters in Florida. Growers say lower wages are offset by better working conditions.