Editorial: RIPE FOR SOME REFORM

THE PALM BEACH POST

December 18, 1999

The state's most endangered species is not flying over the Everglades or swimming in a canal. It is sitting atop your dinner salad.

The Florida tomato is declining in numbers. Competition from Mexico, bad weather from Hurricane Irene and now disputes with farm workers have made this a rotten year for growers. This week, hundreds of tomato pickers in Immokalee, in the rural northeast section of Collier County, stayed off the job to protest low wages and poor housing. For all the attempts at reform through the years, conditions for farm workers remain dismal.

A typical picker works 12-hour days intermittently during the eight-month harvest season, earning about $9 an hour, which amounts in most cases to less than $10,000 a year, without benefits. Immokalee workers went on hunger strikes for higher wages last year, and growers, after Gov. Bush's intervention, responded by increasing the rate per bucket picked from 40 cents to 45 cents. It came to a 13 percent raise that was the pickers' first in 20 years.

This time, farm workers are demanding 75 cents per bucket, a rate the growers say they can't afford. ``It's easy to say that farm workers need to be paid more,'' said a spokesman for the Florida Fruit and Vegetable Association, which represents growers. ``But the reality . . . in Florida is the growers have to be able to pay wages that allow them to compete.''

While the North American Free Trade Agreement has produced many winners, Florida's tomato industry is a clear loser. Cheaper Mexican tomatoes have flooded the market, forcing many growers to switch crops. Before Congress passed NAFTA in 1994, there were 320 tomato farmers in the state; now, there are fewer than 100, says the Florida Tomato Committee.

This season's harvests from Homestead to Palm Beach County are behind or lost because of crop damage from Irene. Yet none of this excuses the deplorable treatment of farm workers, most of whom are migrants and all of whom do a job Americans don't want to perform. Florida should consider an approach California has used for 25 years. There, an agriculture labor relations board referees disputes and exchanges ideas. Members are growers, state representatives - and farm workers.

The least Florida can do is give the people who labor to put food on the table a voice at it.