agricultural workers
kkrisberg | August 16, 2016At NPR, John Burnett reports on the conditions facing farmworkers in south Texas 50 years after a landmark strike in which farmworkers walked 400 miles to the capital city of Austin to demand fair working conditions. He writes:
A lot has changed since 1966, when watermelon workers in the South Texas borderlands walked out of the melon fields in a historic strike to protest poor wages and appalling working conditions.
They marched 400 miles to the state capital of Austin; California labor activist and union leader Cesar Chavez joined them.
The farmworkers succeeded in publicizing their cause…
egrossman | August 8, 2011By Elizabeth Grossman
While the rest of the country has been experiencing an epic heat wave, in the Pacific Northwest where I live, thus far the summer has been unusually cool. One consequence of the cool weather is a slow-to-appear local tomato crop, made evident to consumers by some remarkably high prices. A pint of organic cherry tomatoes at my neighborhood market recently jumped more than a dollar within a week to $4.99, prompting me to wonder precisely what goes into the price of tomatoes.
Regional growers, distributors, and retailers all told me that prices are typically determined by…