Word: grapes
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...asking Americans to not forget the suffering of farm workers and their children, the important human beings who feed this nation daily. Thousands of Americans have responded positively to Chavez's appeal for support, and today the boycott is quickly gaining monentum and making a large impact on grape sales. But there is still much more to be done...
Unfortunately, since 1980 Republican administrations in California, who get a large portion of their financial backing from agribusiness, have shamefully denied farm workers their legal rights. As a result, the working conditions of farm workers rapidly declined in the 1980s. The state of grape workers and their children today, in 1991, is worse than it was 30 years ago, when Chavez first set out to eliminate the injustices of agricultural work...
...uncontrolled and reckless use of toxic pesticides by grape growers demonstrates how helpless farm workers and their children are without protection. In 1988, 12 million pounds of pesticides were used on grapes alone in California; one-third of these pesticides are known to cause cancer. This inordinate use of toxic pesticides poisons and kills farm workers and their children. In McFarland, the rate of cancer diagnosed among children is 800 percent the normal rate. Fourteen children in this grape-growing community of 6000 have been stricken with cancer since 1985; six have already died...
...Earlimart, 15 miles from McFarland, six children have been diagnosed with cancer since 1988; the rate in Earlimart is 1200 percent the expected rate. One of these children, Monica Tovar, died earlier this year. Seven children in Fowler, another grape-growing community, have been diagnosed with cancer since 1984. The World Institute estimates that toxic pesticides poison over 300,000 farm workers in the United States every year...
Because they are denied their legal right to organize and bargain collectively with growers, farm workers, especially grape workers, earn meager wages while working under miserable conditions. Many grape growers use the piece rate method to underpay their workers. As a result, grape growers often earn as little as $2 an hour...