Originally Posted by stereoman
Originally Posted by Reality Bytes
I was quoting from the other article . . .

I had to scratch my head over those numbers a bit. First of all, I wondered, $100 per what? Well, I guess it must be per week, eh? Sure ain't a day! Nor a month, one must hope.
So an extra penny a pound equals an extra franklin a week. That means to earn an extra c-note, they must pick ten thousand pounds of tomatoes each week.

Ten thousand pounds. That works out to, hmm. A six day week, 1,667 pounds day. 180 pounds per hour, 9 hours a day. 3 pounds per minute. Every minute.

Wow.

Now, the second thing that caught my eye. If a one cent per pound increase yields a $100 a week raise in income, then how much are they getting per week at 1.5 cents per pound?

Yeah, me too. I'm not sure though - if it's per week, that would be in keeping with needing an extra $100 (per week) just to get TO minimum wage. But 3#/minute is not that much - I've seen pickers work, if you're talking instantaneous rate, that's pretty slow; as an average... maybe.

On the other hand, the other article said
Quote
Florida workers earn about 45 cents for filling a 32-pound bucket. That can mean upward of $11 an hour for those who hustle to fill more than 200 buckets a day. But work is not guaranteed, and tomato pickers get neither health insurance nor overtime.

OK, so at this rate (which is probably the upper end, in ideal conditions), that would be 12# per minute, or 733#/hr, or 5800#/day - so that extra penny would be $58/day? Hmm.

I think the real numbers are somewhere in between... but in any event, for someone making $150/week or even $450/week, damn straight that $100 per week would help them out of poverty! Just another case of economic class disconnect...

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Now recall the comment of the Burger King executive, who probably makes $100 an hour. Or more.
Originally Posted by Burger King Executive
that won't help them out of poverty

Them.

Indeed.

The CEO made 3.09 million last year. I wonder how many tomatoes that is per minute??

Castigat Ridendo Mores
(laughter succeeds where lecturing fails)

"Those who will risk nothing, risk everything"