The forces that caused the workers to unite and resist, was the low wages, long hours and unsafe work conditions. The workers in the documentary…
“I’ll offer anybody here $50 an hour if you’ll go pick lettuce in Yuma this season, and pick for the whole season,” he said. Amid jeers, he didn’t back down, telling the audience, “You can’t do it, my friends.” (Thompson 82) Regardless the amount of being offered to most Americans, No one will accept the job and rather choose to work at fast food chain or retail than work in the field and get more pay. Most Americans will not challenge themselves to work in the field to gain more skills in agriculture and will let the undocumented do the hard work.…
Michael Pollan's piece “Big Food Strikes Back” in October 9, 2016 The New York Times Magazine begins with critique of a lack of the discussion about food system during 2008 U.S. presidential campaigns. Nevertheless, the food topic—being multi-dimensional—is inevitably a part of a larger, and more discussed, themes such as public health, climate change, and nation's' energy requirements, to name a few. Furthermore, the author in this article pinpoints the U.S. food systems' problems. The production of monocrops, which are subsidized by the government, result in high emissivity of the greenhouse gasses and have shown a negative impact on public health and ecology.…
Sweat dripped down the men's backs as they struck their hoes through the brittle dirt. The hot sun and the cloudless skies beat down on the hard working men far below. The deafening roar of the plane engine above warned farm workers that the air is being sprayed with dangerous pesticides; their lungs and faces burn as they struggle to breathe in the air contaminated with the thick chemical poison. Without anyone advocating for the protection of these workers, they were mercilessly exploited by the hands of farm owners. No one helped the cause of the farm workers more than Cesar Chavez.…
Boycotts were difficult to lead because of the discrimination of how illegal immigrants were looked upon differently. Their multiple protest and hunger strikes served to show growers that they weren’t going to keep putting up of how unfair and how harsh they get treated. Chavez once stated, “Kindness and compassion toward all living things is the mark of a civilized society.” This states how being kind and compassion towards others, it will help society be civilized. The strikes helped benefit migrant workers.…
As an inhabitant of this world, we may be asked the question; “To what extent does globalization contribute to sustainable prosperity for all people.” This is a question that not many people can answer, while some will provide a vague definition of either globalization or sustainability that is off topic. This just shows how naïve we are to the world around us. As global citizens, I believe we should be more knowledgeable and have a broader understanding of events happening around the world. If people became more knowledgeable and understanding, they would see that there is more than meets the eye to these global issues, but more so that citizens would be able to help those in need and the environment stay sustainable for future generations.…
A Critical Review of The Coca-Cola Case and Mardi Gras: Made in China By Sebastian Vladimir Introduction For my critical review I chose to do the movies The Coca-Cola Case and Mardi Gras: Made in China. The Coca-Cola Case is a documentary film about Coke and labor rights in the bottling plants. Similarly, in Mardi Gras: Made in China it is also a sort of documentary about bead factories in China. In both of these films we view some of the most brutal working conditions a human can possibly go through.…
Which Food Chain is Best to Feed America? Delicious. McDonalds, Wendys, Burger King, and more. All of these fast food restaurants are all examples of the Industrial Food Chain. How often do you have fast food?…
Food Inc. is a documentary that given an in depth look at the types of food that we eat every day. The film starts with the mention that there are no seasons in a supermarket because fruits and vegetables are available year round thanks to GMOs. GMOs makes the food grow faster while at the same time keeping pests away. While this may seem fine, fruits and vegetables can lose their rich flavor and color, which then makes them not as delicious. But because GMO grown goods are much cheaper than organic, people end up buying the GMOs.…
The Unfree and Unsafe Labour Conditions: Portrayed in the Lives of Mexicans Farm Workers Do we want to live in a nation with social closure towards migrant workers or do we want to provide autonomy towards such workers? Well, many of the times it is problematic for individuals to have a say because of the class and social inequality that exists in their workplace. Many of those with advantages and privileges may be able to adapt to changing conditions, but marginalized groups are often at a disadvantage to do so. Correspondingly, this idea is evident in the documentary El Contrato, by Min Sook Lee. The story delineates the struggles that Mexican workers migrating to Southern Ontario go through while being tomato labourers.…
Enough is Enough The local chapter of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union (P-9) were a group of passionate individuals that lived metaphorically by the words of “No Surrender” by Bruce Springsteen while they were striking against Hormel at the Austin, Minessota site. Director Barbara Kopple followed the Hormel strike for a couple of years in order to create the Academy Award winning documentary American Dream. The documentary shows the world a first hand experience of the struggles that workers in the meat packing industry had in the 1980s. Due to the recession, and although in 1984 they had a profit of 29.5 million dollars, in 1985 Hormel decided that in order to remain competitive the company they had to conduct large wage cuts.…
In the (Karen Olsson, 606) it states that Wal-Mart is a frenetic, fast-paced, environment and it seems, there simply aren’t enough people around to get the job done. On a given shift McLaughlin might man a register, hop a mechanical lift to retrieve something, from a high shelf, catch fish from a tank, run over to another department to help locate an item, restock the shelves, dust off the bike racks, or field questions about potting soil and lawn mowers. In other words, employers in her situation are accustomed to basically working in every department of the store. In the beginning of the story the author, Karen Olsson, began by letting us know that employee, Jennifer McLaughlin, was a 22-year-old with a one-year-old baby and living with…
America has made a lot of changes in the past on becoming more inventive, resourceful, and as well as industrialized. Due to the variations in how our food industries operate, small family-owned farms have rapidly vanished leaving us with large, industrialized productions that mass produce for the benefit of the Large Corporations. Americans expect to be able to have large quantities of food available for purchase at anytime and at a low price. Unfortunately in order to get that food to us at low prices, we have to sacrifice aspects of animal rights, human rights, the environment, and health.…
Walmart is not good for America because they don’t treat their workers well, they offshore secondary jobs to china, they destroy other retail businesses who can 't compete with them, and they cause suppliers to lose money and possibly declare bankruptcy because of Walmart 's demand for such low prices. Walmart’s employment practices are no secret. Part of the reason why they can sell goods at such low prices is because they don’t pay their average employee well. This is described in the article titled Walmart raising Wage to at least 9$ by Hiroko Tabuchi. ”The retail Giant……. said that all of its retail workers would earn at least 9$ an hour by April and 10$ an hour by next February.…
Farmers are taking advantage of because they realize that they will work for little money. The wages that farm workers are paid is little for the work they perform. Working in the fields requires strength and skill. Most of the work they perform requires carrying heavy loads of produce and repetitive motions cutting the fruits and vegetables. Such hard work should pay more as “The median family income is $13,000 for an indigenous family.…