On Thanksgiving many, perhaps most, who read these words will be among the millions who will join with family and friends to celebrate a joyous holiday.
But the holiday celebration also marks an occasion to reflect on the history that makes the day for many anything but joyful. Many Indigenous people and their allies, not surprisingly, think of Thanksgiving as a National Day of Mourning.
It also is a time to acknowledge that others who would love to celebrate are without the means or reasons to do so. Food insecurity, hunger or being unhoused can make celebration illusory.
And we should recognize the sacrifice of generations, continuing today, that allows so many persons to celebrate when those who produce the bounty really cannot.
Those of us privileged enough to come together to share plentiful and delicious food with family and friends should pause to offer gratitude to the often-overlooked people who make Thanksgiving possible: farmworkers.
Massachusetts’ 14,000 farmworkers, most of whom live here year-round, toil on the land in all weather, through heat waves and floods, utilizing their skills, experience, and hard work to cultivate the food we eat in each season. Those farmworkers and their families are integral to our communities.
The commonwealth has a vibrant agricultural economy. Massachusetts is a leader in direct-to-consumer sales, which means that the crops our local farms grow arrive in our kitchens and local restaurants.
Thanksgiving, in particular, is an opportunity to give thanks to the farmers and farmworkers who cultivate squash, potatoes, and an array of other vegetables and fruits, including the noteworthy ubiquitous holiday staple, cranberries. Entirely native to North America, cranberries were cultivated in Massachusetts by Indigenous peoples long before the Pilgrims arrived.
Thanking farmworkers, holding them in our thoughts, matters. But it is not enough. Here’s the rub. In Massachusetts, the laws that govern farmworkers’ wages and working conditions fail to reflect their value or treat them as equal and essential laborers.
The specifics: the state minimum wage guarantee of $15/hr. excludes farmworkers. For farmworkers the law specifies a subminimum wage of $8/hr. In addition, farmworkers have no right to earn overtime rates, despite working, on average, 60 -70 hours a week during peak harvest periods.
Further, although agricultural work is arduous and highly skilled, under state law farmworkers are not entitled to a day of rest; they may be required to work seven days a week, and they have no legal guarantee of any paid time off.
These inequities stem from a legacy of racism, which was codified in the exclusion of farmworkers, primarily Black Americans, from the essential federal labor law protections enacted in the 1930s. Now, many of the workers are Latino.
It is time — really, past time — for the inequities to end. For the past five years the Fairness for Farmworkers Coalition has been pushing to change the law that governs those who grow our food.
The Fairness for Farmworkers Act, now before the Legislature, would (1) guarantee farmworkers the state minimum wage, (2) provide farmworkers with overtime pay after 55 hours/week, (3) assure farmworkers two paid 15-minute breaks in a workday of eight hours or more, and (4) grant farmworkers the ability to earn paid time off.
While most farm owners pay more than the subminimum wage, the existing law still is wrong and must change. Indeed, there no longer is much debate about that. The same rationale applies to overtime and breaks.
Massachusetts’ antiquated regressive law presents farmworkers with the predicament of choosing between taking time for their families or risking termination for not reporting to work every day of the week.
On Thanksgiving, when Massachusetts farmworkers allow many of us to sit down to a delicious meal that might well include a sweet potato casserole, mashed potatoes and apple pie, all of us should extend gratitude to those who allow us to gather as family and community.
A look backward: There is a long history of thanks. For thousands of years prior to the arrival of the Pilgrims, the Wampanoag nation held feasts of gratitude. They believed that if they expressed their devotion and thanks to Mother Earth, she would continue to provide.
In 1621, the Wampanoag, led by Chief Massasoit, held a three-day feast with English colonists in Plymouth to celebrate a successful harvest. It proved to be a brief interlude in the violence and suffering perpetrated by the colonists.
In 1863, President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a National Day of Thanksgiving. In 1943, President Franklin Roosevelt established the fourth Thursday of November as a National Day of Thanksgiving. That day of Thanksgiving remains our national holiday.
And forward: We have an ask — please join with the Fairness for Farmworkers Coalition in carrying forth this gratitude beyond Thanksgiving by supporting the Fairness for Farmworkers Act. This law will dignify the commonwealth’s farmworkers with fair wages and stronger protections so that next year they might be able to fully partake of the bounty they produce.
Claudia Quintero is the director of Central-West Justice Center, a subsidiary of Community Legal Aid (CLA) and the Supervising Attorney of the Migrant and Seasonal Farmworkers Project. Maya McCann-Som is a staff attorney at CWJC, running the Farmworker Medical-Legal Partnership. Bill Newman is the director of the ACLU of Mass. Western Mass. Law Office All three attorneys serve on the Steering Committee of the Fairness for Farmworkers Coalition.