Oxfam's Make Trade Fair campaign continues to move forward. The non-profit brought together yesterday a coalition of farmworkers, human rights activists and others in a move to demand that corporations, government and consumers to help improve the working conditions for millions of farmworkers in the United States.

A vicious cycle leads to the consistent downgrading of labor conditions around the world, according to Oxfam: brand name buyers are undermining labor standards by squeezing their supply chain to provide cheaper products and stricter standards while producers drastically reduce their labor costs to avoid being forced out of business. Workers are then forced to pay the price by working harder usually for less money under more hazardous conditions.

Oxfam America also released a report yesterday called "Like Machines in the Fields, Workers without Rights in American Agriculture," which exposes how those global business trends are taking place in the fresh produce industry in the United States. Big buyers, like institutional food services and fast food companies, are buying increasing volumes of produce at increasingly cheaper prices.

The report states that in the U.S., nearly two million farmworkers, mainly immigrants, labor without rights, earn sub-living wages and live in dehumanizing conditions. The piece rate paid to tomato pickers in Florida, for example, has dropped by 65 percent over the past 25 years. In the fields of Florida, California, North Carolina and other states, one million farmworkers earn less than $7,500 per year.

The lack of protection from federal labor laws includes the right to organize and bargain collectively, and as a result, poor sanitation, sub-poverty wages, no overtime pay, no health benefits, insufficient water, and violence and abuse of workers are frequently part of farmworkers' daily reality.

Key quote:

"It is unacceptable that huge profits are being made off the back of the hardest working and lowest paid workers in the world. It is unconscionable for that to be happening right here in the United States," said Oxfam America President Raymond C. Offenheiser.