Contact: Kendra Moesle
202.384.1755
kmoesle@afop.org
Farmworkers on Labor Day
Considering those less fortunate on our day off
Washington, DC: This coming Labor Day, farmworkers will go to work. They have
been going to work on Labor Day just like it was any other day, ever since the holiday was established 122 years ago. As manual laborers performing the most difficult and often very complex tasks in order to feed the rest of us, farmworkers should be the first to get a day off as a reward for working the rest of the year. Unfortunately, that is not the case.
“Farmworkers harvest the food that other Americans eat at their Labor Day picnics and barbecues,” says Daniel Sheehan, Executive Director of the Association of Farmworker Opportunity Programs. “The fact that they themselves can’t afford the time or the money to eat that food flies in the face of the core values this country was meant to uphold.”
