Photo Essay: California Farmworker – Lunch Room

FARMWORKER  LUNCH  ROOM

Photo by Gayanne Fietinghoff (c.1972)

On a work day, where do you eat lunch? In the lunch room? On the park bench? In a nearby restaurant? At your office desk? In this photo – in the middle of nowhere – the farmworker uses a standpipe at the edge of the field as his table to eat his canned food.  No protection from the weather, no chair, no bathroom facilities, no running water – better to eat standing up.

Because farmworkers were denied and excluded from any labor rights legislation in 1935, they are not treated as “employees” working in the nation’s largest industry, they are treated – even to this day – as rented slaves or work implements. Labor rights? Civil rights? Human rights? Social justice? – for you maybe, but not for farmworkers.