rate has often been debated. Farm workers getting paid according to a piece rate will often make less than what they would have made had they been earning minimum wage. This can be due to wide range of factors, such as a poor crop, poor weather conditions, and/or their picking pace and familiarity with the job. The primary reason farm owners opt to pay by a piece rate is the belief that if they paid workers an hourly rate the workers would not pick as fast. The idea behind this is the lack of incentive to pick quickly if the workers are paid a flat hourly rate. Additionally, the quality of the fruit picked is very important to the growers. For example, apples cannot be bruised and must still have an intact stem to be considered a sellable piece of fruit. If the workers are not paid by the piece of intact sellable fruit that they pick, then they do not have incentive to pick carefully in order to preserve the marketability of the product (Martin 20-42).
In 2000, the National Agricultural Workers' Survey found that over 60 percent of farm workers had incomes below the poverty line. Over the past decade, the median incomes of migrant farmworkers was less than $7,500 a year, and 77 percent of workers were paid hourly as opposed to 20 percent who were paid a piece rate. The average hourly wage of a farmworker was $5.94; however the rate of hourly pay has been declining over the past decade (NAWS vii-33). Migrant farm wages are thus a recipe for poverty. As we have seen, the median income of a migrant farmer places them far below the poverty line. It is precisely for this reason that migrant farmers tend to be undocumented workers. While the wages they receive are hardly livable in the United States, taken back to Mexico or the Central American countries from which the laborers originate their wages are far higher comparatively. Because these wages are unlivable in the United States, however, domestic workers are for the most ...