SPRINGFIELD — The blueberries in a morning smoothie. The tomatoes in a BLT at lunch. The asparagus on a dinner plate. The food people in Massachusetts eat every day is often grown here. But the people who harvest the crops that feed Baystaters are often paid nearly half of what other workers in the state receive.
The minimum wage for farmworkers in Massachusetts had been $1.60 per hour dating back to the 1960s. It was raised to $8 per hour in 2014 when a state minimum wage of $15 per hour for most workers was passed.
Mya McCann, staff attorney with the Seasonal Migrant Farm Worker Project at the Central West Justice Center, said farmworker families in the state are twice as likely as other families to live in “extreme poverty” with 38% living at or near the federal poverty level.
