Are there slaves in the twenty-first century? Many people may respond to this question by saying of course not, slavery is part of the past not part of today's society. However, if one is to go east or west and look in the fields of farmers, they may notice people hunching over, picking crops from sun-up to sundown. Studies are showing that migrant workers make as little as one dollar an hour and work as much as seventy hours a week. Does the economy rest on the shoulders of these migrant workers or is it the simple fact that these people are allowing themselves to be made to do such work? By accomplishing so much and making so little, the workers and their families seem as if they would just want to give up and quit! Common knowledge would tell you that slaves in the United States are non-existent, but in the field of migrant working, it seems as though this terrible concept of the past is in fact reality today. .
As stated in the Webster's Dictionary, a migratory worker is a person who leaves his home temporarily to do work for wages in another country or state. Throughout the United States, many different environments require certain kinds of workers. Supplementary Farm Workers are those who are needed to supply a large and fluctuating seasonal demand for labor. These workers can be both part of a crew or travel alone from field to field. There are also labor crews, or a group of seasonal workers who travel together under a crew leader and never leave their crew. These workers travel together throughout the season on a route that is chosen beforehand. These crews or individuals travel from state to state. Intrastate migratory workers are people who live in a particular state and travel to various sections within the state, sometime merely from one county to another, or more often, to localities far from the home base (Heaps 164-165). As the food, industry grows the demand for the migratory workers increases.