Only 40 cents per bucket! The question really needs to be how long (as in minutes) does it take to fill a bucket. If they are able to pick & fill 1 bucket per minute, that translates to $24 per hour. The farmers are looking for maximum productivity here. That is why they are paying by quantity picked and not by hours worked.
Sure, 40 cents per bucket sounds like a paltry sum. However, I work part time as a medical transcriptionist. I get paid 7 cents per line of 65 characters that I type. Last year, doing this PART-TIME, I earned $35,000!! Perhaps I should demand parity with the tomato pickers?
How then do we explain our President's argument that Americans can't be found to take these jobs?
I have no doubt that the current status of tomato pickers ranges from appalling working conditions to involuntary servitude. This Administration's Justice Department is currently funding special anti-slavery projects at the local level throughout the country. You'll be hearing a lot more about this before too long.
But the slavery, the atrocious living conditions, the crime, the destruction of our health care and school systems are part and parcel of our crazy policy of protecting employers who violate our immigration and employment laws. We can do better than all this. We would be better off to pay a market price for our groceries. This subsidy for some employers is just too expensive for the rest of us. ;-)