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Worker Exploitation on Florida's Tomato Fields
Senator Sanders is working to open the eyes of America to the conditions under which workers toil to produce the food we eat. From his trip to African cocoa plantations to his support of tomato farm workers in Immokalee, Florida, Sanders has worked to shine a light into the corners of society from which our consumer goods come. This January, on the same day that a 17-count indictment was handed down for enslavement of laborers in tomato fields, Sanders meet with the Immokalee farm workers in Florida. Tragically, working conditions on these farms have changed little since 1960, when Edward R. Morrow exposed the horrendous treatment of farm laborers in the broadcast documentary Harvest of Shame. Recently, a national campaign has developed to support these workers’ efforts to improve wages and working conditions. Leveraging his position on the Senate labor committee, Sanders proposed that the committee review the conditions faced daily by the men and women in the tomato fields of Immokalee. In America, in the year 2008, it is not acceptable that workers producing the food we eat should live in these conditions.
Below, please find a collection of news about the situation in Immokalee.
Op-Ed: Burger With a Side of Spies (NY Times) - 05/07/2008
By Eric Schlosser
WHILE the Patriot Act has raised fears about government spying on ordinary citizens, the growing threat to civil liberties posed by corporate spying has received much less attention. During the late 1990s, a private security firm spied on Greenpeace and other environmental groups, examining activists' phone records and even sending undercover agents to infiltrate the groups, according to an article in Mother Jones. In 2006 Hewlett-Packard was caught spying on journalists. Last year Wal-Mart apologized for improperly recording conversations with a New York Times reporter.
And now it turns out that the Burger King Corporation, home of the Whopper, hired a private security firm to spy on the Student/Farmworker Alliance, a group of idealistic college students trying to improve the lives of migrants in Florida. READ MORE
Burger King VP puts self on grill (Ft. Myers News-Press) - 04/28/2008
Daughter says dad wrote anti-coaltion postings
By Amy Bennett Williams
As the Coalition of Immokalee Workers prepares to deliver more than 60,000 petitions to Burger King headquarters in Miami today, the daughter of Burger King's vice-president Stephen Grover confirmed her father is responsible for online postings vilifying the coalition.
The Immokalee-based group is asking Burger King to improve tomato harvesters' working conditions and pay a penny more a pound for tomatoes, which could add about $20 to a daily wage of $50, workers say.
McDonald's and Yum! Brands, the world's biggest fast-food chain and restaurant company, respectively, have agreed to the raise. Yum! signed on in 2005; McDonald's in 2007. So far, Burger King has refused, while publicly saying it wants to work with the coalition to improve labor conditions.
Yet often during the past year, when articles or videos about the coalition were posted on YouTube and various Internet news sites, someone using the online names activist2008 or surfxaholic36 would attach comments coalition member Greg Asbed has called "libelous."
This one, from surfxaholic36, is representative: "The CIW is an attack organization lining the leaders pockets ... They make up issues and collect money from dupes that believe their story. To (sic) bad the people protesting don't have a clue regarding the facts. A bunch of fools!" READ MORE
It's just a penny a pound, people (St. Petersburg Times) - 04/24/2008
By Robyn E. Blumner, Times Columnist
It is hard to believe that this is America in 2008. It seems more like Upton Sinclair's turn of the century Chicago stockyards or Edward R. Murrow's Harvest of Shame of 1960. But it is today that the tomato pickers of Immokalee, Florida, toil under oppressive, retrograde conditions.
Thousands of immigrant farmworkers can be found in Immokalee during the winter tomato harvest. They arrive at pick-up points before dawn and are typically dropped off after dusk.
They are paid an average of 45 cents for every 32-pound bucket of tomatoes picked, a wage that hasn't much budged for a generation. READ MORE
Op-Ed: We must treat farmworkers fairly (Miami Herald) - 04/20/2008
This column was written by Sens. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio.
Almost 50 years ago, on the day after Thanksgiving in 1960, CBS aired Edward R. Murrow's documentary about migrant farmworkers called Harvest of Shame. The portrayal of the workers' poverty, powerlessness and struggle to eke out a living introduced the plight of migratory farmworkers in Florida to the public consciousness.
Tragically, in Immokalee, a tomato-producing region in Southwest Florida, migrant farmworkers still live in shanty towns and earn nearly the same wages they received 50 years ago. Tomato pickers in this region are paid by a piece rate according to how many tomatoes they pick. The Florida Tomato Growers Exchange, the trade association that represents the region's growers, claims that their tomato pickers earn an average wage of $12 per hour wage. To earn this wage, workers must pick 3,000 tomatoes per hour, an impossible pace to sustain over the course of a day. Even the highest paid farmworkers in the region earn less than $10,000 a year. READ MORE
Editorial: Pickers merit penny (Bradenton Herald) - 04/18/2008
Tomato industry's pay denial puzzling
Businesses around the country struggle with ever-increasing competition and seek out cheap labor. Consumers look for less expensive goods. With these price pressure points, immigrants - both legal and illegal - have become a valuable commodity to the nation's economy.
While our country's leaders, including the presidential candidates, struggle with designing an immigration policy that will pass muster with the American people - many of whom demand wholesale deportation - there are narrower issues at hand today. This week the Senate ordered up an investigation into the tomato industry over claims of paltry pay and deplorable working conditions. READ MORE
Tomato pickers' pay-probe sought (Miami Herald) - 04/16/2008
By Lesley Clark
Delivering a victory to farmworker groups that complain of paltry wages on Florida farms, senators said Tuesday (video here) they'll ask federal investigators to determine whether migrant farm workers are being paid as much as the tomato industry claims.
The call to have the Government Accountability Office investigate came as Sens. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., and Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, pledged to back efforts to boost pay and improve working conditions for thousands of migrant workers picking tomatoes in Immokalee and throughout Florida.
''This is the beginning, this is not the end,'' said Sanders, who toured the Collier County farming community in January and said he found the living conditions for workers ''deplorable.'' He said the committee was likely to push for greater protection of farmworkers, including changes to federal trafficking statutes. READ MORE
Ending Slavery for Pennies (The Nation) - 04/16/2008
By Katrina vanden Heuvel and Greg Kaufmann
The exploitation of farmworkers should not be tolerated in Florida. It should not be tolerated anywhere in the United States. There are many social problems that are extremely difficult to solve. This is not one of them. - Eric Schlosser, investigative reporter and author of Fast Food Nation
Yesterday, at a packed Senate hearing on working conditions for tomato workers, Senator Bernie Sanders asked Detective Charlie Frost, investigator for the human trafficking unit at the Collier County Sheriff's Office, "Do you believe that there is human trafficking happening in Florida agriculture as we speak right now?"
"It's probably occurring right now while we sit here," Frost said. "Almost assuredly it's going on right now."
"Detective, would you agree that in these slavery cases, there are people higher up the economic chain who are complicit and who benefit financially from what goes on?" Sanders asked. "[And if so,] do you believe we need to change the law to prevent the growers from shielding themselves from responsibility?"
"They isolate themselves from what is occurring, and they benefit from what's going on," Frost said. "We have to do something. We have to hold them accountable. This is occurring in their backyard, this is occurring in our fields, this is occurring in our country." READ MORE
Ending Abuses and Improving Working Conditions for Tomato Workers - 04/15/2008
"Is it really going to take an act of Congress to get Florida's tomato pickers a raise?" an editorial in Florida's St. Petersburg Times asked. "The men and women who work the fields in Immokalee earn 45 cents on average for every 32-pound bucket of tomatoes harvested. It is a meager wage that has not been raised in more than 20 years. Yet when a couple of fast food giants generously agreed to pay workers an added penny per pound, the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange sabotaged the deal and has refused to negotiate even after congressional leaders offered to be intermediaries." Senator Bernie Sanders last January visited Immokalee, Florida, to get a first-hand view of what was going on. On Tuesday, he chaired a hearing of the Senate labor committee. READ MORE
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