Poorly paid tomato and produce pickers in Florida, campaigning for a raise in wages and basic workers’ rights for 7 years, are finally making headway. The workers, many of them illegal immigrants, day-labor on farms in the Immokalee (name derives from Cherokee for "tumbling water") area of South West Florida that provide the bulk of winter citrus fruits and vegetables to Tropicana (Pepsi-Co), Minute Maid (Coca-Cola), Wendy's, Burger King, McDonald 's, Carnival Cruise Lines and to supermarkets and corporations such as Yum Brands which owns Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, KFC, and Long John Silver’s (whose rabid "diversification" strategies have brought us the much-derided KenTacoHuts). Pickers generally earn wages from $50/day to $20/week, at rates that unbelievably haven’t been raised in nearly 30 years. One major tomato-producer, Six L’s Packing Co., Inc., a known contractor for Taco Bell, pays only 40 cents for a 32-pound bucket of picked tomatoes. To earn fifty dollars in a day, an Immokalee picker must harvest two tons of tomatoes.

Immigrant workers, fearing deportation by the law, prove relatively easy for unscrupulous growers to coerce and exploit. Trucked over the border by "coyote" smugglers, immigrants are tricked into legally unenforceable debts, made to pay up front for transportation, sub-standard mass housing, tools, and clothes, for which they are "charged" exorbitant rates, and already meager wages are garnished to nothing. Some labor providers even charge the workers a "check cashing" fee. Many are, in effect, indentured slaves, working in rural isolation dozens of miles from the nearest town, unable to escape their captors, and threatened or visited with brutish violence should they consider doing so. In Immokalee, fees for run-down trailers near the daily bus to the fields can run upwards of $200 a week, a rate per square foot, in rural Florida, commensurate with that of Manhattan. A dozen men will share these trailers without heat or phone service.

According to the United States Department of Labor, farm receipts from fruit and vegetable sales have nearly doubled in the past twenty years. Between 1989 and 1998, however, wages paid to farm workers declined, dropping from $6.89 to $6.18 per hour. The national median annual income for farm workers is $7,500. A University of Florida survey found that the average income for Immokalee farm workers is even lower - in 1998, just $6,574. Workers are also denied the right to organize, overtime pay, health insurance, sick leave, paid holidays, vacation, or pensions.

Farm workers are demanding a penny or two more per pound to significantly improve their wages, which haven’t seen a real increase since 1978. An increase of only one cent per pound, if handed directly to the pickers, would nearly double the piece rate.

The Coalition of Immokalee Workers was formed by couple Greg Asbed and Laura Germino in the mid-nineties, while working for Florida Rural Legal Services. The CIW have received national recognition for their work drawing the links between corporate profits and farm worker poverty.

As a result of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers' campaign, piece rates have gone up to 45 - 50 cents per bucket. However, this is still far short of a living wage, and even far short of the value this work had 2 decades ago. In order to keep pace with inflation since 1980, the piece rate today would have to be 73.5 cents.

Immokalee is Florida's largest farm worker community, and Taco Bell is the largest buyer of Florida tomatoes. Taco Bell reaps some $25 billion in annual receipts, but the fast food chain has refused CIW's demands. Taco Bell buys millions of pounds of tomatoes each year through local packing companies, but corporate mouthpieces defend the giant, saying that they don't actually own the groves or harvest the fruit themselves. They employ a parasite called a labor provider to do their dirty work for them.

The CIW also has played a major role in prosecuting labor providers like Six L’s, aiding the Dept. of Justice in prosecuting four slavery operations in Florida. One operation held 400 people captive, forcing them to work 10-12 hour days under armed guard, six days a week, paying them a mere $20 a week. In 2002, after a two-year investigation by the CIW - in collaboration with the Civil Rights Division of the US Department of Justice - the leaders of a violent and coercive slavery operation employing up to 600 farm workers were found guilty in federal court of charges including extortion and use of a firearm during a violent crime.

But the corporate giants are not off the hook. In 2002, a caravan of workers crossed the country in the first Taco Bell Truth Tour, culminating in a massive march and rally at Taco Bell headquarters. Last year, 75 workers and allies held an unprecedented 10-day hunger strike outside Taco Bell's headquarters. This past November, three CIW members received the 2003 Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award for their work fighting modern-day slavery.

Organized this year, the Taco Bell Truth Tour 2004 in early March led hundreds of migrant workers, civil rights defenders and volunteers across the country to both the HQs of Taco Bell in Irvine, CA, and their parent company, YUM Brands.

During their annual convention last May in downtown Pittsburgh, the United Methodist Church voted to officially endorse a boycott against Taco Bell, echoing the support of several other American congregations, Presbyterian, Unitarian, and Quaker among them.

Last April, the University of Notre Dame, heeding concerns raised by Notre Dame's Progressive Student Association, postponed the renewal of a sponsorship contract with Taco Bell pending further investigation into its standards, and the Associated Students of UCLA rejected Taco Bell's request for more time to complete a report on working conditions of tomato pickers in Florida, holding the eatery to an agreement made with that university in December. While the UCLA students’ actions held up negotiations, University executives ultimately opted to renew contracts with Taco Bell. In response, they’ve organized a hunger strike, which currently involves more than 100 students. Notre Dame’s contract is still pending investigation.

These South Florida migrants are a last vestige of neo-slavery in America - below poverty wages and brutal working conditions. This is possible only because of enablers: gutless politicians, greedy growers, and huge purchasers like Taco Bell.

According to a January 2001 Report to Congress, the US Department of Labor said of farm worker conditions: "Low wages, sub-poverty annual earnings, (and) significant periods of un-and underemployment... all add up to a labor force in significant economic distress."

To find out more about what you can do, visit:www.ciw-online.org

        
All photos this page courtesy of www.ciw-online.org the official website of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers.