Farm Workers Fight for an Extra Cent

[cory777]

Source: IPS

TAMPA, Florida, Apr 19, 2010 (IPS) - Chanting "No more slaves! Pay a living wage!", hundreds of farmworkers, students and others marched 22 miles through central Florida for three days, calling on the Publix supermarket chain to pay an extra penny to the impoverished workers who pick their tomatoes.

The three-day long march was organised by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), a collective of Mexican, Guatemalan and Haitian migrants based in the small south Florida town of Immokalee. The procession passed through the cities of Tampa and Plant City, and then culminated with a rally in Lakeland, where Publix corporate headquarters is located.

The farmworkers are calling on Publix to pay them a penny more for every pound of tomatoes they pick, which would almost double their meager wages. They also want Publix to sign onto a code of conduct, co-written by the workers themselves, which would prevent the supermarket chain from buying tomatoes from any growers that did not meet certain basic working conditions.

"We get paid 45 cents for picking a bucket of tomatoes," says farmworker Wilson Perez.

Read more: http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=51111

[defendandprotect]

1. Legalized slavery . . . !!!

[Downwinder]

2. All those foreign workers taking American jobs. n/t

[AlphaCentauri]

8. oh! but Americans can't find jobs

and foreigner do, interesting.

[Romulox]

9. If Americans won't take the abuse, there's ALWAYS somebody more desperate, eh?

That's the basic theory of the race to the bottom, no? :hi:

[bluevoter4life]

3. I don't mean to rain on the parade

But I work for Publix and I know it will take more than a protest to get them to pay an extra penny. Despite making $1.2 billion last year, they won't even pay us workers an extra 15 cents on our evaluations. They are incredibly stingy with their money and they won't want to make any move that would even so much as suggest a union is able to come in.

[Cal Carpenter]

10. Immokalee Workers Take Down Taco Bell

The headline is hyperbolic, as headlines tend to be, but this workers group has had it's successes....


Immokalee Workers Take Down Taco Bell
Elly Leary

On March 8, 2005, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) in Immokalee, Florida won a significant victory. In a precedent-setting move, fast-food giant Yum! Brands Inc., the world’s largest restaurant corporation, agreed to all the farm workers’ demands (and more!) if the CIW would end the four-year-old boycott of its subsidiary Taco Bell. (Yum!, a spin off from Pepsi, includes Taco Bell, Kentucky Fried Chicken, A&W, Long John Silver’s, and Pizza Hut franchises.) As United Farm Workers (UFW) president Arturo Rodriguez commented at the victory celebration, “It is the most significant victory since the successful grape boycott led by the UFW in the 1960s in the fields of California.”

El Acuerdo/The Agreement

To end the boycott of Taco Bell, Yum! Brands signed these first-time-ever agreements:

* Taco Bell will deal only with Immokalee tomato suppliers who agree to pay workers an additional penny per pound. This small amount raises wages 75 percent. For the first time in history these wage increases are coming from the fast-food industry directly! Taco Bell will provide the CIW, on a monthly basis, complete records of their purchases of Florida tomatoes and growers’ wage receipts. Growers who do not pass this wage increase on to workers will be cut from Taco Bell’s list of vendors.
* Taco Bell agreed to work jointly with the CIW to set up a process to ensure that the wage increase goes directly to pickers. The CIW is the investigative and monitoring body.
* Taco Bell will add language to its Supplier Code of Conduct to ensure that indentured servitude is strictly forbidden and there will be strict compliance with all existing laws.
* Taco Bell will aid in efforts at the state level to seek new laws that better protect all Florida tomato farm workers. It will give market incentives for agricultural suppliers willing to respect their workers’ rights, even when those rights are not guaranteed by law.

In an era where workers are losing more than winning, where unionization rates and company-paid benefits like health insurance and pensions are dropping, and poverty is rising, how did a relatively small group of overwhelmingly immigrant farm workers (roughly 2,500 of whom 50 percent are Mexican, 30 percent Guatemalan, 10 percent Haitian, and the rest mostly African-American) take down a company larger than McDonald’s?

much more at link...
http://www.monthlyreview.org/1005leary.htm

[d_r]

11. and them taco bell stopped putting tomatoes on things

I think they have like a board room where advertising execs set around making up new ways to put together taco bell crap and giving it a name that ends in "ito"

[iris27]

12. Collaboration between CIW and student groups at my college

got Taco Bell kicked off campus (it was before they signed this agreement).

[TheMadMonk]

4. Bloody ridiculous. Thirty years ago, I was paid 1c/lb to pick ruddy sauce tomatoes.

50c per 50lb crate was the going rate for kids who wanted a little pocket money. We'd hop on our bikes ride the 4 miles to Cummo's, pick a few rows each and then go blow it all on smokes, and pinnies at the Crystal Cafe.

[Omaha Steve]

5. K&R!

[edwinmathews]

6. I worked in the Tampa and Plant City tomato markets

for many years . Most independent (small) farmers have paid pickers .50 a bucket since the 1990s .

[No Elephants]

7. Geez, I'd hate to boycott tomatoes. I LOVE them. But, I will.