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Tomato Pickers’ Struggle Coming to a Grocery Store Near You
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The fight for justice for tomato pickers is headed to grocery store aisles across the country now that the top three food service companies and the four largest fast-food companies have signed agreements to improve wages and working conditions in the Florida tomato fields.
The Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) announced earlier this week that Sodexo, the largest food service company in the nation, had agreed to pay an additional 1.5 cents for every pound of Florida tomatoes it purchases, with the extra money going directly to the harvesters.
At least 30,000 immigrant farm workers in Florida pick 95 percent of the nation’s tomato crop between October and June. The workers are demanding safer, more humane working conditions and a penny more per pound of tomatoes picked. Florida tomato pickers earn 45 cents for a 32-pound bucket of tomatoes, a rate that has not changed for three decades.
Sodexo joins a growing list of companies that have signed agreements with CIW, including Aramark, Compass Group North America, Bon Appetit Management Co., Subway, Taco Bell and its corporate parent, Yum! Brands, McDonald’s, Burger King, and Whole Foods Market.
CIW spokesperson Lucas Benitez said:
Together with Sodexo and our other partners, we are building a system of real accountability, with tangible consequences for growers who fail to protect farm workers’ basic rights. It is our belief that such accountability, with worker input, will be the foundation for lasting improvements in the industry.
The farm workers’ focus now has shifted to the supermarket industry. Wal-Mart, which alone sells 25 percent of all food sold in U.S. grocery stores, along with the Publix, Ahold and Kroger supermarket chains, has tremendous market power in the produce industry. And as an Immokalee press release says:
…with great power comes great responsibility—both for the poverty and brutal working conditions from which they have profited for so many years, and for the work of reforming farm labor conditions in their supply chains that lies ahead.
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4 Comments
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What year are we in?45 cents for 32 lbs of tomatoes?how much do they make in a day?and then people wonder why there’s 10 people living in a 2 bedroom apartment, they have to pitch in to pay the rent,that goes to show the greed that’s involved in some companies and they have been getting away with it for the last 30 years,then the answer becomes that they are probably illegal and the company is taking advantage of them again,that’s why the Federal Govt needs to fix the immigration problem not only for the citizens but for the illegals so they would have some rights and then maybe they will not be treated this way.
I have been following this story for years and it is a sad one. Some workers used to actually get locked in at night in the employers facilities. It has taken years and years too long to get these workers out of slave labor conditions, conditions that aren’t even legal in this country, and we still aren’t there.
It shows you how powerless the government and organized labor is on worker rights.
I will be curious to see what Wal-Mart does now that it can’t hide behind the other big companies any longer.
WOW! It has been three decades since there last raise and it is only 1.5 cents a pound. I am pretty sure the cost of produce has gone up in the last 3 decades and it does not surprise me that corporate greed and possibly intimidation are responsible for stagnant wages. As well as as a high turnover rate. I hope 1.5 cents makes a difference to them harvesters.
Publix puts on such a happy family face on its advertisements down here in Florida. From what I gather they are also notoriously anti-union.
Give it up Publix!!