Tomato Workers Score Huge Victory
 |
||||
|
In a huge win for farm workers, one of the nation’s top food service and management companies reached an agreement with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) to improve working conditions and give a raise directly to Florida’s tomato harvesters.
The pact between Compass Group North America and the CIW calls for the company to pay an additional 1.5 cents per pound for all the tomatoes it purchases each year, with 1 cent per pound passed directly from the supplier to the workers. The agreement boosts workers’ wages from 50 cents for a 32-pound bucket to 82 cents per bucket, a 64 percent increase.
This is the first agreement where the money goes directly to the workers. Previous agreements called for the money to go into an escrow account.
Texas May Bar Students from Learning About Cesar Chavez, Thurgood Marshall
 |
 |
| César Chávez and Thurgood Marshall: Outlaws in Texas? |
United Farmworkers founder César Chávez is an unfitting role model for students, and former Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall is not an appropriate historical figure. So say “expert reviewers” in their report to the Texas State Board of Education, which recommends removing the two U.S. leaders from the social studies curriculum taught to its 4.7 million public school students.
The ranting of these extremists has the potential to turn into mass censorship—Texas is such a mega-purchaser of textbooks that the state’s required curricula drives the content of textbooks produced nationwide.
The Texas Freedom Network, which monitors actions by religious reactionaries on the state’s school board, points out that two of the “expert reviewers” are unqualified to be on the panel and were appointed mainly because of their background as religious ideologues.
David Barton, founder of the conservative Christian advocacy group WallBuilders, and the Rev. Peter Marshall, an evangelical minister from Massachusetts who runs Peter Marshall Ministries, were appointed to the state school board in March.
Obama Honors César Chávez’s Birthday
 |
|
What a difference a year makes. While the Bush White House tried to thwart workers’ rights and all that the late César Chávez fought for, Barack Obama adopted Chávez’s rallying cry as his campaign theme.
Today, on what would have been Chávez’s 82nd birthday, President Obama issued a statement hailing the former Farm Workers president as “an educator, environmentalist, and as a civil rights leader who struggled for fair treatment and fair wages for America’s workers.”
Chávez’s rallying cry, “Sí Se Puede”—”Yes, We Can,” was more than a slogan, it was an expression of hope and a rejection of those who said farm workers could not organize, and could not take on the growers. Through his courage, César Chávez taught us that a single voice could change our country, and that together, we could make America a stronger, more just, and more prosperous nation.
