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From the Naples Daily News 1/31/06
The Coalition of Immokalee Workers, a
farmworkers' advocacy group based in Southwest Florida,
has been a leader in the movement to end modern-day
slavery in the United States.
Coalition leaders have taken a three-pronged approach
in combating human trafficking. They've gotten involved
in investigating and prosecuting slavery operations.
They've trained enforcement and social service workers
to ensure there are additional investigations and prosecutions
- and they've demanded greater corporate responsibility.
"In addition to cleaning up abuses after they have
already occurred, we must also prevent and eliminate
the possibility of future slavery operations from taking
root in agriculture," said Laura Germino, anti-slavery
campaign coordinator for the Coalition of Immokalee
Workers, in a statement.
The organization has uncovered, investigated and assisted
in the federal prosecution of seven slavery operations
since 1997. The key to its success is its worker-based
community education and outreach program, which has
reached across Florida and into other East Coast states
such as Georgia and the Carolinas.
The coalition's members travel the East Coast following
the harvest.
Members go from labor camp to labor camp in remote rural
areas looking for problems and teaching workers about
their labor rights and talking about human trafficking.
The coalition holds community meetings in Immokalee
to talk about trafficking and other labor concerns.
It has helped the FBI locate and interview potential
trafficking victims and witnesses.
"The slavery operations that we have assisted in
bringing to justice, mostly in agriculture, are multistate
and can involve hundreds of workers being held against
their will through the use of armed guards, informants
with cell phones and coercion," Germino said.
Contractors can threaten violence or use actual violence,
such as pistol-whippings and shootings, "to ensure
that workers toil for little or no pay to work off 'debts'
for transportation, rent, food and work equipment,"
she said.
To prevent human trafficking in the future, Germino
said, corporate buyers must be forced to take responsibility
for labor conditions in their food supply chains.
In 2005, the coalition ended its boycott of Taco Bell
after its parent company, Yum! Brands, agreed to require
its suppliers to pay tomato pickers a penny more a pound.
As part of the settlement, Yum! Brands has pledged to
work toward improving worker conditions.
As a result of the coalition's continuing boycott, Taco
Bell has rewritten its code of conduct to say the company
won't tolerate the use of forced labor or physical intimidation
of farmworkers.
"Taco Bell, as a result of the campaign, has now
formally established a 'zero tolerance' policy against
slavery," Germino said.
The company agreed to develop and monitor codes of conduct
for suppliers of Florida tomatoes.
Germino said other companies in other industries can
take the same steps to discourage human trafficking
by putting the same kind of pressure on their suppliers.
"Basically, industries which already have labor
violations or working conditions, often called 'sweatshop'
conditions, provide fertile soil in which slavery can
take root," she said. "In short, if you eliminate
those sweatshop conditions, you will also eliminate
slavery, because slavery does not exist in a vacuum."
Human trafficking is a tough fight with no easy solutions.
But for the Coalition of Immokalee Workers and other
farmworker advocates, it's a fight they're determined
to win through education, outreach, enforcement, legal
reform - and a lot of sweat.
END
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