“In a major reversal, a powerful Florida agricultural group will now let its tomato-grower members distribute to workers extra wages contributed by buyers such as grocers and fast-food companies.

A new social responsibility program will let companies make supplemental payments to workers and establish guidelines for employment practices, said Reggie Brown, vice president of the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange, to which 90 percent of growers in the state’s $400 million tomato industry belong…”

Coalition of Immokalee Workers:

“On the one hand, this shows just how far the Campaign for Fair Food has come,” said Lucas Benitez of the CIW. “Two years ago, the FTGE testified before the US Senate that the penny-per-pound raise was not just impossible, but illegal. Today they are embracing the program and calling it their own. But while a wage increase is important, it can’t be a license for continued labor abuse.”

“The Campaign for Fair Food is comprised of two key elements — a penny-per-pound raise and a code of conduct based on worker participation,” continued Benitez. “What the FTGE has done is to accept the raise, but very carefully deleted from our code any provision that creates an opportunity for workers to participate in the protection of their own rights. A complaint system and worker education simply aren’t credible if they’re controlled by the growers. In the end, the growers’ code leaves the foxes squarely in charge of the henhouse. And sadly, Florida tomato growers have never demonstrated the ability to police themselves.”

“We’ve seen this before, and it doesn’t end well,” added Gerardo Reyes, also of the CIW. “In 2006, the growers came out with their own code of conduct by the name of SAFE, and they swore up and down that they would monitor their own behavior and protect their workers’ rights. But what happened next? Yet another brutal slavery operation came to light — this time with tomato pickers chained inside trucks, beaten, and forced to work in SAFE-certified fields . And the complaints keep coming in, including horrible allegations of sexual harassment and across-the-board minimum wage violations.” Reyes concluded, “Quite simply, the stakes are too high to trust the FTGE to protect our rights as workers. We have to work together to get this done right.”

Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.):

Statement on the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange Proposed Social Responsibility Program by the Rev. Noelle Damico, PC(USA) Campaign for Fair Food

“The Florida Tomato Growers Exchange (FTGE) is clearly feeling the heat from consumers and corporations who refuse to tolerate the poverty and other human rights abuses faced by Florida farmworkers.  In a stunning reversal this FTGE proposal acknowledges that Florida farmworkers wages and conditions in the fields must be improved.  This admission is a welcome departure from years of denying poverty wages, turning a blind eye to modern-day slavery in the fields, and working to disrupt the advances the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) has made through its fair food agreements.  In fact, the FTGE’s proposal has copied a few aspects of the CIW’s fair food agreements with one glaring exception:  there is no farmworker participation. 

The participation of farmworkers in the protection of their own rights is both a moral imperative and a practical necessity.  Farmworkers, like growers, have been created in God’s image, and therefore should be treated as equals at the table, not as mere objects of either help or abuse.  Further, if real improvement of wages and working conditions is the goal, the CIW’s expertise is needed.  After all, CIW members are the only ones who have already secured these advances and more, they are the only ones who are in the fields harvesting, and they are the only ones who have successfully investigated and helped the US Department of Justice and FBI prosecute seven cases of modern-day slavery. 

Grower and third party efforts have not only failed to uncover modern-day slavery and other abuses in the past, in 2007 they certified Florida fields as “slavery-free” on the very day that farmworkers who were enslaved by members of the Navarrete family, punched their way through the ventilation hatch of a cargo box truck where they had been chained and locked and forced to harvest in the fields of two of the FTGE’s grower members, Six L’s and Pacific Tomato Growers.   In 2008, the slavers were indicted under the Thirteenth Amendment and subsequently sentenced under federal law to years in prison.

Let us be clear:  the public has been told by the FTGE that the fields were “slave free” when in fact they are not.  Nothing in the FTGE’s new proposal would prevent this kind of egregious, dangerous certification of slavery as slavery-free.  Given the FTGE’s years of denial of abuses and the generations of suffering endured by farmworkers, consumers of conscience will therefore not take this new grower-initiated effort “on faith.”

The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and consumers across the nation will continue to insist that farmworkers must be involved in creating, implementing, and monitoring needed advances if they are to be effective and lasting.  If the FTGE wants to repent, let them join three of their grower colleagues and seven major retail food corporations who have worked with the CIW farmworkers to establish the only proven structural advances Florida agriculture has seen in recent history. 

May the day come soon when the FTGE recognizes the full equality and dignity of farmworkers and works in earnest partnership with the CIW for the betterment of the industry. 

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The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), with denominational offices in Louisville, Kentucky, has approximately 2.3 million members, more than 10,000 congregations and 14,000 ordained and active ministers.

Student/Farmworker Alliance:

Statement on FTGE reversal of position on farmworker pay

History shows us that, from the Civil Rights movement to the more recent anti-sweatshop campaigns, just as consensus begins to form around a campaign’s goals and its objectives are within reach, those who profit most from the status quo will launch a final, desperate effort to stop progress. The strategy is usually designed to give the superficial impression of progress while leaving the power dynamic underlying the injustice fundamentally untouched.

The FTGE’s announcement that it has abandoned its opposition to the penny-per-pound is just such a strategic retreat. Yes, the FTGE has lifted the fines that blocked the penny from reaching workers for two seasons, and yes the growers have announced that they will abide by a new code of conduct. But make no mistake, the FTGE’s latest move is not about making real change. Rather, it is aimed solely at convincing us, as consumers, that the growers are now on board with the changes demanded by the CIW. We will not be fooled.

Simply put, the new policies announced today are concessions the growers deemed necessary in order to maintain what they hold most dear, and that’s total control over the lives of their workers. Under the cover of a wage increase, the growers have set out to systematically strip the groundbreaking standards negotiated by the CIW of any and all meaningful avenues for farmworker participation in the protection of their own rights. Without farmworker participation, it’s business as usual on the farms, and that means widespread, systemic human rights violations.

Case in point: At the time of the Navarette slavery operation — now the 7th successfully prosecuted forced labor case in Florida’s fields in recent years — the president and vice president of the FTGE were executive representatives of 6Ls and Pacific, the very same two growers in whose fields workers in that brutal case were forced to work. If FTGE leadership cannot police their own fields, how in the world are they to be trusted to patrol the entire tomato industry?

Today’s announcement by the FTGE confirms what we’ve known all along, that their resistance to the principles of the Campaign for Fair Food has nothing to do with the “penny-per-pound” but rather with control and power. How else do we explain that the FTGE is finally conceding that farmworkers do indeed need and deserve a wage increase, just so long as that increase isn’t accompanied by a real voice in the industry? While we should not lose sight of the fact that the growers’ latest move is a reflection of the growing success of the campaign, we as consumers and allies of the CIW must now redouble our efforts to ensure that the retail food corporations that buy Florida tomatoes demand only the highest standards from their suppliers. That means working directly with the CIW to forge a new agricultural industry in Florida based on the respect for human rights, not the exploitation of human beings.