Florida Tomato Growers Exchange (FTGE), Reggie Brown (right) taken to the woodshed by Florida editorial writers for stand against farmworker justice!

Two strongly-worded opinions excoriating the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange for its opposition to the CIW’s groundbreaking agreements with fast-food industry leaders were published this week in major Florida papers.

From the state’s southwestern Gulf coast (the Ft. Myers News-Press) to its northeastern Atlantic coast (Daytona News-Journal), editorial and opinion writers are saying “enough is enough” to the FTGE’s stubborn refusal to allow its member growers to participate in the agreements that would, with the financial help of the large corporate purchasers of Florida tomatoes, significantly improve farmworker wages and working conditions.

Here’s an extended excerpt from the lead editorial in today’s Ft. Myers News-Press, “Tomato growers must give in” (7/10/08) :

“The Florida Tomato Growers Exchange is digging in against progress. It needs to stop playing the spoiler and realize that a new day is dawning in the treatment of farm laborers.

This largest group of Florida tomato growers is refusing to implement an agreement between farmworker advocates and three giant food service companies to increase the pay of tomato pickers by a penny per pound.

The growers need to get out of the way, or Congress needs to investigate the exchange’s role in denying farmworkers their hard-won raise…

The three companies on board with the raise so far are Yum! Brands (Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, KFC, A&W), McDonald’s and most recently Burger King, which even added an extra half-cent a pound to cover payroll taxes and other costs.

These are among the very largest food retailers on Earth. The Coalition of Immokalee Workers, which spearheaded the agreements with years of relentless pressure, is now targeting Chipotle, Subway and Whole Foods. The tipping point has been reached, and we expect other food retailers to join the movement.

We suspect the drive to improve farmworkers’ pay and conditions enjoys strong public support.

If the heavyweight food companies are sincere about this agreement, any real problems with getting these raises into the pickers’ pockets can be worked out.

The growers need to get on board or be plowed under.” Read the editorial in its entirety here

The Daytona News-Journal op/ed, entitled, “Pennies a bucket don’t end slavery for Florida farmworkers,” (7/08/08), was no less blunt. It begins:

“Reggie Brown was upset. As executive vice president of the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange, he was before a U.S. Senate committee in April to dispute charges of slavery and human trafficking leveled at tomato growers by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, what Brown called “a purported labor organization.” There’s nothing “purported” about the South Florida-based organization (ciw-online.org) other than the status of its mostly Latino, Haitian, and Mayan Indian membership of migrants. Their employers often don’t consider them quite human. More like purported human beings.” Read the op/ed in its entirety here

Don’t miss these two remarkably powerful editorials.

The FTGE likes to think of itself as operating beyond the reach of public opinion. But outrage — public, press, and political — over the FTGE’s unabashed disregard for long-overdue justice in Florida’s fields may very well be reaching the tipping point, in the apt words of the News-Press editorial. There comes a time when the call for reform grows so strong that it can overwhelm even the Florida agricultural industry’s proven ability to lobby and maneuver against it.