UPDATE #2: Read the Ft. Myers News-Press editorial on the slavery conviction, “Purge U.S. of shame of slavery”! Here’s an excerpt:

“The successful prosecution of five Immokalee residents on slavery charges is satisfying, but the brutal details of their treatment of farm workers show how warped the agricultural labor system is…

This is among six slavery cases the Coalition of Immokalee Workers has helped prosecute, freeing more than 1,000 people. Coalition member Gerardo Reyes asked Tuesday, “How many more workers have to be held against their will before the food industry steps up to the plate and demands that this never – ever – occur again in the produce that ends up on America’s tables?”

Also, click here to read the US Department of Justice press release announcing the convictions.

UPDATE #1: US Sen. Bernie Sanders issues a statement on the convictions! Here’s an excerpt:

“… I applaud U.S. Attorney Doug Molloy and his staff for successfully prosecuting this case. I also want to congratulate the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) for their on-going efforts to protect some of the most exploited workers in our country…

… As a member of the Health, Education, Labor and Pension (HELP) Committee I intend to introduce legislation in the very near future which will end a loophole in current law which enables growers to avoid taking responsibility for what happens on their fields when workers are being enslaved.”

September 3, 2008: Yesterday, at federal court in Ft. Myers, FL, farm bosses from Immokalee pleaded guilty to “numerous charges of enslaving Mexican and Guatemalan immigrants, brutalizing them and forcing them to work in farm fields.” (“Five to plead guilty on charges of enslaving immigrant laborers,” Ft. Myers News Press, 9/2/08).

According to the News-Press report:

“The 17-count indictment in the case — one of the largest slavery prosecutions Southwest Florida has ever seen — was released in January. It alleges that for two years, Cesar Navarrete and Geovanni Navarrete beat agricultural laborers, chained them up, locked them in boxes and trucks on the family property while keeping them in ever-increasing debt.

Chief Assistant U.S. Attorney Doug Molloy has called it “slavery, plain and simple.”

Many will remember this latest slavery case — one of the most extreme stories of exploitation to emerge from fields renowned for their brutality — as the prosecution that began when workers escaped from a locked u-haul truck and made their way to an Immokalee police cruiser to denounce their employers… on the same day that a delegation comprised of representatives from the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange, an industry-friendly “third-party” monitoring group by the name of Intertek, and Burger King were visiting Immokalee to declare Florida’s fields free of slavery.

Here’s an excerpt from our own coverage of that story when it broke:

“November 20th was a momentous day in Immokalee.

On November 20th, according to court documents filed last week, three tomato pickers made their way to the Collier County Sheriff’s office after having escaped two days earlier through the ventilation hatch of a box truck where they had been held against their will by their employer. The three men told police of an Immokalee-based tomato harvesting slavery ring in which workers “were beaten and forced to work exclusively for the Navarrete family,” according to an article entitled, “Family accused of enslaving workers at Immokalee camp” in the Naples Daily News (12/7/07).

On that same day, November 20th, Andre Raghu, global managing director with the supply chain monitoring group “Intertek,” told the readers of the Miami Herald that his company’s audits of Florida tomato operations “have found no slave labor.” Mr. Raghu was quoted in the Herald as part of a high-profile press junket organized by Burger King and their new partners in public relations, the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange (FTGE), to counter CIW claims of a human rights crisis in Florida’s tomato fields.

And so, on November 20th, while well-paid executives assured the world that all is well in the Florida’s fields, workers in Immokalee were recounting to Sheriff’s deputies how they had to break out of a locked U-Haul truck to escape from their employers.”

The explosion of this case on the scene then helped put the lie to that effort to whitewash farm labor abuse. Its conclusion in guilty pleas yesterday should likewise leave the leaders of the Florida tomato industry with no more room for denial of the urgent need for reform.

We’ll close with the words of the CIW’s Gerardo Reyes, from a statement issued to the News-Press about the convictions:

“The facts that have been reported in this case are beyond outrageous — workers being beaten, tied to posts, and chained and locked into trucks to prevent them from leaving their boss. How many more workers have to be held against their will before the food industry steps up to the plate and demands that this never — ever — occur again in the produce that ends up on America’s tables?”

“What’s most frustrating is that there is a solution. As US Senator Bernie Sanders said when he visited Immokale, ‘Slavery is the extreme. The norm is a disaster.’ If we can improve the norm — guarantee fair wages and humane conditions for all Florida farmworkers — then we can eliminate the extreme. And there are now several retail food industry leaders who have agreed to do their part to promote social responsibility in Florida agriculture. Yet the leaders of Florida’s tomato industry — who are holding their annual meeting this week at the Ritz Carlton in Naples — continue to stand in the way of progress. The FTGE needs to start working with Yum Brands, McDonald’s, Burger King, and the other major tomato buyers who want to put an end to exploitation in Florida’s fields.”

Check back in the days ahead for much more breaking news as the season approaches and the Campaign for Fair Food shifts into high gear.