Stories in St. Petersburg Times, the Nation focus on the human rights crisis in Florida’s fields

Jewel Goodman (pictured on right, photo by John Pendygraft), a farmworker who harvested potatoes and cabbage for farm labor contractor Ronald Evans in Hastings, Florida, is quoted in last week’s St. Petersburg Times story entitled, simply, “Modern day slavery”:

“I had to scrap with the devil for my living. And by the devil, I mean contractors,” he says. “All the camps I been in, some of them was good and some of them wasn’t, but Evans . . . that was slavery time. No playing around.” read more

The story includes the following video. Please watch it – it’s hard to imagine a better use of two minutes of your time:

For more context on the Evans prosecution and Mr. Goodman’s story, see “A brief history of inhumanity.”

Nation editor Katrina vanden Heuvel also ran a very good story last week, entitled “Ms. Solis goes to Immokalee,” (5/27/10) spurred by the recent visit by Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis to Immokalee and her tour of the CIW’s Modern-Day Slavery Museum. Here’s an excerpt:

“… No matter how many resources are devoted to enforcement by the Department of Labor, it will never be sufficient to achieve the level of voluntary compliance that is needed in the agriculture industry. In most industries, there is sufficient voluntary compliance with basic labor laws such as the minimum wage so that the bad actors stand out. But in the fields, the prevailing norm is so bad that voluntary compliance doesn’t exist, and the worst violations remain hidden in the weeds.That’s why CIW’s campaign to harness the power of the largest buyers of US produce–by brokering agreements that demand higher labor standards and create market consequences for any major violations by growers–is so key in the fight to raise wages and improve working conditions… That preventative market-based approach was another focus of the talks between Solis and CIW–how the Administration can encourage the largest buyers of US produce to take real, meaningful, and verifiable steps towards supply-chain accountability. ‘It’s not immediately obvious how that happens, because it’s not something that past Administrations have ever done,’ said Asbed. ‘But the results have never been good for past Administrations either. So the need to think of new approaches is urgent, and we felt like the Secretary shared that feeling of urgency.'” read more

Stay tuned in the coming days as the “preventative market-based approach” of the Campaign for Fair Food seeks the support of still more food industry giants, including Sodexo, Ahold, and Quiznos.