Immigrant Farm Workers in Florida Bypass Government and Deal Directly With Corporations
After years of bitterness and a very public struggle, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) and the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange (FTGE) have come to a new cooperative agreement.
The Coalition of Imokalee Workers (CIW), an organization representing nearly 4,000 farm workers of Latino, Haitian, and Mayan Indian descent in the Southern Florida region, has been advocating for a penny-a-pound pay increase for Florida’s tomato pickers since 2001. Large purchasers have agreed to the pay increase in principle for years, and the recent deal marks the first time purchasers have signed a deal with a member-led coalition of growers.
The deal will be implemented over two years. This year, all participating members of the FTGE will increase farm workers’ wages a penny-a-pound and two growers, Six L’s and Pacific Tomato Growers will pilot a new code of conduct which will include a cooperative complaint resolution system, a health and safety program, and a worker-to-worker education process. The agreement will be fully implemented throughout the FTGE beginning in the 2011-2012 season.
Farm workers in the United States have maintained a near invisible presence for decades, yet they continue to harvest the majority of produce consumed in this country for wages that have actually fallen over the years. According to the Oxfam America report [PDF], real wages earned by farm workers has declined over the last few decades and wages have fallen 30 percent from what they were in 1980. Ninety-nine percent of farm workers have no access to a Social Security pension or disability insurance.
Their invisibility extends to the application of standing U.S. labor laws. Unlike other employers, growers are not required to pay farm workers overtime and routinely pay workers on a piece-by-piece basis that does not bring the workers’ wages up to the minimum wage (let alone a living wage). They remain invisible because many have little to no formal education, and do not speak English at a high level. Sometimes they don't speak English at all. Some indigenous migrant workers don’t even speak Spanish, to their further disadvantage. Many have a precarious legal status and live with the threat of deportation.
The difficulties for such a population to organize itself and advocate for substantive change are tremendous.
Yet, despite the challenges, CIW has won a hard-earned victory—and they are already planning their next moves. This latest deal is the second step in their three-pronged strategy to affect the working conditions and wages of farm workers in Florida. CIW hopes to target three different players in the agricultural/food industry. First, they negotiated an agreement with purchasers such as Taco Bell and Burger King to pay an extra penny-per-pound for produce. The most recent deal signed by growers ensures that results of this penny-a-pound raise would be passed on to workers. CIW’s Fair Food Campaign is now focused on lobbying the supermarket industry (Trader Joe’s, Kroger, Publix, and Ahold) to sign a similar deal.
CIW has not directed its energy on lobbying Congress to push for legislation improving and regulating working conditions, where it might get mired in partisan politicking. Instead, the coalition has chosen to focus on changing the structure of the supply-chain itself by creating consumer and investor pressure. In the world of agricultural industry, a world sustained by virtually unregulated labor, it is large corporations that decide both prices and working conditions. The consolidated power of these enterprises is what has allowed them to steadily lower costs (i.e. lowering workers wages), while increasing profits. CIW’s recognition of this reality was the key to their campaign’s success.
Kayvan Farchadi is a staff writer for Campus Progress.
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