In another workers’ rights milestone, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) has successfully pushed for an agreement with Whole Foods, Inc., to improve wages and working conditions for tomato pickers in Florida. This agreement between the world’s most prominent natural and organic foods supermarket, based in Texas, and the Florida-based farm worker organization aims to bring higher wages and better working conditions to some of the country’s most exploited workers.
Farm workers are generally deprived of basic labor rights and benefits, such as overtime pay, health insurance, sick leave, paid vacation, and the right to organize without fear of retaliation. The Coalition is leading the Campaign for Fair Food, which seeks to guarantee better labor standards for workers as well as fair pricing for farmers and wholesalers. Ensuring more humane conditions for vulnerable workers is a critical part of the Public Welfare Foundation’s Workers’ Rights program, and the Foundation has supported CIW as a grantee since 1999.
The Coalition’s latest victory breaks new ground. “This is not only our first agreement in the supermarket industry, but, in working with Whole Foods, we have the opportunity to really raise the bar to establish and ensure modern day labor standards in Florida,” said Gerardo Reyes, a CIW staff member.
Headquartered in Immokalee, Florida, the Coalition is the state’s largest community-based farm worker organization, with 4,000 members who are mostly Latino, Haitian and Mayan immigrants and who make about $10,000 a year. Since its inception in 1993, CIW has used a variety of methods, such as work stoppages, hunger strikes and public pressure, to call attention to human rights abuses in the U.S. agriculture industry. It has exposed slavery operations that have held more than 1,000 workers, and it has rallied consumers and retail food leaders to the cause of bringing about basic farm labor reforms.
The organization’s effective strategies have had a tremendous impact. As a result of targeted pressure, fast food giants such as Taco Bell Corp., McDonald’s USA, and Burger King Corp. have already agreed to pay at least an additional net penny per pound for tomatoes, with the extra money being used to give higher wages to workers and to cover some related administrative costs of participating farmers.
In what could be a model for grocery store chains, Whole Foods is not only supporting the “penny-per-pound” initiative, but is also looking to create a purchasing program that would ensure transparent, ethical and responsible sourcing and production of domestic produce, similar to a third-party verification program that the company uses in developing countries.
For more information on CIW and the agreement, see http://www.ciw-online.org/.
