In 'Fair Food' Fight, Florida Farmworkers Take On Industry
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2014/03/16-3
Sara Lazare
Common Dreams
The Immokalee, Florida migrant farmworkers who have forced some of the biggest food industry corporations in the world to acquiesce to their demands for dignity in the fields say they are determined to make Wendy's and Publix do the same.
To prove it, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers [1] launched their 'Now Is the Time' tour in early March, staging rallies and actions in ten cities in 10 days that culminated in an overnight vigil of hundreds at a Lakeland, Florida Publix on Friday and Saturday.
Their demands? That Wendy's and Publix support a penny-per-pound pay increase for tomato pickers, back-up a zero-tolerance policy for abuse and sexual harassment, and allow workers to exercise their rights to organize and work safely.
Now under the banner of the Fair Food Program [2], these demands emerged from the earliest days of CIW organizing in the early 1990s, in which mostly Mexico, Guatemala, and Haiti born migrant farmworkers joined together to fight low pay, rampant wage theft, workplace abuse, and modern-day slavery [3]. The organization, which has since swelled to 5,000 farmworker members, has forced a dozen [4] of the world's wealthiest fast food and grocery corporations to sign onto the Fair Food Program, including Walmart in January 2014.
To prove it, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers [1] launched their 'Now Is the Time' tour in early March, staging rallies and actions in ten cities in 10 days that culminated in an overnight vigil of hundreds at a Lakeland, Florida Publix on Friday and Saturday.
Their demands? That Wendy's and Publix support a penny-per-pound pay increase for tomato pickers, back-up a zero-tolerance policy for abuse and sexual harassment, and allow workers to exercise their rights to organize and work safely.
Now under the banner of the Fair Food Program [2], these demands emerged from the earliest days of CIW organizing in the early 1990s, in which mostly Mexico, Guatemala, and Haiti born migrant farmworkers joined together to fight low pay, rampant wage theft, workplace abuse, and modern-day slavery [3]. The organization, which has since swelled to 5,000 farmworker members, has forced a dozen [4] of the world's wealthiest fast food and grocery corporations to sign onto the Fair Food Program, including Walmart in January 2014.
