Immokalee workers to take slavery tales to Crist

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Immokalee

workers to take slavery tales to Crist

By AMY BENNETT WILLIAMS

awilliams@...

http://news-press.com/article/20090312/NEWS0119/903120349/1075

Florida

Gov. Charlie Crist announced Wednesday he will talk with the Coalition of

Immokalee Workers - a meeting the group has sought for two years. On the table:

slavery and the labor conditions of Southwest Florida's

tomato harvesters.

Crist

spokesman Sterling Ivey said the meeting will likely be the last week of March.

The

coalition has tried to meet with Crist for two years with no success. On

Monday, members traveled to Tallahassee

to deliver thousands of petitions and re-enact Immokalee's most recent slavery

prosecution. (Click here for a photo

report of the theater and press conference that took place on Monday.)

In

December, members of the Navarrete family went to federal prison for enslaving

12 migrant workers. The bosses took their captive crews to work on farms owned

by some of the state's major tomato producers: Immokalee-based Six L's and

Pacific Tomato Growers in Palmetto. Both belong to the Socially Accountable

Farm Employers program, designed to prevent labor abuses.

Neither

company returned calls from The News-Press Wednesday afternoon.

The

Navarrete case is the seventh such slave labor operation the coalition has

helped prosecute in federal court in the past 11 years. More than 1,000 people

have been freed.

Slavery,

coalition members say, is the extreme end of a broken labor system that begins

with subpoverty wages. The group has pledges from the world's largest fast-food

companies - Mc's, Burger King, Subway and others - to pay harvesters a

penny more per pound for the tomatoes they pick.

The

extra money would make a huge difference in workers' lives, 31-year-old picker

Gomez told The News-Press last week. He hadn't found work for eight

days.

" If

I'd made a few more dollars, I'd have been able to have some defense against

hunger, " Gomez said.

Although

the fast-food companies have agreed to the increase, the Florida Tomato Growers

Exchange, to which 90 percent of the state's tomato producers belong, refuses

to pass it along, citing legal concerns. Instead, the companies pay the extra

wages into an escrow account, where it accumulates without reaching workers.

That's

another thing coalition members want to take up with Crist.

" What's

most important is what happens after the meeting, " worker Leonel

said. " We hope the governor can set the record straight that not a single

case of slavery is acceptable in the 21st century - period - and that he can

help us move the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange out of the way of our

agreements with food industry leaders. "

Josh

Viertel, president of New York-based Slow Food USA and part of a group of food

advocates who visited Immokaee earlier this month, agrees.

" We

should be eating food with a story behind it that doesn't make us lose our

appetite, " Viertel said.

Seth Doyle, MA

Migrant Health Coordinator

Northwest Regional Primary Care Association

sdoyle@...,

(206) 783-3004 ext 16