UPDATE: In early March, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers won a huge victory when years of boycotting and popular pressure forced Taco Bell into an agreement to work with the CIW to address the wages and working conditions of farmworkers in the Florida tomato industry. The Coalition called on their allies to end the Taco Bell Boycott. The CIW and the Student/Farmworker Alliance have announced that former boycott supporters are already gearing up for the next step in the campaign to make fast food fair food.
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Ten years ago, few people knew of Immokalee, and even fewer could find it on a map. Today, this severely impoverished town in rural southwest Florida, the heart of the state’s colossal agriculture industry, is the base of a movement whose shockwaves are reverberating throughout the country. This nonviolent worker uprising – renowned for creative protest and adept in popular education methods from Latin America – has not only begun to transform Immokalee, but it has elevated its fight for dignity, fair wages, and (in some cases) freedom from enslavement to a national stage.
Along the way, these farmworkers in a forgotten corner of the Deep South have forged strategic alliances, particularly with students and youth. In fact, the struggle of the Immokalee workers has become one of the fastest growing campaigns for economic justice on American campuses today. This unique partnership has contributed new voices to ongoing conversations about the role of corporations on our campuses and in our communities. It has also spurred many young people to think critically for the first time about where their food comes from and the story of its production. For those who don’t know, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) is a community organization whose 3,000+ members are mostly young Latino, Haitian, and Mayan Indian low-wage workers. Many are immigrants who left their countries to escape paramilitary violence or war.
The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) displaced others as Mexico went from being a top exporter of corn to a top exporter of cheap labor to the US. Unable to compete with subsidized grain
produced by multibillion-dollar corporations such as Cargill, many small Mexican farmers became economic refugees. Ironically, a sizable number of these young workers now toil in American agricultural fields, enriching the very corporate food system that displaced them in the first place.
But much of this “cheap labor� is fighting back and refusing to go along with an imposed script that assumes they are simply disposable people. In Florida, for example, the CIW has fought for over a decade to raise farmworker wages and put an end to modern-day slavery in American agriculture. Their work has led to several historic victories including an end to twenty years of stagnant wages in the tomato industry; an end to widespread violence in the fields; and the discovery, investigation, and successful prosecution of five cases of modern-day slavery in the past five years, resulting in the liberation of over 1,000 captive workers in the tomato and citrus industries.
That slavery takes place in the United States, in the 21st century, at the core of one this country’s most important industries is unconscionable. Yet changes triggered by corporate globalization coupled with the historic imbalance of power in agriculture in the South mean this nightmare is increasingly becoming a reality. It is important to understand that when the CIW uses the word slavery, it does not mean “slave-like� or “resembling slavery." Rather, it is referring to specific conditions that meet the definition and high standard of proof of slavery under U.S. federal laws. In such situations, captive workers are forced to work by their employers for little or no pay through threats and, all too often, the actual use of
violence – including beatings, pistol-whippings, and shootings.
While slavery is not the norm in American agriculture, it does not occur in a vacuum. The vast majority of farmworkers in the U.S. work in sweatshop conditions: sub-poverty wages, no benefits, no overtime pay, and no right to organize. Florida farmworkers have not seen a real increase in wages since 1978. At this rate, a worker must pick and haul two tons of tomatoes to earn fifty dollars in a day. Worse still, a farmworker can only expect to earn a little more than $7,500 a year, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. Laws and corporate practices that sanction sweatshops in the fields provide the setting in which these human rights violations tip over into slavery.
To challenge the root cause of these industry-wide abuses, the CIW is spearheading a national consumer boycott of Taco Bell, a major buyer of Florida tomatoes. Corporations such as Taco Bell have a crucial role to play in modernizing working conditions in agriculture, since these large buyers leverage their unprecedented market power to secure the lowest possible prices for the produce they buy. This downward pressure on their suppliers’ prices drives downworkers’ wages and worsens conditions as large corporate growers continue to demand cheap labor – without any concern given to how labor costs are controlled.
In particular, the fast-food industry has grown almost overnight into a multi-billion dollar business thanks in large part to low-cost ingredients that allow fast-food chains to control costs and plow their profits back into advertising and expansion. If the fast-food industry were to employ a tiny portion of its vast resources towards eliminating undeniable human rights abuses in its supply chain, the lives of the millions of farmworkers who contribute to these profits will improve swiftly and dramatically.
Since the boycott was launched in April 2001, students have been key allies of the Immokalee workers, and for good reason. Young people have their own fight to pick with Taco Bell, whose target market is 18-24 year olds. The company spends over $200 million on advertising every year to shape the tastes and desires of these young consumers, who it smugly refers to as ‘The New Hedonism Generation’ in its marketing research. In a press release announcing the completion of a 1999 study, Taco Bell's marketers concluded: “To catch increasingly short attention spans - and the insatiable demand for novelty - marketers today need to follow the lead of the entertainment industry with a steady stream of new products... This life-in-the-fast-lane sensibility also fuels hedonistic impulses, from raves to rich-tasting food.�
Taco Bell’s $200 million gamble is that young people care more about constant stimulation than the reality of exploitation in Taco Bell’s products. In truth, students across the country are continuously proving Taco Bell wrong by organizing in solidarity with the CIW. To date, students at 21 colleges and high schools have either prevented or removed Taco Bell from doing business on their campus to pressure the company to clean up human rights abuses in its supply chain. The University of Notre Dame and UCLA are two of the latest hard-fought victories in the national “Boot the Bell� campaign, and dozens of other campuses are following suit. Even young people who don’t attend a school with Taco Bell on campus are educating their peers and communities about the campaign and the struggle for fair food.
This expression of student-worker solidarity is yet another indication that today’s youth are not undemanding tools of corporations and their marketing departments. To the contrary, more and more young people are recognizing their capacity as agents of change. They are looking beyond the television sets and shopping malls and doing the tedious work necessary to create a world worth inhabiting – a world where simply eating a taco doesn’t come at the cost of another person’s freedom.
Sean Sellers is co-coordinator of the Student/Farmworker Alliance
(http://www.sfalliance.org), based in Immokalee, Florida.
Get Involved
SFA is a national network of students and youth in solidarity with farmworkers as they struggle to eliminate sweatshop conditions and modern-day slavery in the fields. you can reach Sean at sean@sfalliance.org.
For more info visit http://www.ciw-online.org.
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