Migrant workers mistreated in Florida

Seems to me that Florida's governor is one of the Bush clan. These conditions sound absolutely terrible but perhaps they are not representative. Even so it sounds as if there is a lot of reform needed to bring conditions up to some tolerable standard. Even if living conditions were improved the wages are still pathetic and as the article shows the whole system exists just to keep food prices down a few cents.


http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article3263500.ece

Migrant workers chained beaten and forced into debt, exposing the human

cost of producing cheap food

By Leonard Doyle in Immokalee, Floride

Three Florida fruit-pickers, held captive and brutalised by their
employer for more than a year, finally broke free of their bonds by
punching their way through the ventilator hatch of the van in which
they
were imprisoned. Once outside, they dashed for freedom.

When they found sanctuary one recent Sunday morning, all bore the marks

of heavy beatings to the head and body. One of the pickers had a nasty,

untreated knife wound on his arm. Police would learn later that another

man had his hands chained behind his back every night to prevent him
escaping, leaving his wrists swollen.

The migrants were not only forced to work in sub-human conditions but
mistreated and forced into debt. They were locked up at night and had
to
pay for sub-standard food. If they took a shower with a garden hose or
bucket, it cost them $5.

Their story of slavery and abuse in the fruit fields of sub-tropical
Florida threatens to lift the lid on some appalling human rights abuses

in America today.

Between December and May, Florida produces virtually the entire US crop

of field-grown fresh tomatoes. Fruit picked here in the winter months
ends up on the shelves of supermarkets and is also served in the
country's top restaurants and in tens of thousands of fast-food
outlets.

But conditions in the state's fruit-picking industry range from
straightforward exploitation to forced labour. Tens of thousands of
men,
women and children – excluded from the protection of America's
employment laws and banned from unionising – work their fingers to
the
bone for rates of pay which have hardly budged in 30 years.

Until now, even appeals from the former president Jimmy Carter to help
raise the wages of fruit-pickers have gone unheeded. However, with
Florida looming as a key battleground during the the next presidential
election, there is hope that their cause will be raised by the
Democratic candidates Barack Obama and John Edwards.

Fruit-pickers, who typically earn about $200 (£100) a week, are part
of
an unregulated system designed to keep food prices low and the plates
of
America's overweight families piled high. The migrants, largely
Hispanic
and with many of them from Mexico, are the last wretched link in a long

chain of exploitation and abuse. They are paid 45 cents (22p) for every

32-pound bucket of tomatoes collected. A worker has to pick nearly
two-and-a-half tons of tomatoes – a near impossibility – in order
to
reach minimum wage. So bad are their working and living conditions that

the US Department of Labour, which is not known for its sympathy to the

underdog, has called it "a labour force in considerable distress".

A week after the escapees managed to emerge from the van in which they
had been locked up for the night, police discovered that a forced
labour
operation was supplying fruit-pickers to local growers. Court papers
describe how migrant workers were forced into debt and beaten into
going
to work on farms in Florida, as well as in North and South Carolina.
Detectives found another 11 men who were being kept against their will
in the grounds of a Florida house shaded by palm trees. The bungalow
stood abandoned this week, a Cadillac in the driveway alongside a black

and chrome pick-up truck with a cowboy hat on the dashboard. The entire

operation was being run by the Navarettes, a family well known in the
area.

Also near by was the removals van from which Mariano Lucas, one of the
first to escape, punched his way through a ventilation hatch to freedom

in the early hours of 18 November. With him were Jose Velasquez, who
had
bruises on his face and ribs and a cut forearm, and Jose Hari. The men
told police they had to relieve themselves inside the van. Other
migrant
workers were kept in other vehicles and sheds scattered around the
garden.

Enslaved by the Navarettes for more than a year, the men had been
working in blisteringly hot conditions, sometimes for seven days a
week.
Despite their hard work, they were mired in debt because of the
punitive
charges imposed by their employer, who is being held on minor charges
while a grand jury investigates his alleged involvement in human
trafficking.

The men had to pay to live in the back of vans and for food. Their
entire pay cheques went to the Navarettes and they were still in debt.
They slept in decrepit sheds and vehicles in a yard littered with
rubbish. When one man did not want to go to work because he was sick,
he
was allegedly pushed and kicked by the Navarettes. "They physically
loaded him in the van and made him go to work that day. Cesar, Geovanni

and Martin Navarette beat him up and as a result he was bleeding in his

mouth," a grand jury was told.

The complaint reveals that the men were forced to pay rent of $20
(£10)
a week to sleep in a locked furniture van where they had no option but
to urinate and defecate in a corner. They had to pay $50 a week for
meals – mostly rice and beans with meat perhaps twice a week if they
were lucky. The fruit-pickers' caravans, which they share with up to 15

other men, rent for $2,400 a month – more per square foot than a New
York apartment – and are less than 10 minutes' walk from the hiring
fair
where the men show up before sunrise. At least half those who come
looking for work are not taken on.

Florida has a long history of exploiting migrant workers. Farm
labourers
have no protection under US law and can be fired at will. Conditions
have barely changed since 1960 when the journalist Edward R Murrow
shocked Americans with Harvest Of Shame, a television broadcast about
the bleak and underpaid lives of the workers who put food on their
tables. "We used to own our slaves but now we just rent them," Murrow
said, in a phrase that still resonates in Immokalee today.

For several years, a campaign has been under way to improve the
workers'
conditions. After years of talks, a scheme to pay the tomato pickers a
penny extra per pound has been signed off by McDonald's, the world's
biggest restaurant chain, and by Yum!, which owns 35,000 restaurants
including KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell. But Burger King, which also
buys
its tomatoes in Immokalee, has so far refused to participate,
threatening the entire scheme.

"We see no legal way of paying these workers," said Steve Grover, the
vice-president of Burger King. He complained that a local human rights
group, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers "has gone after us because we

are a known brand". But he added: "At the end of the day, we don't
employ the farmworkers so how can we pay them?"

Burger King will not pay the extra penny a pound that the
tomato-pickers
are demanding he said. "If we agreed to the penny per pound, Burger
King
would pay about $250,000 annually, or $100 per worker. How does that
solve exploitation and poverty?" he asked.

Burger King is not the only buyer digging in its heels. Whole Foods
Market, which recently expanded into Britain with a store in London's
upmarket suburb of Kensington, has been discovered stocking tomatoes
from one of the most notorious Florida sweatshop producers. Whole Foods

ignored an appeal by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers to pay an extra

penny a pound for its tomatoes.

In a statement Whole Foods said it was "committed to supporting and
promoting economically, environmentally, and socially sustainable
agriculture" and supports "the right of all workers to be treated
fairly
and humanely."

The Democratic candidates for the presidency do not often talk about
exploited migrant workers, but there are hints that Barack Obama will
visit the Immokalee fruit pickers sometime before Florida's primary
election on 5 February.

Jimmy Carter recently joined the campaign to improve the lot of
fruit-pickers, appealing to Burger King and the growers "to restore the

dignity of Florida's tomato industry". His appeal fell on deaf ears but

100 church groups, including the Catholic bishop of Miami, joined him
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