LOUISVILLE — The co-founder of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)-backed Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) is to be among those testifying before a U.S. Senate committee today (April 15) about conditions facing farmworkers in the growing fields of southern Florida.
CIW co-founder Lucas Benitez, a former tomato picker, and investigative journalist Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation, are among the witnesses expected to appear at the hearing of the U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee.
The CIW, an Immokalee, Fla.-based group of farmworkers, receives support from the PC(USA) and other faith groups.
The hearing, in Washington, D.C., beginning at 10 a.m. comes after U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) visited Immokalee in January to urge support for the CIW’s Campaign for Fair Food, which is working to persuade Burger King and other food industry leaders to raise tomato workers’ pay.
Sanders and U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA), the committee’s chairmen, will convene the proceedings titled: “Ending Abuses and Improving Working Conditions for Tomato Workers.”
The hearing also comes on the heels of a federal indictment in January involving the seventh case of modern-day slavery to emerge from Florida’s fields in the last 10 years.
“In an era of globalization the American people are becoming more and more concerned not only about the quality of goods they consume but about the conditions facing those who produce those goods,” Sanders said in a press release. “In my view, the American consumer does not want the tomatoes they eat to be picked by workers who are grossly mistreated, underpaid and in some cases even kept in chains. This must not happen in the United States of America in 2008.”
In recent years, the CIW has scored a number of hard-fought, high-profile victories. McDonald’s and Yum! Brands Inc., the world’s biggest fast-food chain and restaurant company, respectively, agreed to a coalition-supported penny-per-pound pay increase for tomato workers. Yum! signed on in 2005; McDonald’s in 2007.
The Yum! Brands agreement followed a nearly four-year CIW-led boycott of Mexican-style fast-food giant Taco Bell, which is owned by Yum! Brands.
The PC(USA)’s 214th General Assembly in 2002 endorsed the Taco Bell boycott and called for discussions involving Taco Bell, its tomato suppliers and CIW representatives.
In 2006, the PC(USA)’s 217th Assembly approved a resolution calling for ongoing work with the CIW in the campaign to get fast-food and grocery corporations to ensure the human rights of farmworkers harvesting their tomatoes by partnering with the CIW and advancing the precedents established in the Yum! Brands-CIW agreement.
Last month, as Sanders called for Senate hearings on farm conditions, the Coalition launched a petition campaign. Backed with the threat of a boycott, it aimed to persuade Burger King and others, including the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange, which also opposes the penny-a-pound raise, to pay it and to “eliminate slavery and human rights abuses from Florida’s fields.”
The Rev. Clifton Kirkpatrick, stated clerk of the PC(USA)’s General Assembly and Linda Valentine, executive director of the PC(USA)’s General Assembly Council, are among notable Presbyterians that have already signed the petition.
