Opinion
Florida has a long, ugly, and ongoing history of abuse and exploitation in its farm fields.
Edward R. Murrow exposed grisly details in his “Harvest of Shame ” investigation report back in 1960. And just last year, a South Florida farmworker died in a ditch from heat-related illness — after his first day on the job.
There are obviously still problems, but far fewer than before, thanks partly to something called the Fair Food Program — a coalition of retailers and farmers who came together to guarantee that the people harvesting your produce receive fair wages and working conditions.
The retailers who’ve joined this coalition aren’t little mom-and-pop do-gooders. They’re the biggest food sellers on the planet, including Walmart, McDonald’s and Subway.
All agreed to pay a small premium — about an extra penny per pound for tomatoes, for instance — to ensure that their customers get produce from farms where workers earn legal wages and are guaranteed basic rights, like water breaks and paycheck audits. Really, this is basic, humane stuff.
Yet two decades after the Coalition of Immokalee Workers began its crusade, a handful of companies still refuse to make the fair food pledge.
Florida’s marquee grocer, Publix, is the highest-profile grocery holdout. Among fast-food eateries, it’s Wendy’s.
Both are getting heightened attention as the coalition prepares for its first Farmworker Freedom Festival next weekend in Palm Beach — a location chosen, in part, because it’s home to Nelson Peltz, the chairman of the Wendy’s board of directors .
Coalition leaders like Gerardo Reyes Chavez, who has worked in the fields since he was 11, say wages are important. (Chavez says workers at fair-food operations can earn something like $15 an hour, something akin to theme park ride attendants.)
But really, he says, one of the most important things the program does is ensure workplace safety — like clean water, guaranteed shade during the summer and 10-minute breaks every two hours. Again, hardly radical stuff.
The program also audits farms’ payments to prevent wage theft and runs a complaint hotline that it says resolves most worker complaints within two weeks.
At the most extreme end, the program also helps prevent crimes that, make no mistake, are still happening in America’s farm fields. Just last week, the U.S. Department of Justice accepted plea agreements in one of the largest cases of human trafficking it has ever handled — one that played out in the onion fields of Georgia where authorities say workers were physically abused, forced to work for little to no pay and housed in unsanitary conditions.
Closer to home, a Florida contractor was fined just last year in the death of the farmworker who died of heat-related illness after his first day on the job.
Chavez said fair-food program participants can look their customers in the eyes and say: “We’re doing things in a responsible manner.”
The holdout companies say they already are.
The Lakeland-based Publix has a lengthy post on its website that basically says farmworkers’ beefs are with the farms, not retailers. The company says it is “more than willing to pay a penny more per pound” extra for produce, but that the farms should simply decide to charge them more (the store’s retort is “put it in the price”) and then ensure humane working conditions on their own.
Farmworkers say that argument is disingenuous since major retailers like Publix often control the market and that farms won’t raise prices for fear of sending companies like Publix to another farm — or country — for produce.
Wendy’s says it doesn’t participate in the Fair Food Program because “there is no nexus between the program and our supply chain.” The company says its tomatoes, for instance, are harvested “exclusively from indoor, hydroponic greenhouse farms, while the Fair Food Program predominantly operates in outdoor, conventional tomato growing environments.”
The coalition, however, notes its program addresses much more than just outdoor working conditions, including wage and general workplace protections.
Really, most any reason companies might give for not making a fair-food pledge fade away when you consider that most major companies already have.
In addition to Walmart, McDonald’s and Subway, other participants include KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, Burger King, Chipotle, Fresh Market, Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods Market.
All these companies voluntarily joined a coalition that has been recognized and honored by everyone from the foodies at the James Beard Foundation to two U.S. presidents.
Before concluding, it’s worth noting that a big reason why there’s so much exploitation in agriculture is because so much of the labor is comprised of undocumented immigrants and seasonal migrant workers who aren’t in a position to complain.
And let’s be clear: Florida politicians know their state’s agriculture industry runs this way, and they’re fine with it. The American Farm Bureau has flat-out said that more than half its workforce is undocumented. Farming interests have begged Florida lawmakers not to crack down on them. And Florida politicians have agreed.
The end result is an ugly system of exploitation, demonization and political convenience. Florida politicians virtually never target the employers. (Ask yourself the last time you saw an ag exec perp-walked in Florida.) Instead, the politicians rage against the migrants while giving free passes to campaign-donor buddies who, once again, admit they rely on illegal labor.
Still, most retailers have decided to take a stance against the exploitation. In signing the fair-food pledge a decade ago, Walmart said it wanted to “ensure that our customers get great products at great prices from suppliers that are working to improve the lives of their workers.”
In other words, the company didn’t just talk about treating people right, it signed a contract, promising to do so and to keep its suppliers accountable.
And if a company that generates $ 600 billion a year can do so — and arguably still sell produce at cheaper prices than most — it seems pretty clear others can as well. The ones who care about these things anyway.