Moden Day Slavery in Florida

This video is of a Congressional committee hearing on modern day exploitation of migrant farm workers in Immokalee, Florida. Workers are claiming intolerable working conditions, substandard and poverty level housing conditions, indentured servitude and slave wages. The Florida Tomato Growers Exchange, which represents the majority of tomato growers in Southern Florida, denies those claims and attempts to explain their actions to the committee.

On November 16, 2010 the Coalition of Immokalee Workers and the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange reached an agreement. The agreement now improves working conditions and allows giant food retailers such as McDonald's, Taco Bell, Subway and others to pass on the penny a pound initiative proposed by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers. However, this is still a far cry from solving the problem. Many more giant food retailers have not signed on to the agreement. Locally, Publix Supermarkets and most recently the new Trader Joe's grocery store in Naples have refused to accept the agreement. Pressure needs to be put on these retailers to help the struggling Immokalee workers.

One thing I can do  is write a letter to these food giants demanding that they agree to the penny a pound initiative. 

This is a link to a sample letter supplied by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers that anyone can use to write to the giant food retailers who do not support the migrant workers.

http://ciw-online.org/Resources/tools/manager%20letters/GenLTR.pdf