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Slave labour that shames US
Migrant workers chained beaten and forced into debt, exposing
the human cost of producing cheap food
By Leonard Doyle
12/19/07 "The
Independent" -- -- 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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