Witnesses Say Congress Must Act to End Slavery in Tomato Fields

[Omaha Steve]

http://blog.aflcio.org/2008/04/15/witnesses-say-congress-must-act-to-end-slavery-in-tomato-fields/

by James Parks, Apr 15, 2008

A Senate hearing on Capitol Hill today highlighted the slave-like working conditions of workers in U.S. tomato fields and the need for the Bush administration to step in and ensure that tomato pickers and other migrant workers do not endure 21st century slavery.

Testifying before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, Charlie Frost, a detective with the anti-trafficking unit of the Collier County police in Naples, Fla., said slavery in the Sunshine State’s tomato fields was happening even as he spoke.

The system of recruiting, hiring and employing migrant workers allows large companies that buy the tomatoes to “remain willfully blind” to the reality of slavery and, without a doubt, the larger companies are complicit and benefit from the slavery, he testified. Says Frost:

We have to do something and hold them accountable. This is happening in our backyards; it is happening in our country.

The mostly immigrant workers who pick tomatoes for the fast-food industry are among the most exploited workers in the country, Lucas Benitez told the committee. Benitez, co-founder of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), said the workers sometimes are held against their will, beaten and forced to work for little or no pay. Thousands more are trying to survive on poverty wages with no sick leave and no freedom to join unions for a better life.

The work is hard and dangerous, and workers suffer not only from the physical effects of the back-breaking work, Benitez says, but also from mental abuse, as multiple supervisors shout at them all day. And for a week of hard labor, many of the workers receive as little as $20 after they pay for their housing and transportation.

FULL story at link.

[msongs]

1. if you go to a fast food joint, tell em "no tomatos"; most FF tomatoes are inedible anyway, & while

you're there ask about the source of their tomatos and whether they are grown by slave labor

Msongs

[rubberducky]

2. You would have to actually see how these people are treated to believe this.

I lived there (CA) and saw this first hand and I still ache when I think of people desperate enough to endure what these people endure. The OP says they have to pay for housing and transportation. Ha! What a joke, they are "housed" in shacks slammed together out of scrap lumber. Windows and doors?? they are framed. No real windows, no doors, no plumbing, no utilities. Transportation?? Oh, yeah the trucks with the long flat trailer that the workers have to jump on to. We`re talking FAMILIES here, children working along with mom and dad. But, this is NOT limited to tomatoes. If you want to see something really sad, look for the families that pick up the walnuts, almonds.