Rabbis For Human Rights - North America

Slavery and Human Trafficking

“No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms” (Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Article 4)

 

Photo by the ACLU of Southern California via flickr.com. Creative Commons License.

RHR-NA Supports the Campaign for Fair Food

 

Ask Our Grocery Stores to Support Fair Food

•  Take Action

• Resources
• Rabbinic Fact-Finding Mission to Immokalee Florida

 

Breaking news: On February 9th, 2012, Trader Joe's (one of the major focuses of this campaign) signed a Fair Food Agreement with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers. This announcement came one day after a delegation of RHR-NA rabbis posted a "mezuzah of justice" to the new Trader Joe's in Naples, their first store in Florida. We applaud Trader Joe's for joining other corporations such as Whole Foods and Yum Brands in taking this critical step to increase wages for tomato pickers and ensure safer working conditions in the fields. Campaign materials are currently being updated to reflect this exciting victory. Please stay tuned!

Who picks your food that you eat and how much are they paid? Would you pay a penny more for just wages for just food? Every year, from September until May, millions of tomatoes are harvested in Florida and shipped all around the country. The workers who pick the tomatoes come from all over the world to earn money to support their families. As one of the workers RHR-NA met in Florida told us, "We want dignity. We want the ability to feed our families and not rely on handouts."

But because of exemptions related to farmworkers in American labor law, farmworkers are paid by the pound, not by the hour. They are paid $0.50 for every 32 pound bucket of tomatoes they pick (We pay $75-80 in the store for the same amount of tomatoes). At those rates, many workers make well below the minimum wage, for an average annual salary of about $10,000. This holds true regardless of whether workers are here legally or illegally. They are face extreme pesticide exposure and unsafe working conditions. Meanwhile, cases of human trafficking and slavery are rampant. One federal prosecutor has called Florida "ground zero" for modern slavery.

But the workers are fighting back. The Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) has organized to bring safety and dignity to the Florida tomato fields. Their Campaign for Fair Food will raise the wages of tomato pickers by one penny a pound and ensure fair, regulated working conditions in the fields to end the conditions that led the labor trafficking and slavery. They have already waged successful campaigns against fast food chains such as Taco Bell and McDonald's, food service companies, and the grocery stores Whole Foods and Trader Joe's. In the fall of 2010, they scored a major victory when the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange agreed to phase-in the Fair Food Code of Conduct and to pay their workers one penny more a pound for tomatoes.

But their work in not done! Other than Whole Foods, the grocery industry has proved extremely recalcitrant to the demands of the CIW. Industry leaders such as Stop and Shop and Publix--for all the other good work they might do--will not pay just one penny more a pound for tomatoes or agree that their suppliers must sign the Fair Food Code of Conduct. RHR-NA has joined with the CIW to support their efforts in the Campaign for Fair Food and raise awareness in the Jewish community about this critical issues of workers and food justice.

 

Take Action Today!

Send an email to the corporate executives of Publix.

Download a letter you can present to the manager of your local Publix.

Support the Fast for Fair Food at your local Publix.

Spread the word outside your local supermarket!

Additional resources from the CIW

Additional resources from Interfaith Action of Southwest Florida

Rabbis and other community leaders! Are you interested in bringing the CIW to your community or supporting one of their public actions? Let us know!

 

Resources

Background information on the Campaign for Fair Food

Fair Food Program: Frequently Asked Questions

Frequently Ask Questions (written by the Student-Farmworker Alliance)

Sermon outline on the Fair Food Campaign

Sermons from RHR-NA rabbis about the Campaign for Fair Food

Talking Points for an OpEd about the Campaign for Fair Food

Jewish values and slavery

Florida Modern-Day Slavery Museum Educational Booklet

Jewish values and the demand for fair food (Coming soon)

Videos:

• One Penny More

• With These Hands
• Harvest of Shame, 50 Years Later

 

RHR-NA Rabbinic Mission to Florida

On September 12-14, seventeen rabbis and rabbinical students traveled with RHR-NA to Immokalee, Florida to learn firsthand from the CIW about their Campaign for Fair Food. We heard from CIW members about their work, their desire for dignity, and the efforts they have undertaken around the country to shed light on both the abuses of the tomato industry and the possibilities for change. To bring attention to the CIW’s campaign, we staged a prayer circle at a Publix in Naples, urging the company to agree to a Code of Conduct that also guarantees that tomato pickers are working in an environment with a zero-tolerance policy for trafficking and slavery, sexual assault and child labor.

Our rabbinic delegation also met with Jon Esformes of Pacific Tomato Growers, who talked about his decision to agree to the Campaign and led RHR-NA rabbis through his tomato fields. The trip forged critical connections between the workers of the CIW and RHR-NA’s campaign to end modern slavery.

RHR-NA's Open Letter to Publix

View photos from the 2011 Florida trip.

Read more about the trip! Articles from the CIW, the JTA, and Rabbi Barbara Penzner.