Romeo Ramirez of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers and Meghan Cohorst of the Student/Farmworker Alliance shared the coalition's next steps in the Campaign for Fair Food with a large audience in MacMillan 117 Saturday.
The coalition is a grassroots organization founded in 1993 in response to the hardships workers endured when harvesting tomatoes, including violence, dangerous working conditions and sub-poverty wages. Through strikes and protests, the coalition has already convinced nine major companies — including Subway, Taco Bell and Whole Foods — to pay one cent more per pound of tomatoes and to ensure that their tomato suppliers treat workers humanely. In addition, many growers and suppliers have agreed to a code of conduct for worker treatment.
In nine extreme cases, tomato suppliers have been federally prosecuted for enslavement. The coalition was directly involved in helping to "uncover, investigate and prosecute" six of these cases, Ramirez said in his presentation.
In one case, a family hired several dozen workers to harvest tomatoes during the day and would chain them in a locked truck at night. While the workers did receive a meager wage, they were also charged for food. This was a case of "not just physical captivity, but also economic exploitation," Ramirez said.
But Ramirez said, despite being "on the road to creating a new and more modern agricultural industry," there is still work to be done.
The next step for the coalition is to implement changes in supermarkets. The Campaign for Fair Food's next target is Stop and Shop, one of the nation's biggest supermarket chains.
Members from student groups such as the Student Labor Alliance, the Student/Farmworker Alliance and the Sustainable Food Initiative are supporting the campaign.
Cohorst and Ramirez invited students "to get involved and take action" by attending the "March to Stop Sweatshops" Feb. 27 in Boston.
This would not be the first time students participated in such an event. Jonathan Leibovic '12 became involved with the Sustainable Food Initiative when he attended the Farmworker Freedom March in Tampa, Fla., last year with six other Brown students.
Leibovic, who had been actively involved in problems concerning the environment, public health and poverty, said he found that "food is the issue that all of those issues are connected to" and that becoming involved in farmworkers' rights helps form "as complete a picture as possible of the food industry."
The coalition, which has about 5,000 members, also works with over 1,000 students. Student involvement began with the coalition's first protest, a boycott of Taco Bell, a major consumer of one supplier's tomatoes. Students organized a campaign called "Boot the Bell" to kick Taco Bell off campuses across the nation.
"This is their struggle, too," Cohorst said. "These companies are exploiting students with advertisements. It's common exploitation."
