Immokalee

I apologize for writing these blogs kind of out of order, but I still thought it was important to write about my first day of work. Jeanette (the director of South Florida Interfaith Worker Justice) set up a meeting for all of us with the IWJ center in Immokalee. I am assuming that many of you don’t know about the atrocities happening in this small town located very close to Miami, so I am going to try to attempt to explain what is going on there and what I took from the meeting. Please understand that I was only there for one day so I cannot even begin to understand the full scope of things there so what I am writing is not even breaking the surface of the issue.

Immokalee is the home to man migrant workers for part of the year. For about six months out of the year these workers live in Immokalee and pick tomatoes, but for the rest of the year they migrate to Georgia or another state to pick watermelons because there is no work in Immokalee during these months. The workers wake up very early (around 4:00) to get ready for the day. It is necessary to wake up so early because most of the workers live in small trailers that house around ten people. Most of the people don’t have beds or rooms; instead they sleep on a mattress on the floor. After they wait in line to use the bathroom and kitchen then they head to a parking lot, located across from the CIW (Coalition of Immokalee Workers) and Interfaith Worker Justice office, to attempt to get hired. There the workers walk around and talk to different contractors until one of them agrees to hire them for the day. If they don’t get hired that day then they don’t get paid and have to return home.

Once they are hired they head to the fields in buses, where they are forced to pick tomatoes until the bosses decide that they are done. They get paid a small amount for every bucket of tomatoes they pick. (Sorry I don’t remember the exact amount.) Obviously, this kind of work is very straining on the body; however the workers are not given health care or offered any other means to cope with health damages that result from work. There were also reports of beatings taking place at the worksite. Once example of this was when gentlemen left for a minute to get a drink of water. He was yelled at and told to return to work. When he did not the boss beat him. When other workers found out about this they organized and marched to the field owner’s house. Following the march they refused to pick tomatoes for that guy for a few weeks, which sent a message to the other field owners that the workers weren’t going to take it anymore.

To continue their organizing efforts the workers formed the CIW (Coalition of Immokalee Workers). Together the CIW and Interfaith Worker Justice have won many victories for the workers. They have been able to get Subway, Taco Bell, McDonald’s, and Burger King to agree to pay a penny more a pound for the tomatoes they purchase and currently they are working on a campaign to encourage Publix’s (a grocery store in Florida) and Chipotle to do the same. They also have fought to improve the working conditions in the fields for the workers. On problem that many of the workers were struggling with outside of work is that many of them do not have cars. As a result they are forced to shop at grocery stores within walking distance. Some of the owners of these stories took this as an opportunity to significantly raise the prices in order to Increase their profit. To fight this CIW opened up a store of their own in their office and see grocery products at wholesale price. This has forced the owners of the other grocery stores to lower their prices.

I encourage everyone to go to http://www.ciw-online.org/ to learn more about the issue and about how to get involved!