Peasant leaders today called "old car with new paint" the announcement made by the tomato farms owners of Florida to implement a social responsibility program through which guarantees the working conditions for the farmworkers.
In a public statement, the Immokalee Coalition of Workers (CIW) argued that the program announced this week by the Florida Tomato Exchange (FTGE), comprising at least 75 percent of the owners of Florida tomato farms, there is no difference with the one announced in 2006.
Four years ago the FTGE introduced the Conduct Social Code for Agricultural Employees, SAFE for its short name in English, and was discredited by the lack of farmer’s participation and the lack of force mechanisms to their partners to comply with the same .
"The only thing that differentiates this SAFE new social responsibility code is that it copied some provisions of the Fair Food Code of Conduct implemented by the CIW, but left out the farmers participation," explained the farmer leaders through their website. The Code of Conduct by a Food Fair and other fast food chains was established in 2009 by the CIW in collaboration with tomato buyers like McDonald and Burger King who had agreed to pay an extra penny per pound of tomatoes purchased at Florida farms. The new program excludes the participation of the CIW or any other peasant organization and let tomato under the owners vigilance, which in the opinion of the peasants, is like "putting foxes in charge of the henhouse" because " Tomato growers have never shown the ability to police themselves, "said Lucas Benitez, co-director of CIW.
Reggie Brown, president of the FTGE, disagreed with Benitez and told Efe that the program will be overseen by international companies dedicated to provide those services and that would be employed independently by each FTGE client. "These are issues between farm owners, suppliers (of tomatoes) and their clients on what they have to get workers who are hired to harvest crops," Brown told EFE.
Also, the CIW criticized the announcement of wage increase for farmers also made by the FTGE, arguing that it only seeks to obscure the years of intense struggle and dedication to improving the wage conditions of the peasants.
He gave the examples the campaign "a penny more per pound of tomatoes” where they manage to engage the leading U.S. fast food, money that FTGE has refused to prosecute and even threatened their members to do so with .fines of $ 100,000. However, this punishment was dismissed in October after the East Coast Growers and Packers, one of the largest companies in the U.S. tomato industry, challenged the sentence by agreeing directly with CIW the payment process.
"This is a new plan that has nothing to do with the penny per pound of tomatoes and our customers will use to improve the wages for temporary agricultural workers hired by each season," said Brown to EFE, who said none of its members has yet said how much money is ready to increase and blamed the recent frosts for their lack of execution. "There is no tomatoes, frost damaged all crops and in January alone lost 75 percent of the crop and 30 percent a year, so hopefully that maybe the middle or beginning of March we will see this increase," he concluded www.google.com - 19 February 2010
|