Protesters Call on Trader Joe's to Adopt Humane Conditions for Tomato Pickers
[l-r: Educators' Chapter member Matias Wolkowicz, Volunteer Helen Murphy, Associate Director Arieh Lebowitz. Photo courtesy Next Left Notes / Bud Korotzer]
August 19th, 2010 NYC: JLC joined nearly 100 people at a demo in front of a newly opened Trader Joe's store in Manhattan's Chelsea neighborhood, to inform consumers about the human rights abuses against farm workers harvesting the tomatoes sold by the company, and to demand that the company sign a fair food agreement with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), which is the central organization fighting for these farm workers, who need better wages and more humane standards in the fields. The protestors also called on the company to buy only from growers who meet these standards. Other large corporations such as Whole Foods, Subway, Burger King and McDonald's have already signed similar agreements with the CIW.
The Jewish Labor Committee was there with the Community Farmworker Alliance NYC, Make the Road New York, the National Economic and Social Rights Initiative [NESRI], and a range of trade unionists, community, labor, religious and anti-slavery groups, for the hour-long rally. We were accompanied, literally and figuratively, by members of the Rude Mechanical Orchestra, a 30-odd-piece New York City radical marching band and dance troupe.
Farmworkers picking tomatoes for the Trader Joe's chain of supermarkets earn as little as 40-50 cents per 32-pound bucket of tomatoes harvested, and their wages have not risen since 1978. In fact, a worker must pick nearly 2.5 tons of tomatoes in order to earn the minimum wage for a typical 10-hour day. Such meager wages lock farm workers in poverty and make them susceptible to further exploitation.
According to Community Farmworker Alliance member Luis Gomez, "[t]he CIW, a farmworker-led organization based in Immokalee, is targeting Trader Joe's to encourage them to be part of the solution. They must eliminate the conditions that allow slavery to occur in U.S. agriculture, which means to help increase wages, to improve working conditions and to give workers a voice in their workplace, so we can bring an end to the harvest of shame in the United States."