Neither Rain Nor Wind Will Stop the Movement

No, not that movement.

One would be hard pressed to know it based on the national press, so focused as we have been on Charlie Sheen's exploits and, naturally, James Franco and Anne Hathaway hosting the Oscars, but there have been two labor protests going on in the United States over the past few weeks.

On one side we have union workers and their ally's fighting to avoid having their rights stripped away in states such as Wisconsin, Ohio and Indiana. On the other, we have the coalition of Immokalee Workers fighting to for a fair wage.

On February 27th, more than 900 demonstrators marched on a Boston Stop & Shop to pressure the Northeast regional chain to pay a penny more, directly to the workers, for each pound of tomatoes they pick. As we've mentioned before, since 2006 the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, a community-based organization of mostly Latino, Mayan Indian and Haitian immigrants working in low-wage jobs throughout the state of Florida, has been working to improve the working conditions of these laborers. Their big campaign has been to get buyers - ranging from supermarkets to fast food chains - to agree to pay one penny more per pound of tomatoes picked. Currently, the workers get paid 1.4 cents for each pound picked; a wage that was hasn't changed since 1978. To make the federally mandated minimum wage  while working a 10-hour day, the Immokalee workers say they would have to fill one 32-pound bucket (for which they'd earn between 45 and 50 cents) every four minutes.

Stop & Shop, according to a recent Boston Globe article says that it is not their 'place' to enter into wage negotiations with the employees of their suppliers, but rather that they pay market price to suppliers who comply with Stop & Shop's standards. Never mind that with 375 locations in New England and the mi-Atlantic they make up a sizable chunk of that market. Stop & Shop also refuse to negotiate with the worker's secondary goal - getting businesses to adopt a zero tolerance policy towards suppliers who engage in abhorrent working conditions. The Immokalee workers want purchasers to pledge that should it be discovered that a supplier is violating a stated code of conduct that ensures better working conditions, such as you know paying less than a livable wage, or enslaving (sad but true) employees, that those businesses would refuse to do business with that supplier ever again. This would provide the leverage necessary to force the employers to well, provide decent working conditions.

Although major restaurants such as Taco Bell and McDonalds have signed onto the Immokalee Worker's agreement, Whole Foods is the only supermarket chain to date that has signed. Stop & Shop joins Trader Joes and Florida based supermarket chain Publix as unwilling to negotiate.

Photo Credit: Isa Sorensen