For Immediate Release: March 1, 2005
Contact: Lucas Benitez, Coalition of Immokalee Workers (both) 239-503-0133, Julia Perkins, CIW 239-986-0891, or Amanda Shanor, Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Center for Human Rights 202-463-7575; workers@ciw-online.org; www.ciw-online.org
OUTRAGE AT HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES IN U.S. FIELDS GOES BEFORE INTERNATIONAL BODY
CIW leader to testify at OAS hearing on human rights abuses in U.S. agricultural industry – Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Global Rights sign on
Washington, DC – In a hearing before the Organization of American States (OAS), Lucas Benitez, 2003 Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award Laureate and member of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), a farmworker organization based in Southwest Florida, will present testimony about sweatshop and modern-day slavery conditions facing farmworkers in American fields.
Farmworkers are one of the worst-paid and least protected classes of workers in the U.S. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, the average farmworker earns a median annual income of $7,500 – far below the poverty line. Farmwokers receive no benefits of any kind and are excluded from the labor laws (National Labor Relations Act and Fair Labor Standards Act) which allow other sectors of workers to organize and receive overtime pay. Moreover, in recent years, the U.S. agricultural industry has seen a growing number of cases of modern-day slavery. The CIW has uncovered, investigated, and assisted the U.S. Department of Justice in the prosecution of five of these modern-day slavery cases in the past six years.
This hearing will call upon the OAS to urge the U.S. government to remedy current labor laws that discriminate against farmworkers. Testimony will also address the role played by corporations such as the fast food industry in enabling these human rights violations. [The CIW has been spearheading a corporate responsibility campaign calling on Taco Bell, part of Yum Brands, the world’s largest restaurant chain (also including KFC, Pizza Hut, Long John Silver’s, and A&W Restaurants), to ensure human rights and fair wages for tomato pickers in their supply chain.] According to Mr. Benitez, “ For decades, farmworkers have labored under inhumane conditions and for sub-poverty wages. It is time for the corporations who benefit from our poverty to put an end to these conditions of exploitation.”
Amnesty International, Center for Constitutional Rights, Global Rights, Human Rights Watch, National Economic and Social Rights Initiative, Oxfam, RFK Memorial Center on Human Rights, and U.S. Human Rights Network have all signed a letter of support for the hearing calling for equal rights for farmworkers.
The hearing takes place as two buses of farmworkers from Immokalee embark on the two-week “Taco Bell Truth Tour” (February 28 – March 14) to raise awareness about farmworker conditions at stops in fifteen cities across the United States. The 4th annual Truth Tour will arrive in Louisville, KY, home to Yum Brands, for a week of education and action (March 6-12) and a national rally for farmworker rights featuring actor Martin Sheen on Saturday, March 12.
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RFK CENTER PRESS RELEASE FOR O.A.S. HEARING
For Immediate Release: March 1, 2005
Contact: Rebecca Smith, National Employment Law Project, 360.970.4979
Amanda Shanor, Robert F. Kennedy Center for Human Rights, 202.463.7575
IMMIGRANT WORKERS BRING INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS CLAIMS AGAINST THE U.S.
Where? Organization of American States, 17th and Constitution Avenues, Washington, DC.
When? March 3, 2005
10:30 a.m. Press Interviews
11:30 a.m. Hearing
What? Hearing on Labor and Human Rights Abuses in the US.
Advocates and workers will testify about U.S. human rights abuses against undocumented and agricultural workers in front of The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights on March 3rd. The hearing will explore how the U.S. denies the most fundamental labor rights to immigrant workers.
The issue of excluding undocumented workers from full labor protections stems from a controversial US Supreme Court ruling in March 2002. In Hoffman Plastic Compounds, Inc. v. NLRB, the Court held that an undocumented immigrant who is fired for labor organizing is not entitled to compensation for lost work. Giving Hoffman a broad interpretation, a number of courts and agencies have since denied undocumented workers recourse to compensation for lost work, unpaid wages and a number of other rights normally covered under U.S. labor law.
A coalition of more than one hundred labor, civil rights and immigrant rights groups in the U.S., including the national AFL-CIO, the American Friends Service Committee, the National Employment Law Project, and the American University Washington College of Law International Human Rights Law Clinic, have brought to the Commission personal stories about mistreatment of undocumented workers by U.S. employers, and court rulings which limit their labor rights. Stories presented to the Commission illustrate the threats and fear of retaliation that follow these workers to their jobs.
Felicia Bartow of the American Friends Service Committee underscores this point: “As undocumented workers’ rights to legal redress are being stripped away by U.S. Courts, this hearing represents an important opportunity for the voices of immigrant workers to be heard by the Inter-American Commission and the public at large. All too often, these voices are silenced by fear.”
Senator Edward Kennedy, (D-MA), a champion for Congressional action on Hoffman, states, “The Hoffman decision is a poster child for immigration reform. It’s hypocritical to condemn illegal immigration, then look the other way while some U.S. firms welcome undocumented workers with open arms, then exploit them with low pay and harsh working conditions. We must not let our broken immigration system subject hard-working immigrants to untold rights violations while on the job. Our immigration system cries out to be fixed and fixed fairly.”
The Commission will also hear testimony from Lucas Benitez, a farmworker from the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, a migrant farmworker rights group based in southwest Florida. Benitez’s personal testimony will focus on the pervasive sweatshop conditions that farmworkers face, as well as the recent rise in forced labor and human trafficking in the agricultural sector. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, the average farmworker, the vast majority of whom are immigrants, makes $7,500 annually—far below the poverty line.
Other testimony will illustrate the discriminatory treatment of agricultural workers by the U.S. government — including exclusion from federal overtime, collective bargaining, and health and safety protections and the lack of enforcement of existing wage protections. It will also draw attention to the influence of corporate buyers who enable current human rights violations — such as Yum Brands, the world’s largest restaurant chain and parent company of Taco Bell, against whom the Coalition is spearheading a national boycott.
Mr. Benitez explains, “For decades, we have labored for sub-poverty wages. We receive no benefits, no overtime pay, no paid holidays or sick leave, and we have no right to organize or to collectively bargain. It is time for the corporations who benefit from our poverty to put an end to these conditions of exploitation.”
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