McD’s TOMATO SUPPLIER SUED FOR NOT PAYING PICKERS MINIMUM WAGE!

Long-time supplier in hot water once again, after repeated reports of housing, pesticide, and other labor abuse.

Here’s what the Ft. Myers News-Press reported in a story today:

"Nearly 200 migrant workers have filed a federal lawsuit against a produce company that grows tomatoes in Immokalee for paying them, they say, less than minimum wage. The lawsuit, filed Monday in Fort Myers, was filed on behalf of more than 3,000 people comprising indigent migrant workers… (The suit) alleges the company owes the plaintiffs more than $250,000 in lost wages and, if certified as a class-action suit to include 3,000 workers, the company could end up paying more than $2 million if it loses." READ MORE

Read the story in its entirety here.

The question must be asked: How much longer will McDonald’s keep its head in the sand while the fiction of social responsibility in its tomato suppliers’ fields continues to crumble all around it?

AgMart, a key supplier of the grape tomatoes that grace McDonald’s salads, has made headlines time and time again, for everything from "crowded, squalid housing," in North Carolina, to rehiring a convicted slaver to "recruit, supervise, and transport farmworkers for Ag-Mart Farms," in Florida. Meanwhile, McDonald’s has joined forces with the powerful lobbying firm for Florida’s agricultural employers, the Florida Fruit and Vegetable Association (FFVA), to create an employer-controlled group to "monitor" workers’ rights on growers’ farms in Florida. And like clockwork, as soon as McDonald’s and the FFVA announce the creation of SAFE, to much fanfare, 2004 FFVA Chairman Frank Johns’ crewleader is indicted on more than 50 criminal counts and accused of holding his workers in servitude by federal prosecutors. Last week Johns’ crewleader, Ron Evans, received what the Miami Herald called, "the longest sentence handed out for abuse of farmworkers in recent Florida history."

Bogus employer-controlled monitoring groups like SAFE, and shoddy "studies" like the one paid for by McDonald’s to "prove" farmworkers aren’t poor, may work for a moment to fool some people, but all the PR in the world can’t hide forever the essential truth that Florida agriculture is founded on the exploitation of its workers in the fields. At long last, can Ag-Mart’s latest scandal be the final straw?