Frank Johns, on right, shown here with current FFVA Chairman Jay Taylor, at the 2006 FFVA Convention’s “Annual Cracker Breakfast,” held at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Naples, FL photo from “The Harvester Online”

“SECOND LENGTHY SENTENCE GIVEN FOR FARMWORKER ABUSE”!… See the Miami Herald article here.

The article asks hard questions about Frank Johns (right) , the north Florida farmer whose crewleader, Ron Evans, was sentenced to 30 years this week for keeping his workers in what federal prosecutors called “a form of servitude.” Johns’ name surfaced repeatedly in the indictment, but he was not charged in the case.

Johns was the 2004 Chairman of the Florida Fruit and Vegetable Association (FFVA) and, more recently, the 2006 Chairman of the FFVA’s Budget and Finance Committee. The FFVA is McDonald’s principal partner in its employer-controlled workers’ rights “monitoring” program dubbed “SAFE.”

Here’s an excerpt from the Miami Herald article (Feb. 8, 2007):

“While farmworker advocates praise the multi-agency crackdown that shut Evans’ camps and led to the prison terms, questions persist about the role of the industry that ultimately profits from the laborers. Six times in recent decades, Florida farm bosses have been sent to prison for exploiting workers, but not once in those cases was a Sunshine State grower punished criminally…

‘The message for the growers is: How many more times does this have to happen before it’s taken seriously?” asked Laura Germino, coordinator of the ‘ anti-slavery campaign. The coalition, which has long worked with law enforcement to bring abuse of farmworkers to light, played a key role in the Evans case — starting with a Miami link.” READ MORE

And while, without a doubt, growers should be held accountable for the labor abuse that occurs on their farms, the search for accountability can’t stop there. The “industry that ultimately profits from the laborers” extends well beyond the farm gates.

Florida produce harvested in abusive conditions has been bought and sold, no questions asked, for decades by the companies that sell food to the public, including the fast-food giants. During that same period, the explosive growth of those restaurant companies has allowed them to leverage their volume purchasing power to demand lower and lower produce prices, exerting a pressure at the farm level that is translated directly into wage cuts for farmworkers (read “Big fast-food contracts breaking tomato repackers,” for an inside-the-industry perspective on this chain of profit and poverty).

The food industry only begins in the field. It ends on tens of millions of tables across this country. And if we are to hope to ever truly end farmworker abuse in this country’s fields, it’s going to require that the major corporate buyers of produce use their leverage to demand higher labor standards — not lower prices — to end it.

For more on the origins of the case and the CIW’s role in investigating the Evans operation, read the Naples Daily News article and editorial from 9/25/06 here.