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The CIW's Anti-Slavery Campaign has resulted in freedom
for more than a thousand tomato and orange pickers held
in debt bondage, historic sentences for various agricultural
employers, the development of a successful model of
community-government cooperation, and the growth of
an expanding base of aware and committed worker activists.
The campaign is a community-based approach to eliminating
modern-day slavery in the agricultural industry. The
CIW helps fight this crime by uncovering, investigating,
and  assisting
in the federal prosecution of slavery rings preying
on hundreds of farmworkers. In such situations, captive
workers are held against their will by their employers
through threats and, all too often, the actual use of
violence -- including beatings, shootings, and pistol-whippings.
Below are just three examples of multi-worker, multi-state
slavery rings which the CIW has helped eliminate in
the past few years:
* In 2002, three Florida-based agricultural employers
convicted in federal court on slavery, extortion,
and weapons charges were sentenced to a total of nearly
35 years in prison and the forfeiture of $3 million
in assets. The men, who employed over 700 farmworkers,
threatened workers with death if they were to try
to leave, and pistol-whipped and assaulted -- at gunpoint
-- passenger van service drivers who gave rides to
farmworkers leaving the area. The case was brought
to trial by federal authorities from the Department
of Justice (Civil Rights Division) after two years
of investigation by the CIW.
* In 2000, a South Florida employer was prosecuted
by the Department of Justice (DOJ) on slavery charges
and sentenced to three years in federal prison. He
had held more than 30 tomato pickers in two trailers
in the isolated swampland west of Immokalee, keeping
them under constant watch. Three workers escaped the
camp, only to have their boss track them down a few
weeks later. The employer ran one of them down with
his car, stating that he owned them. The workers sought
help from the CIW and the police, and the CIW worked
with the DOJ on the ensuing investigation.
* In 1997, two agricultural employers were prosecuted
by the DOJ on slavery, extortion, and firearms charges
and sentenced to 15 years each in federal prison.
The slavers held over 400 men and women in debt bondage
in Florida and South Carolina. The workers, mostly
indigenous Mexicans and Guatemalans, were forced to
work 10-12 hour days, 6 days per week,  for
as little as $20 per week, under the constant watch
of armed guards. Those who attempted escape were assaulted,
pistol-whipped, and even shot. The case was brought
to federal authorities after five years of investigation
by escaped workers and CIW members.
The CIW is a founding member of the national Freedom
Network USA to Empower Victims of Slavery and Trafficking.
As a regional coordinator for the Freedom Network Training
Institute on Human Trafficking, we train state and federal
law enforcement and social services personnel throughout
the Southeastern US on how to recognize and assist enslaved
people. The CIW's efforts have gained national recognition,
including the 2003 Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award,
presented to three CIW members, and the National Organization
for Women (NOW) 'Woman of Courage Award,' given to a
CIW member in 2000.
Slavery -- being forced to work against your will for
little or no pay through the threat or use of violence
-- is among the most reprehensible of human rights violations.
That slavery takes place in the United States, in the
year 2004, at the core of one of this country’s
most important industries is simply unconscionable.
But slavery in US agriculture does not occur in a vacuum.
Rather it is the product, in part, of a political system
and legal environment that formally sanction sweatshop
conditions in this country’s fields. US law excludes
farmworkers from the right to collectively bargain and
the right to overtime pay, while virtually nonexistent
enforcement by the Department of Labor makes large-scale
minimum wage violations a tragically common occurrence
and sub-poverty wages the norm (according to the USDOL,
farmworkers’ median annual income is $7,500).
These conditions create an unparalleled turnover in
the agricultural labor market, as workers who are able
to leave the fields for other employment do so at the
first opportunity. Given the staggering power of agricultural
employers over their workers’ lives and their
virtual freedom from the enforcement of labor laws,
it is hardly surprising that the most unscrupulous employers
all too often decide to deny their workers their final
and most important freedom -- the freedom to change
jobs.
Thus, it is no exaggeration to say that the vast majority
of US farmworkers find themselves facing conditions
somewhere along a continuum from sweatshops to slavery.
As such, farmworkers face the daily and systematic violation
of their human rights, including Articles 23, #(3) &
(4), and Article 24 of the United Nations Universal
Declaration of Human Rights. Article 4, prohibiting
slavery, is also violated in all too many cases.
This reality is further undergirded by the total lack
of accountability of the major, multi-national corporations
that buy fruits and vegetables produced in these conditions
-- corporations like Taco Bell, McDonalds, and Wal Mart
-- at prices that assume the super-exploitation of agricultural
labor. These major corporations are in fact complicit
in the squeezing of wages in their supply chains, as
their unprecedented buying power creates a formidable
downward pressure on prices, pressure that is in turn
passed on to the weakest link in the agricultural production
chain, the link least able to negotiate its interests,
labor.
The CIW’s national boycott of Taco Bell and our
Anti-Slavery campaign are designed to attack the roots
of modern-day slavery and sweatshop conditions in the
fields. Our objectives are clear: To eliminate slavery
in US agriculture, and to improve wages and working
conditions so that farmworkers can earn a dignified
living and enjoy their fundamental human rights in exchange
for their labor.
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New Yorker 4/03
* "Fear
and knowing in Immokalee," St. Petersburg Times
12/02
* "Florida
employers guilty of slavery," Labor Note 8/02
* "Trafficking
for labour," BBC World News radio report
* "For
pickers, slavery tastes like tomatoes," Op/Ed
Palm Beach Post 3/03
* "Report:
Modern-day slavery alive and well in Florida,"
CNN 2/04
* "Slavery?
In Florida? in 2003? Yes," Palm Beach Post
Op/Ed 11/03
*
"Esclavitud
en el siglo XXI," Univision
(reporte de internet con Jorge Ramos), Enero 2004
Reports on the CIW's efforts also appear in the following
studies:
“Human Traffic, Human Rights: Redefining
Victim Protection,” Anti-Slavery International/London,
2002
“Hidden Slaves: Forced Labor in the United
States,” Free the Slaves and Human Rights
Center, Berkeley, 2004 (embargoed until 9/23/04)
 When
the CIW uses the word slavery, we do not mean “slave-like”
or “resembling slavery" --- rather, we
are referring to conditions that meet the high standard
of proof and definition of slavery under US federal
laws.
The cases we have helped bring to justice have been
prosecuted by the US Department of Justice Civil
Rights Division either under laws forbidding peonage
and indentured servitude passed just after the Civil
War during Reconstruction (18 U.S.C. Sections 1581-9)
or under the 2000 Victims of Trafficking and Violence
Protection Act, which prohibits the recruitment,
harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining
of a person for labor or services, through the use
of force, fraud, or coercion for the purpose of
subjection to involuntary servitude, peonage, debt
bondage, or slavery. |
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