Boycott the Bell!

I am the CIW!
¡Soy yo la Coalicion!

Julia Gabriel:
"Como trabajadores y mujeres, tenemos que luchar por nuestros derechos y contra la violencia tanto en la labor como en la casa"
"As women and as workers, we have to fight for our rights and against violence both in the fields and in our own homes"

Take a virtual tour of Immokalee...

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CIW POSITION ON BUSH GUESTWORKERS PROPOSAL

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BOYCOTT TOOLS

You and your friends -- your fellow students, neighbors, co-workers, or members of your church -- are the very heart of this campaign!

If you have come to this site because you want to help make FAIR FOOD a reality, you can use the tools below to bring the Taco Bell boycott to your community.

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Now, here are some great tools for organizing at home:

CIW Listserve
join and stay updated on the boycott

Action Alert
a concise explanation of the boycott with contact info for TB

Sample Press Releases
use them as a model for your own actions at home

Flyers
post 'em everywhere, they really do work

E-mail Petition
send an email to Emil (Emil Brolick, TB's CEO)

Or, send an automated fax to Emil Brolick, Taco Bell CEO, from this link on the United Church of Christ web site - It's easy and a great way to support the boycott without even getting up from your seat!

Thanks for joining us, and don't forget to send us any news, photos, or media reports on actions in your community -- we'll post them as soon as we can and your action can help motivate thousands of visitors to the site across the country!

Coalition of Immokalee Workers

WHO WE ARE

1995 General Strike
Immokalee, Florida

The CIW is today spear-heading the Taco Bell boycott. But before we launched the national boycott in April of 2001, we had been organizing locally for many years in an effort to modernize labor relations in Florida's fields, improve wages and working conditions for our members, and eliminate modern-day slavery.

To learn more about the history of the Coalition, you can go to the CIW site where you'll find all the non-Taco Bell info on the Coalition from 1995 to 2001, including past CIW campaigns, Press Archives, Photo Galleries, and more!

1997 General Strike
Immokalee, Florida

Or, you can simply click on some of the links here below to go directly to the pages from the CIW site that interest you... just remember to hit the back button on your browser to return to the boycott site!:

ABOUT CIW

PHOTOS

NEWS ARCHIVES

EDITORIALS & CARTOONS

STATISTICS

CIW POSITION ON BUSH ADMINISTRATION'S GUESTWORKER PROPOSAL

CIW, 2003 RFK HUMAN RIGHTS AWARD LAUREATES STRONGLY
CRITICIZE BUSH PROPOSAL FOR MASSIVE NEW GUESTWORKER
PROGRAM

Coalition of Immokalee Workers calls guestworker proposal "damaging to the
very people it purports to help"

[Immokalee, FL -- The Coalition of Immokalee Workers offered this reaction
today to President Bush's proposal for a new guestworker program. Three
CIW members -- Lucas Benitez, Romeo Ramirez, and Julia Gabriel --
received the 2003 Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award for their work
fighting modern-day slavery.]

On Wednesday, January 7, President Bush invited Latino immigration
activists to the White House for a press event unveiling an important new
policy initiative. The President told those assembled that US immigration
policy "is not working" and proposed an ambitious new policy he said would
better "reflect the American Dream."

Following the President's speech, John Alger, an agricultural employer in
Homestead, Florida, told the USA Today that he welcomed the new initiative,
saying, "To have a sustainable, low-cost labor force is crucial to us."
Why was Mr. Alger talking about labor and securing a "low-wage labor force,"
while the President talked of immigration and of realizing the American
Dream? Because Mr. Alger was being honest about the true objectives of the
President's initiative.

What President Bush in fact unveiled Wednesday is nothing less than a
massive new guestworker program, designed to give US industries legal,
taxpayer-assisted access to millions of desperately poor workers outside this
country's borders.

Why, when there are 9 million workers -- US-born and immigrant alike --
unemployed in this country today, do US industries need to look to guest
workers to fill their jobs? For several years, dozens of industries, from
meatpacking to fast-food, have complained of labor shortages, while
stubbornly offering sub-poverty wages and little or no benefits to potential
new hires. Yet rather than raise wages and improve conditions to attract and
maintain a stable workforce, as the market would have it, these employers
have lobbied their friends in the Bush Administration for the right to
circumvent the US labor market altogether and import low-wage workers
directly from countries far poorer than the United States.

The President's proposal would grant their wish, while cloaking this thinly-
veiled subsidy to low-wage industry in the compassionate clothing of
immigration reform. Yet it is difficult to imagine a policy more damaging to the
very people it purports to help than a guestworker program.

The President's proposal would effectively create a new basement in the US
labor market, a basement, according to the specifics ot the President's plan,
with no door out. Under the President's plan, undocumented workers and
foreign workers living abroad could apply for a temporary, non-immigrant
work visa for three years at the request of a specific US employer. They
would remain in the country at the pleasure of their employer, they could not
change jobs, and would be obliged to return to their home country once their
employer is finished with them, or face deportation.

The President's plan makes no provision for guestworkers to become
members of US society. Under his proposal, guestworkers have no hopes of
earning immigrant status or citizenship in exchange for their labor. Instead,
once they have finished picking the country's crops, sweeping its floors,
emptying its bedpans, and building its skyscrapers, they are to be sent home
to the same poverty and desperation they, like so many Americans before
them, had hoped to escape.

This new "American Dream" would create a permanent underclass of millions
of guestworkers, a huge, disenfranchised sector of US labor with no power on
the job, no hopes of upward mobility, and no political voice, as guestworkers
would not have the right to vote. In short, it would provide the legal framework
for a sort of 21st century American peasantry, a class of workers consigned to
manual labor and yet excluded, by law, from American society.

Not surprisingly, guestworker programs have been tried before, and they
have failed miserably, often with tragic consequences. Between 1942 and
1964, for example, millions of Mexican workers were imported under an
agricultural guestworker program (known as the "Bracero" program) to work
temporarily under contract to US growers and ranchers. The program was
scuttled in 1964 after years of scandalous labor abuses. Europe, too,
experimented with guestworker programs, which also ended in failure years
ago.

Abuses such as those that eventually killed the Bracero program are
inevitable, as the guestworker relationship is an extremely coercive form of
labor relations. As a guestworker, not only does your employer hold your
livelihood in his hands, but he also holds your visa, your very right to be in this
country. With so much power concentrated under the employers' control, it is
hardly surprising that an inordinate number of recent prosecutions for
modern-day slavery and forced labor have involved guestworkers, with cases
ranging from New Hampshire to American Samoa. Indeed, while a guest-
worker program would free some immigrant workers from the horrors that can
result from unauthorized border crossings, the President's proposal could well
undermine efforts to fight slavery more broadly, as giving employers such
wide control over their workers' lives is a proven recipe for exploitation.

In short, the President's proposal is the wrong policy for the wrong reasons,
and should be rejected. President Bush is attempting to aid the efforts of this
country's low-wage industries to avoid paying competitive wages by granting
them access to foreign workers, workers who will end up locked in second-
class, dead-end jobs with no hopes of advancement or of ever becoming part
of the very country that demands their labor. The proposal will hurt workers
already in this country today, it will hurt guestworkers it proposes to import
tomorrow, and it will hurt the Latino community whose vote it was designed to
win in this election year.

Though the Administration timed the announcement of its new initiative in an
effort to win Latino votes, most Latino and immigrant rights organizations
immediately dismissed the President's proposal as a cynical effort to play on
the hopes of their long-suffering members. But if President Bush is really
interested in winning Latino and immigrant labor support, he should consider
returning to one of the principles that made this country great in the first place:
Reward work. Raise the minimum wage, restore workers' rights to organize
and collectively bargain, and help win legal status for undocumented workers
who are contributing to this country's wealth. Reward work, not those who
would seek government support to exploit already poor workers yet more.

END