Letter: Picket for Coalition of Immokalee Workers

Letter: Picket for Coalition of Immokalee Workers

Terry Buckenmeyer
St Augustine, FL

Dear Editor:

Local members of the Gainesville General Membership Branch, Industrial Workers of the World, Occupy St Augustine, Fair Food Jacksonville, and Gainesville’s Interfaith Action for Immigrant Justice, will show support for the struggle of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers for fair food and justice in the fields.

Participants will meet on January 14th and march to the Publix grand opening in a solidarity picket. We will gather at 12 Noon at the Pier Pavilion on the west end of Vilano Road on Vilano Beach in St Augustine.

Since the 1990’s, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers has been struggling for fair wages and humane treatment for the farm workers in Immokalee, Florida who pick the tomatoes we eat every day.

Farm workers earn the same money as they did in the late 1980’s and a penny-a-pound more would bring them up minimum wage.

There have been ten cases of literal slavery in the fields prosecuted here in Florida, one in St Johns County.

Yum Foods, Subway, MacDonald’s, Burger King, Whole Foods, Aramark and many others have already signed on to guarantee that farm workers are treated fairly and get one penny a pound more for the tomatoes they pick.

The time has come for Publix to step up and “do the right thing”.

Photo credits: © 2012 Historic City News staff photographer