Florida’s farm industry has long been plagued with high profile cases of worker abuse—including several instances of slavery. But one advocacy group, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) has works to bring justice and better working conditions for the mostly migrant laborers on Florida’s farms. Yesterday, the group had a major victory.
It took over a decade of struggle, but finally, the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange (FTGE) has signed onto the CIW’s Fair Food Code of Conduct. The agreement will bring better working conditions and a penny-per-pound raise for Florida’s tomato farm workers.
Harsh Working Conditions, Lack of Rights
U.S. farm workers do not enjoy the same legal protections extended to most other members of the workforce. The 1935 passage of the National Labor Relations Act gave millions of Americans basic workers rights, but farm laborers and domestic workers were left out of the bill—and, as Kevin Bales and Ron Soodalter write in The Slave Next Door, “are still denied the rights enjoyed by all other workers.” And working conditions are notoriously hard for farm workers. A 2008 study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention revealed that crop workers die from heat related illnesses at a rate 20 times higher than other U.S. workers.
Bring it to Fast Food Chains
The FTGE is a private cooperative of Florida’s tomato farm owners. For 15 years, they refused to come to an agreement with CIW—so, the CIW got to organizing. If the farm owners won’t cooperate, why not put pressure on the companies at the other end of the supply chain?
CIW organized student groups and farm workers to stage boycotts and demonstrations against major corporations that use Florida tomatoes in their products. Through their Fair Food campaign, launched in 2001, CIW was able to convince companies like Taco Bell, McDonalds, Burger King, Whole Foods, Subway and Sodexo to take steps to ensure their supply chains are free of worker abuse.
But it wasn’t until yesterday that the FTGE followed suite. In a statement, CIW spokesperson Lucas Benitez called this a “watershed moment in the history of Florida agriculture.” But, Benitez added, “there is still much to be done.”
Next on the agenda: supermarkets. Gerardo Reyes, also of CIW said: “It is time now for supermarket industry leaders to seize this historic opportunity to help make the promise of fresh—and fair—tomatoes from Florida a reality.”
Fighting Slavery
It was in the year 2000 that U.S. federal law recognized the extant of modern day slavery with the passage of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act. But years before this, CIW was instrumental in levying charges of slavery against unscrupulous people in the Florida farm industry. A 1997 landmark case resulted in 15 year sentences for Miguel Flores and Sebastian Gomez, who forced hundreds of workers to labor for virtually no pay monitored by armed guards, who shot and beat laborers who tried to escape. CIW’s website says, “The case was brought to federal authorities after five years of investigation by escaped workers and CIW members.” Both Flores and Gomez were charged with slavery.
Free the Slaves featured the work of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers in our documentary Dreams Die Hard. Watch it after the jump!
A poster for the mid '70s film 'The Yakuza' directed by Sydney Pollack.
- The Economist: Death of a mockingbird: ”Toshiro Igari, a former prosecutor who worked on cases against the yakuza, Japan’s mafia, was found dead in August. His death was ruled a suicide. But Jake Adelstein, an American journalist who specialises on yakuza activities, suspects murder….As in few other countries, the business of Japan’s criminal gangs is woven densely into the life of the country, its economy, government and society… But there is a deeper and uglier dimension lying beneath the surface, profiting by human-trafficking, extortion and the trade in hard drugs. It can be exceedingly violent.”Read Jake Adelstein’s essay on Igari’s passing here.
- Newsweek: Cambodia no longer a pedophile’s haven: “Among the 141 arrests for “debauchery” and “indecent acts” in Cambodia since 2003, only 37 of the suspects were Cambodian and just 19 were men from other Asian countries, according to APLE. And yet, Western men represent only a minuscule fraction of the population in Cambodia that is sexually exploiting children. According to a report released last month by the juvenile-protection NGO, ECPAT (End Child Prostitution, Abuse and Trafficking), the vast majority of former child sex workers say their clients were local men.”
- France 24: Hong Kong: capital of domestic slavery
The TVPA (Trafficking Victims Protection Act) has been called the most important anti-human trafficking legislation ever passed. It was signed into law in 2000 (the same year that Free the Slaves was founded), to comprehensively protect and rehabilitate victims of modern day slavery—and prosecute perpetrators of the crime.
2010 marks the TVPA’s tenth birthday. Last Friday, the Department of Justice held an event to commemorate its passage. Federal staffers, policy makers and NGO representatives filled the Great Hall of the Department of Justice, where several attorneys stood up and reflected on a decade’s worth of accomplishments, working with the TVPA. Over a hundred people were there to celebrate the milestone legislation, which put the U.S. fight against modern day slavery on the map.
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, Jr. said the TVPA was a “great source of pride” that can allow all people to live with “the dignity every human deserves.” But, he added, there is “still much more work to be done.” Holder said the Department of Justice is taking new steps to increase collaboration between law enforcement, NGOs and lawmakers.
The attorneys giving remarks looked back at some of the most significant human trafficking cases from the past decade—from garment industry slavery, to sex trafficking. The prosecution of traffickers was discussed, but it was the stories of survivors that took center stage.
Hilary Axam from the Human Trafficking Prosecution Unit read from slave narratives, while on the screen to her right, photographs of brothels where women were held in slavery were shown. Steven M. Dettelbach, U.S. Attorney from the Northern District of Ohio said that prosecutors love human trafficking cases because it gives them a chance to help victims. He said the fight against human trafficking is to make good on the illegality of slavery in the United States.
Dettelbach was lead prosecutor in the landmark El Monte, California, sweatshop case of 1995, in which 72 Thai garment workers were enslaved behind barbed wire in an apartment complex on the outskirts of Los Angeles. It is considered one of the first major cases of modern day slavery in the U.S.
At first, Dettelbach says, the victims were fearful of him. “Those women did not trust us,” he said. “They had never been treated well by any authority figure in their adult lives.” The proudest moment of his career came at the conclusion of the case, when the Thai women bowed to his team of prosecutors in respect—this time, with trust.
Dettelbach concluded the commemoration with the following quote from the 13th Amendment: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall exist in the United States.”
- Yes! Magazine: This Halloween, a new breed of activists is coming to your door: They’re costumed, committed, and about four and a half feet tall:
“Emilie, a seventh-grader from North Bend, Wash., was shocked when her best friend, Rachel Donka, told her that the Hershey bars and other chocolate products she loved came, in part, from the labor of kids in places like Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire, and Indonesia. “Most people don’t know about this,” she reflected later, “so I wanted to understand what went into the things I used. And I wanted other people to start asking questions, too.”
This year both girls are participating in Reverse Trick-or-Treating, an annual tradition initiated four years ago by activists promoting fair wages and treatment for farmers. Instead of just going door to door asking for candy, an anticipated quarter of a million Reverse Trick-or-Treaters are bringing the chocolate to you—fairly traded, bite-sized morsels glued to cards that explain widespread human rights violations occurring on non-fair trade cacao farms around the world.
- The Salt Lake Tribune: Modern slavery widespread in U.S., Brigham Young University conference told
“‘These days it’s not about forcible capture or kidnapping,’ said Kevin Bales, president of the nonprofit Free the Slaves.
Instead, recruiters show up in villages around the world offering jobs. Even though victims say recruiters look shady, Bales said, they take a chance because their children are hungry or need medicine — and suddenly find themselves enslaved, with only rare help coming from governments.”
- The Sophia Echo: In Bulgaria, Roma Youth at Greatest Risk for Being Trafficked
Children aged from six to 15, from the Roma minority and orphans are at greatest risk of being dragged into trafficking for sexual exploitation, according to Antoaneta Vassileva of Bulgaria’s national commission for combating trafficking in human beings.
…Bulgaria was a transit country for trafficking of people to Germany, Belgium, Austria and Switzerland, she said. Children trafficked for sex also were used for begging and pick-pocketing.
In San Francisco, 2008, a protest of Chinese support for the Myanmar regime. Photo by BrokenSphere.
This week, the Global Post published a great article about human trafficking in Ruili, a city on the Chinese side of the border with Myanmar. The article, written Kathleen E. McLaughlin, says that China’s one child policy is fueling trafficking of women from poorer neighboring countries like North Korea and Myanmar into forced marriages.
Recently, we reported from a congressional hearing in which North Korean defectors spoke of being trafficked upon landing on Chinese soil. And worse yet, arrested and sent back to North Korea, where they were tortured. (Read ’90% of North Korean Defectors Sold to Chinese Traffickers, Advocate Says’). China is currently on the Tier 2 watch list on the latest Trafficking in Persons Report. And the Chinese government has made several high profile human trafficking busts in recent months (like this, this and this).
But critics, such as Representative Chris Smith (R-NJ) have said that China does not comply with the minimum standards prescribed by the Trafficking Victims Protections Act.
Read McLaughlin’s report (via Global Post):
At least 10,000 women from Myanmar live and work in the Ruili area, with varying degrees of legal status. Many are maids and nannies. Many more work in the sex trade. This is a hub of prostitution, and foreign women are both exotic — a big draw for Chinese men — and cheaper than Chinese girls. Prostitution halls are often disguised as massage parlors, but the sex trade is barely hidden.
Women lured from Myanmar to China fill a gap created by this country’s one-child policy and cultural preference for sons. By 2020, an estimated 35 million Chinese men will be unable to find wives. Increasingly, bachelors buy women from poorer countries like Myanmar and North Korea.
Watch video of the report after the jump!
Photo from 1909, showing a 6 year old farm laborer near Baltimore, Md.
- StoptheTraffik: Children found enslaved on Worcester, U.K. farm: “Following a police raid on a farm in Worcestershire last week, 7 Romanian children between the ages of 9 and 15 were found picking spring onions. These children were working daily from 7.30am until dusk, without food or water, in freezing weather dressed only in thin summer clothing.“…It’s much too early for the authorities to start back-patting one another though.There have been several occasions in the past where trafficked children, forced to beg and steal on the streets, have been ‘rescued’, reunited with parents, only to find themselves returned to slave labor shortly afterwards – trapped in a vicious cycle. Why? Because some parents may be complicit in the trafficking operation.”
- Miami Herald: Exclusive investigation: Guards cash in on smuggling Haitian children: “It took the young smuggler less than five minutes to ferry the children into the Dominican Republic, an easy, well-timed and completely illegal maneuver that repeats again and again on what is supposed to be the most surveilled border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic.’It’s a game,’ said Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive, readily acknowledging to The Herald that smuggling is an economic driver between both countries. ‘A lot of people are trafficking. They make money. Everyone along the frontier is benefiting. It’s the sole source of revenues. And everyone accepts it like that.’”
- AP: US official: Trafficking victims subject to detention and deportation: “growing numbers of countries are guilty of unfairly treating victims of human trafficking by detaining and deporting them at the first opportunity. Luis CdeBaca is Washington’s envoy on human trafficking issues. He says that while countries are increasingly signing on to conventions targeting human traffickers, the victims are subject to unfair treatment. Anti-trafficking activist Marika van Doorninck says that countries often use anti-trafficking policies to develop anti-migration laws.”
Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D–New York) is tough on human traffickers.
Representative Carolyn Maloney (D–New York) announced last week that she will introduce a federal bill modeled on the California Supply Chain Transparency Act (SB 657), recently signed into law by Governor Schwarzenegger. SB 657 requires all businesses that trade in California and gross over $100 million globally, to reveal what they are doing to eradicate slavery in their supply chains.
In a “Dear Colleague” letter sent to other members of Congress, Maloney said this proposed bill, titled Slavery Prevention Supply Chains Act will “allow consumers to make better, more informed choices and motivate businesses to ensure humane practices throughout the supply chain.” Like the California law, this federal bill will require companies grossing over $100 million to post on their websites the systems they have in place to keep their supply chains slavery free.
Free the Slaves has been a public supporter of the California legislation. Together with our colleagues at the Alliance to End Slavery and Trafficking (ATEST), we sent Gov. Schwarzenegger a letter urging him to sign the law. Read our statement here (PDF).
Making consumers aware that slavery may exist in the products we use is a powerful step. But it will take more than this to eradicate slavery. The law only requires that businesses reveal their voluntary efforts in keeping a slave-free supply chain. More legislation and follow up is needed to keep the momentum going.
Maloney seems to agree with our stance. She says, “This is one step in a multi-pronged approach to attacking a horrific problem that plagues the world but is found right here in our own back yards. With increased knowledge, consumers can let their opinions on human slavery be known through their pocketbooks.”
Maloney has had a hand in several anti human trafficking bills making their way through congress, including the Prevention of Trafficking of Tsunami Orphans Act of 2005 (H.R. 950)—in response to the alarming trend of vulnerable children falling prey to traffickers in disaster zones.
Michael Stipe and Helena Christensen at the Free the Slaves benefit, October 20, 2010.
Some more press on Free the Slaves Global Ambassador Katie Ford’s benefit event at Top of The Standard in New York last week. This round: InStyle and Tonic.com.
via Tonic.com:
Stars Mix, Mingle And Bid to Free the Slaves
Michael Stipe, Helena Christensen, Selma Blair, Liev Schreiber, designer Nicole Miller and celebrity chef Todd English mixed and mingled at the Top of The Standard to raise money to help rescue the more than 27 million enslaved people worldwide this week.
The event was organized by Free the Slaves, a nonprofit that saves, rehabilitates and educates slavery victims, while also conducting substantial advocacy on their behalf. Donations from the evening will fund the charities various efforts like providing shelter for women who have been rescued from sex slavery, rescuing captive children in Haiti, Ghana and India as well as freeing entire Indian villages that have been in debt bondage for generations.
And in InStyle’s Parties! section, Selma Blair is shown wielding her bidding paddle (or is that a Japanese fan?) at the Free the Slaves auction.
So exciting to see the anti-slavery movement grow!
Ambassador Luis CdeBaca, who heads the State Department’s Office to Monitor and Combat Human Trafficking has been called America’s “Human Trafficking Czar.” As a federal prosecutor, CdeBaca was lead council in what was the biggest human trafficking case on U.S. soil. His work has contributed to the liberation of hundreds of people.
In past weeks, CdeBaca has indicated an area of particular concern to the anti-slavery movement: the re-victimization slavery survivors by the criminal justice system.
Ambassador CdeBaca recently testified at a hearing on modern day slavery at the House Foreign Affairs Committee, where he said the future challenges of his office will be to get law enforcement to recognize human trafficking victims as victims—rather than “merely illegal immigrants or criminals.”
CdeBaca’s statements on this issue were picked up yesterday by the Associated Press, who ran a brief story titled “US: Trafficking victims subject to detention”
In our work, Free the Slaves has seen this happen. One of our 2010 Freedom Award winners, Tina Frundt, was trafficked into sex slavery when she was just 14 years old. When the police came knocking, they didn’t treat her as a victim. They arrested her for prostitution.
Read Tina Frundt’s testimony to Congress, urging the passage of the Domestic Minor Sex Trafficking Deterrence and Victims Support Act (H.R. 5575)
Friend of Free the Slaves, journalist Christa Hillstrom (who is also the founder and editor of Human Goods, a magazine-style blog on modern day slavery) has just published an article on supply chain slavery. She focuses on the recent passage of California’s SB 675, otherwise known as the California Supply Chain Transparency Act, which requires California businesses to disclose what they are doing to eradicate slavery in their supply chains.
Read Free the Slaves’ response to California’s Governor Schwarzenegger’s passage of SB 657 here.
Here is Christa Hillstrom’s report (via Yes! Magazine):
Slavery Goes Public: Are the products you buy tainted by slavery and child labor? A new California law can help you find out.
Chances are, they’re in your pockets, your closet, and even your body.
From cotton to coltan, materials tainted by slavery and child labor flow through opaque, fragmented supply chains to end up, often without our knowledge, in the products we buy. It’s a global reality that has received little mainstream scrutiny, but a new California law may herald a changing national attitude towards holding corporations accountable for the materials they use.
This week, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed California’s Supply Chain Transparency Act. The law, sponsored by state Senator Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento), requires companies operating in California and making more than $100 million in annual revenue to publicly report on voluntary efforts to monitor their direct supply chains in order to eliminate exploitation.
The use of slave and child labor is common in the mines and fields where resources are obtained as well as in the factories where they’re manufactured. The International Labor Organization reports a staggering 200 million children at work worldwide, while global estimates of people in slavery are as high as 27 million. But in a market that rewards the companies selling the cheapest goods, reform has been sluggish at best.
Corporations that benefit from underpaid or slave labor, including that of children, have also long enjoyed the benefits of plausible deniability—essentially, shoulder-shrugging—when human rights violations occur on their watch. When child labor is discovered in sweatshops at the lowest rung of production at companies like Nike, Apple, Firestone, or Abercrombie, those suppliers are reprimanded and sometimes put out of business. But the companies themselves, which contract for the mining, sewing, and harvesting involved in getting their products on the shelves, often pay little or no penalty.
California’s new legislation could change that. Well, sort of.
While some corporations have voluntarily published official statements on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) for years, this law requires businesses with substantial profits to use a fraction of that money to report on strategies for tracking and responding to slavery in the work they commission. If they don’t have a strategy, they must report that too. And that doesn’t look good.
