Feds arrest 4 for “human slavery” in the tomato fields of Immokalee, Fla
by coaimmwkr Monday, Dec. 10, 2007 at 6:36 PM
workers@ciw-online.org

On November 20th, according to court documents filed last week, three tomato pickers made their way to the Collier County Sheriff’s office after having escaped two days earlier through the ventilation hatch of a box truck where they had been held against their will by their employer. The three men told police of an Immokalee-based tomato harvesting slavery ring in which workers “were beaten and forced to work exclusively for the Navarrete family,” according to an article entitled, “Family accused of enslaving workers at Immokalee camp” in the Naples Daily News (12/7/07).

pickinglg.jpg, image/jpeg, 324x244

On that same day, November 20th, Andre Raghu, global managing director with the supply chain monitoring group “Intertek,” told the readers of the Miami Herald that his company’s audits of Florida tomato operations “have found no slave labor.” Mr. Raghu was quoted in the Herald as part of a high-profile press junket organized by Burger King and their new partners in public relations, the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange (FTGE), to counter CIW claims of a human rights crisis in Florida’s tomato fields.

And so, on November 20th, while well-paid executives assured the world that all is well in the Florida’s fields, workers in Immokalee were recounting to Sheriff’s deputies how they had to break out of a locked U-Haul truck to escape from their employers.

* Read about the latest slavery investigation out of Immokalee at http://www.ciw-online.org/no_slave_labor.html

add your comments

Article: How about a side order of human rights?
by Fred Grimm Sunday, Dec. 16, 2007 at 10:46 AM
fgrimm@MiamiHerald.com

How about a side order of human rights?
By FRED GRIMM

Cheap tomatoes start here. At the slave house on Seventh Street. The squat beige stucco house three blocks off Main Street in Immokalee hardly suggests that the Navarrete family was getting rich using intimidation, locked doors and the strong-arm tactics to maintain their low-wage undocumented work crews.

* Read the full article at
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/columnists/fred_grimm/story/346594.html

add your comments

dead miami herald link
by Fred Grimm Thursday, Mar. 27, 2008 at 12:24 AM
delldot at hotmail dot com nope

The above link to the miami herald article has died. Here's a link to the Google cache of it:
http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache:NmNv5Wf22B4J:http://www.miamiherald.com/431/story/346594.html+miami+herald+%22side+order+of+human+rights%22&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us

add your comments