Call on Publix to ensure justice for tomato pickers!

Publix is one of the ten largest supermarket chains in the United States and a large buyer of Florida tomatoes. Unfortunately, while Publix markets itself as a good neighbor, it has yet to address the human rights abuses and sub-poverty wages faced by the workers who pick the tomatoes sold in its stores. Instead of working with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers to ensure fair wages and conditions for those who pick its tomatoes, Publix continues to purchase tomatoes from the farms where the victims in a recent Florida farmworker slavery case were taken to work.

What You Can Do:

• Join farmworkers and their famillies on the afternoon of Sunday, Dec. 6th for a Walk and Rally for Farmworker Justice! Click here for more details.

• Write a letter to Publix Headquarters encouraging them to work with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers to ensure fair wages and conditions for tomato pickers. Click here for a sample letter.

Mr. Ed Crenshaw, CEO
Publix Super Markets Corporate Office
PO Box 407
Lakeland, FL 33802-0407

• Ask to speak to the Manager of your local Publix, explain the situation to him/her, and ask the manager to pass this letter onto Corporate Headquarters (or write your own letter) along with your concern as a local customer. Click here for a sample script. To see a report from CIW/IA Manager Letter deliveries, click here.

• Invite members of your congregation or group to sign postcards to Publix and mail them in to Corporate Headquarters. Contact us for pre-printed postcards to Publix - just let us know how many you'd like and where we should send them to.

Resources:

Letter to Publix from Rev. Kent Siladi, Conference Minister, Florida Conference of the United Church of Christ

Letter to Publix from Bishop Frank Dewane of the Catholic Diocese of Venice.

Letter to Publix from Bishop Timothy Whitaker, Florida Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church

Ft. Myers News-Press article about Publix, farmworkers, and people from local congregations who have gotten involved in calling on Publix to do the right thing!

Guest Commentary by the Rev. Dana Hendershot of Christus Victor Lutheran Church in the Naples Daily News.

Guest Opinion by the Rev. Jim Boler, a retired United Church of Christ minister, published in the Ft. Myers News-Press

Publix and Slavery in the Fields

In December 2008, employers Cesar and Geovanni Navarrete were sentenced to 12 years each in federal prison on charges of conspiracy, holding workers in involuntary servitude, and peonage. They had employed dozens of tomato pickers in Florida and South Carolina. As stated in the US Department of Justice press release on the farm bosses' conviction, “[the employers] pled guilty to beating, threatening, restraining, and locking workers in trucks to force them to work as agricultural laborers. They were accused of paying the workers minimal wages and driving the workers into debt, while simultaneously threatening physical harm if the workers left their employment before their debts had been repaid to the Navarretes."

As reported in the Fort Myers News-Press, "The bosses took their captive crews to work on farms owned by some of the state’s major tomato producers: Immokalee-based Six L’s and Pacific Tomato Growers in Palmetto” (“Workers to take slavery tales to Crist,” Ft. Myers News-Press, 03/12/09).

Publix continues to purchase tomatoes from both Pacific Tomato Growers and Six L's, despite the fact that the victims in this recent farmworker slavery case were taken to work on these farms. Join us in encouraging Publix to stop turning a blind eye to modern-day slavery and other abuses in Florida agriculture.