Please join Fair Food Austin for an all-ages benefit concert:
Friday Dec. 4th
Music Gym (815 E. 6th)
$5 suggested donation
11pm Frank Smith
12am Smoking Feathers
After hours w/ DJ Hoodie Allen
November 23, 2009
Fair Food Austin Benefit Concert: Friday 12/4
November 20, 2009
Photo Report: Our Sweat is Not Free!
Yesterday, members of Fair Food Austin took their message about labor conditions in Florida's tomato fields to the student body at the University of Texas at Austin with a powerful skit recreating the brutal facts of a 2007 slavery case in Immokalee, Florida.
Accompanied by the musicians of Son Armado, the performance consisted of an endless cycle of day and night scenes in which farmworkers were forced to harvest tomatoes against their will under a scorching sun only to be robbed of their pay and chained inside a u-haul truck at night. Over the course of the 90-minute performance, hundreds of flyers were distributed outlining the link between farmworker exploitation and the purchasing practices of UT foodservice providers Armark and Sodexo. Students were provided with the telephone numbers of Aramark officials and encouraged to call and voice their support for the Campaign for Fair Food.
The Coalition of Immokalee Workers originally performed the theater piece this year on the steps of the Florida Capitol to dramatize the indifference of Florida Governor Charlie Crist to the slavery epidemic in Florida agriculture involving seven federally prosecuted farm labor slavery cases and well over one thousand workers since 1997 alone.
Click here for pictures from yesterday's action!
November 16, 2009
Fair Food Austin to commemorate 2nd anniversary of Florida slavery case
What: Popular theater and son jarocho performance
Where: Texas Union patio and West Mall
When: Thursday, November 19, 12:30pm
On Thursday, November 19, members of Fair Food Austin will commemorate the second anniversary of a modern-day slavery case involving over a dozen tomato pickers who were held in debt peonage, forced to work, and chained inside a box truck at night in Immokalee.
On November 18, 2007, three workers escaped from the truck by punching through a ventilation hatch in the ceiling. The ensuing investigation resulted in the successful federal prosecution of three farm employers on slavery charges (“Slave Labour that Shames America,” The Independent, 12/19/07).
Two years after this horrific case came to light, foodservice providers Aramark and Sodexo – both of whom do business with UT-Austin and buy millions of pounds of Florida tomatoes annually – have yet to take meaningful steps to prevent slavery in their tomato supply chains. As we pointed out last month, this is simply unacceptable ("The Texas Union and Slavery," Daily Texan, 10/6/09).
Join us in calling on Aramark and Sodexo to partner with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) to eliminate slavery in Florida's fields once and for all.
October 9, 2009
Daily Texan: "Coalition campaigns against abusive tomato farmers"
Here's an interesting excerpt from the Daily Texan's coverage of our delegation to Henry Jackson's (Aramark) office in the Texas Union. Yesterday members of Fair Food Austin delivered an open letter calling on Aramark to "establish an agreement with the CIW with all due diligence."
During the meeting in the Union, Vallejo asked Jackson to pass the letter to his supervisor and set up another meeting time. Jackson said that his company asked that he did not have a meeting with the group.According to the CIW, however, no negotiations are currently underway. In fact, Aramark has yet to contact the CIW since the launch of the Dine With Dignity campaign six months ago. And in light of the Fair Food agreements between the CIW and seven multibillion-dollar, multinational food retailers, Aramark's excuses arrive dead on arrival in 2009. Read more...
“I don’t make purchasing decisions. [Aramark and the Coalition] are negotiating at a higher level,” Jackson said.
A statement was released from Aramark’s Corporate Communications stating that they have already met with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers and sent a letter to their suppliers asking them to investigate the minimum wage and employment practices with the Immokalee tomato workers, and that Aramark does not contract with the growers or the farm workers in the purchasing of tomatoes.”
October 6, 2009
Daily Texan op-ed: "The Texas Union and slavery"
"The Texas Union and slavery"
By Kandace Vallejo
Daily Texan Guest Columnist
October 6, 2009
The day after Thanksgiving 1960, millions of Americans tuned into the landmark documentary “Harvest of Shame.” Narrated by Edward Murrow, the legendary pioneer of television news broadcasting, the report provided viewers with vivid portrayals of the degradation experienced daily by migrant farmworkers throughout the U.S. In an iconic soundbite, one produce grower casually explained, “We used to own our slaves. Now we just rent them.”
Very little has changed in 50 years. For example, U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders notes that “the norm is a disaster, and the extreme is slavery” for tomato harvesters in Florida. The picking piece rate has remained stagnant since 1980. A worker today must pick and haul roughly two and a half tons of tomatoes to earn minimum wage for a typical 10-hour day.
These wages, combined with the precarious nature of farm labor and virtually nonexistent legal protections, result in workers’ sub-poverty annual earnings and create an environment where abuses as extreme as slavery can flourish.
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