The Texas Union and slavery

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.

Slavery.  As in seven prosecuted cases involving 15 farm employers and over 1000 workers – native-born and immigrant alike – in the last decade. In the most recent case, a dozen workers escaped from a box truck in Immokalee, Florida where they were being held against their will, beaten, chained and forced to pick tomatoes for little or no pay. After successfully prosecuting their enslavers, U.S. Attorney Doug Molloy acknowledged that the handful of cases that have come to light are “just the tip of the iceberg.”

At the forefront of today’s abolition movement is an award-winning farmworker’s organization, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW).  Their anti-slavery efforts have been praised by Florida Governor Charlie Crist, FBI Director Robert Mueller, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), and leading trafficking experts the world over. The CIW is not only the undisputed leader in uncovering slavery cases in Florida’s fields., it is also advancing a strategic program to eliminate the systemic poverty and powerlessness that lie at the heart of the state’s agricultural industry.

On Sept. 25, the CIW and Compass Group North America announced sweeping changes to improve tomato harvesters’ wages and working conditions. Compass is the first major foodservice provider to join Yum Brands, McDonald’s, Burger King, Subway, and Whole Foods Market in partnering with the CIW to address the human rights crisis in Florida’s fields.

These innovative agreements harness the market power of large retailers to improve labor standards in their tomato supply chains.

Yet Aramark – the foodservice provider of the Texas Union – remains on the sidelines. On its Web site, Aramark claims to “conduct business … according to the highest ethical standard.” With news of the Compass agreement, Aramark can no longer claim that it meets the highest ethical standard. If it wishes to retain the goodwill of students and the broader Austin community, Aramark should, with all due diligence, establish an agreement with the CIW to demand those same higher standards of its tomato suppliers. Until that time, Aramark will continue to play an indefensible and unnecessary role in prolonging Florida’s harvest of shame.

Vallejo is a cultural studies in education graduate student.
 

12 comments

slug

Wed Oct 7 2009 17:01

Vallejo here is your equation.
ARAMARK buys tomatoes = slavery
Vallejo eats and buys tomatoes = slavery
Because x company buys more tomatoes than you doesn't make them any different than you.
Get a life.

DJ

Wed Oct 7 2009 13:48

Ted, great point.

"rs", you need to read Ted's comment again. Aramark has one, and only one, true responsibility: Increase shareholder equity, period. It's nice when companies make decisions based on moral issues, but I promise you that they only do so when they believe it will result in profitability. Ted is correct when he says that the only true way to inact change is to appeal to the shareholders, whether by requesting a proposal vote or through consumer boycott. You, and most of the other posters here, are idealistic and are not thinking in a frame of mind that has any chance of changing anything.

Ted

Wed Oct 7 2009 00:32

It's not the company that doesn't care. They've got to make their money.
It's up to the clients of Aramark to choose an alternative.
Until students and the university ask for a change, none will be made.

rs

Tue Oct 6 2009 23:11

Aramark has the responsibility and moral obligation to step up and support the workers struggles just like Compass has. To be complicit and to financially support the undisputed abuse happening in the fields is to be guilty of the crimes themselves. Thanks for this fantastic article.

Rudy

Tue Oct 6 2009 15:10

For history's sake, at UT, The Texas Union their retailers have all been approached in the past about combating the abuses faced by immigrant and citizen laborers alike workin the fields. Having said that, I believe that do not care about the rights of the workers, and in their inaction and indifference, they support the systemic abuses suffered by the farmworkers in lieu of cheaper food that in turn mean a heartier value menu and thicker profits. I short time to research would have spared you the trouble of sounding uninformed.

DJ

Tue Oct 6 2009 14:39

Amilcar, maybe next time you'll write the article and explain what's really going on - without the use of anecdotal evidence and straw man arguments like Vallejo has done here.

Amilcar

Tue Oct 6 2009 12:24

Actually, DJ, we do know for a fact that Aramark is not "working behind the scenes" with the CIW and has, in fact, had decades to assess and understand the problem of farmworker exploitation and chosen to do nothing about it. Aramark also chose to do nothing about it after a 4-year boycott of Taco Bell by the CIW and its youth, student, religious, and other allies galvanized the world's attention and resulted in the first direct payments from the final corporate purchaser of the tomatoes to the people who harvest them, in order to improve those harvesters' sub-poverty wages. Aramark chose to do nothing after national and international headlines were made by seven separate cases of modern-day slavery that emerged from Florida's fields over the past eleven years -- the fields that furnish the US with upwards of 90% of the fresh tomatoes we consume from October through May, which also happens to correspond with the time of year Aramark is purchasing literally tons of tomatoes to serve on campuses across the country. And Aramark continues, today, to chose to do nothing despite the fact that the 4 largest fast-food corporations in the world and the largest food service provider corporation in the world -- Compass -- have shown that the changes demanded by the workers and their allies are implementable, fair, and, at the end of the day, good for business. I'm sure Vallejo and SS have been following the campaign and understand these things and the fact that Aramark has chosen to stand on the sidelines, arms crossed, while accounts of brutal exploitation surface from Florida and while a movement led by the very workers facing that exploitation slowly but surely transforms the agricultural industry and works to usher in a new standard of social responsibility in the food industry. Aramark is very well aware of all of these things, and it is actually quite simple, DJ. To paraphrase: to be ignorant is one thing; but to know what's going on and choose not do anything about it, is entirely something else.

cdt

Tue Oct 6 2009 11:57

As journalists, you should know that Mr. Murrow was always styled "Edward R. Murrow". If you had had that item correct, your article may have been more convincing. Please pay attention to the details in your writing.

DJ

Tue Oct 6 2009 11:56

Vallejo is clearly implying that if Aramark does not join the CIW then they, and the entire Union apparently, are complicit and accepting of alleged human rights abuses. If that's not a straw man fallacy, I don't know what is. If anything, you (SS) and Vallejo are making some pretty wide-sweeping assumptions that Aramark has "opted for inaction and silence." How do you know what they're doing? How do you know that they aren't working behind the scenes with the CIW right now? We, the reader, certainly do not - as the author doesn't even mention Aramark's name until the very last paragraph of the entire story. We know they haven't joined the CIW today, but to stretch that fact into an accusation of complicity and acceptance of unlawful activity is completely irresponsible.

Your name

Tue Oct 6 2009 11:25

Nicely put SS: DJ feels that Aramark's position was misrepresented becase Aramark is acatually working hard to keep up with the public image it's putting out with it's web site despite the fact that in their supply chain there is a proven history on the fields and in the court room of egregious human rights violations culminating in slavery. Interesting.

My mother woked those fields, and was a dispensable commodity for the agricultural business in Southern Florida; suffering through their daily abuses. She did it for my sister and for me. Boring anecdote - I know - pointless to a fault; but maybe not. If companies with altruistic public images are being less than accountable to their own words, I don't see it necessary to sugar-coat my position or their responsibility.

SS

Tue Oct 6 2009 09:59

DJ - What are the logical fallacies and strawmen in this piece? It seemed rather straightforward to me: Aramark has an opportunity to support these reforms and has instead opted for inaction and silence. Instead of using their purchasing power to drive down wages and working conditions (the status quo), they could use their market power "to improve labor standards in their tomato supply chains."

Maybe you should explain yourself a little more clearly. Your claims -- to put this in terms of the rhetoric jargon you seem to prefer -- do not have any warrants. Surely you know what "claims" and "warrants" are.

DJ

Tue Oct 6 2009 08:11

So, just so I have this right: if Aramark doesn't join this coalition, then they're implicitly endorsing slavery in the Florida tomato industry, or at best, and unethical company? Right. Do you not see the logical fallacy in this argument? If you want to make an argument that Aramark should join the CIW, then you must state the reasons why it should - don't use anecdotal evidence and straw man fallacies. Doing so waters down your argument and makes it irrelevant.

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