 "Photo: Maddie Crum/The Daily Texan")
Throughout the state of Florida, and across the United States, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers is campaigning to end conditions for farm laborers that it says meet legal standards for modern-day slavery.
Based in Immokalee, Fla., the coalition is working to encourage major food service providers to not purchase tomatoes from growers who have been convicted of labor abuse.
On Thursday, education graduate student Kandace Vallejo and other members of Fair Food Austin delivered a letter to Henry Jackson, Aramark’s business representative at the Texas Union, outlining their expectations for the company. Aramark is the food service provider of the Texas Union.
The letter asked Aramark to follow the recent example set by the Compass Group North America in working with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers to eliminate human rights violations in its tomato supply chain.
Partners of the coalition, including the Student/Farmworker Alliance and Fair Food Austin, are calling on major buyers of tomatoes to establish a code of conduct in their supply chains, pay a premium of one penny more per pound for their tomatoes and ensure that this penny is passed down directly to farm workers.
The coalition is urging students across the country to get involved by letting their campus food service providers know about a similar agreement made with Compass Group and demanding that Sodexo and Aramark require the same standards of their Florida tomato suppliers, according to material on its Web site.
Vallejo, a member of the Steering Committee in the Student/Farmworker Alliance, wrote a guest column Tuesday for The Daily Texan. Vallejo said in the column that Aramark should establish an agreement with the coalition to demand higher standards of its tomato suppliers and end their role in Florida’s “harvest of shame.”
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.
“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.
“If we were anybody else, we would not have been put off this long. Until today, we’ve been sidelined and ignored,” Vallejo said. “Aramark has continued to put their head in the sand and pretend like nothing is happening.”
Marc Rodrigues, an organizer of the Student/FarmWorker alliance located in Immokalee, accused Aramark of purchasing tomatoes from Florida.
“Due to the geographic location of Austin, some could be coming from California or Mexico, but it is very likely they’re coming from Florida,” Rodrigues said. “Even if they’re not, Aramark still has a role to play in this.”
Jackson said that he has not unpacked any boxes of tomatoes from Florida in the Union in the past two years.
“I’ve never seen tomatoes from Immokalee, Florida,” Jackson said. “They’re from California or Mexico.”
Fair Food Austin plans to make presentations regarding the issue on campus in the upcoming weeks.
“The next steps are to continue to do outreach and education at UT and in the Austin area,” Vallejo said. “I believe we should rightly have a say in matters like this when there’s human rights issues going on.”
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