In March 2005, I started a weekly feature called "Sweet Victories." The idea was to chronicle progressive victories --electoral wins, protests and boycotts, the launching of new ideas, fresh organizations and initiatives, and successful organizing efforts. I hoped that these stories would serve not only as a source of information, but inspiration. The victories might be small, but they were always sweet.

On May 23, we celebrate a sweet victory for social justice. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT.) will join representatives of the Coalition for Immokalee Workers (CIW) and the Burger King Corporation at a press conference in the U.S. Capitol to announce that the corporation has agreed to work with CIW to improve wages and working conditions for the farm workers who harvest tomatoes for Burger King.

This victory is testament to the tenacity and discipline of the Coalition,a community-based worker organization, which has exposed a half-dozen slavery cases that helped trigger the freeing of more than 1000 workers. It has also advocated for better wages, living conditions, respect from the industry, and an end to indentured servitude. In this last year, CIW scored victories in negotiating a penny-per-pound surcharge--so workers would receive about 77 cents per 32-pound bucket--with McDonald's and Yum! Brands (owner of Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, KFC). (The corporations also agreed to work with the Coalition to eliminate slavery from the fields.) And the corporations --not the tomato growers--agreed to pay the 40 percent salary increase. Astonishingly, Burger King, until today, refused to go along with a deal that will cost them less than $300,000 annually; last year, the corporation raked in $2.23 billion in revenues.

The Coalition won this agreement because it had the facts on its side; it never exaggerated or distorted the truth. As a result, none of the lies told by Burger King or the growers could stick. In patiently hewing to the high road, its members were finally rewarded.

In April, Sanders chaired a Senate Labor Committee hearing devoted to exposing the low wages and harsh working conditions faced for decades by farm workers in South Florida. (The hearing came on the heels of Sanders' fact-finding trip to meet with the workers--a trip in which he saw first hand the grueling and brutal conditions of their lives.) At the April hearing, investigative reporter and author of Fast Food Nation Eric Schlosser, who traveled with Sanders to visit the Coalition workers, laid down a marker: "The exploitation of farm workers should not be tolerated in Florida. It should not be tolerated anywhere in the United States. There are many social problems that are extremely difficult to solve. This is not one of them."

This victory is the result of years of struggle and highly disciplined organizing work by the courageous members of CIW. (It is a struggle I have reported) As such, it is a marker of real progress in exposing and addressing the injustices and abuses suffered by workers in our imperfect union. It is also an agreement that is good not only for Florida farm workers, but also for Florida farmers; it increases wages without taking money out of the pocket of farmers.

One historic measure of the Coalition's victory comes from Lucas Benitez, its indomitable co-founder and former tomato worker. At the Congressional hearing in April, he recalled how during a 1997 worker hunger strike a grower said that they would never meet the workers' single demand for dialogue. "Let me put it to you like this," the grower said. "The tractor doesn't tell the farmer how to run a farm." Benitez continued, "That's how they've always seen us, just another tool and nothing more. But we aren't alone anymore. Today there are millions of consumers with us willing to use their buying power to eliminate the exploitation behind the food they buy. And a new dawn for social responsibility in the agriculture industry is on its way. With the help of Congress and with the faith that the complicated will be made clear under the purifying light of human rights, today, just as was it 200 years ago, we will witness the dawn of that new day."

Eric Schlosser also sees enormous significance in this win. On the eve of the settlement's announcement, he told me "This may be the most important victory for American farmworkers since passage of California's Agricultural Labor Relations Act in 1975. That bill heralded a golden age for farm workers. But the state government apparatus it created, the Agricultural Labor Relations Board, got taken over by the growers in the 1980s and watered down the reforms. In Florida, the Coalition has chosen a different path, avoiding government and putting pressure on the corporations at the top of nation's food chain. The strategy clearly works and can be emulated by other workers in other states. In the absence of a government that cares about the people at the bottom, here's a way to achieve change."

Yet the CIW's organizing victory is also a marker of how much more needs to be done. The settlement of the dispute over wages and working conditions does not relieve Burger king of the obligation to come clean about the corporate spying which has been exposed. What exactly did Burger King do, and to whom, and who knew about it? Those questions still have to be answered; and if Burger King doesn't provide the answers, Congress should investigate.

This is no time for complacency. Conditions in the field are still appalling. And now that the deal with Burger King has been signed, it's a moment to leverage that agreement to go after WalMart, Whole Foods and the other big supermarket chains. If McDonalds and Burger King can agree to take care of farm workers, there is no reason other companies shouldn't spend a few extra pennies for their tomatoes.

In the statement announcing the agreement, the Coalition's Benitez eloquently laid out what is at stake in the fight ahead: "Today we are one step closer to building a world where we, as farmworkers, can enjoy a fair wage and humane working conditions in exchange for the hard and essential work we do everyday. We are not there yet, but we are getting there, and this agreement should send a strong message to the rest of the restaurant and supermarket industry: Now is the time to join Yum! Brands, McDonalds and Burger King in righting the wrongs that have been allowed to linger in Florida's fields for far too long."

Comments (13)

1. Good News indeed!

   But, as you say KVH, much yet to do to bring attention to the conditions "we" tolerate for those that bring us our daily sustenance. This is but one step in a long journey.

   MASK, what say you now? You pretty much wrote this campaign off.

   Neo-cons, how long till our economy tanks because a company was "forced" to pay a little more for its raw materials?

   JOMAMA: With diesel reaching $5/gal, do you still think moving food production thousands of miles from other production and end users is the best Plan? Is that idea "mainstream" or loony?

   Posted by crabwalk at 05/23/2008 @ 10:48am

2. Posted by HAPPY3 at 05/23/2008

   So we will give the 300k to border patrol see how much that does for them.

   Posted by Cccomfo1 at 05/23/2008 @ 12:25pm

3. burger king still sucks..........

   Posted by frosty zoom at 05/23/2008 @ 1:28pm

4. HAPPY3

   mexican tomato pickers in ontario make ~$8.00/hour.

   and the farmers are doing QUITE well.

   it ain't perfect, and some employers are quite unkind.....

   yet.

   Friday, May 23, 2008 1:34:25 PM

   Posted by frosty zoom at 05/23/2008 @ 1:34pm

5. More of us American fatsoes should boycott the inedible "food" sold by corporate purveyors such as Burger King. We would be healthier (and would probably draw more satisfaction from life), while the American economy would need far fewer illegal laborers enslaved to stuff our ham faces.

   Posted by feinfein at 05/23/2008 @ 1:41pm

6. feinfein

   i liken north america to a ham sandwich.

   canada, the stripped of nutrients white bread on top.

   the u.s., an overly fat fatty piece of ham.

   méxico, a slice of whole grain bread on the bottom.

   Posted by frosty zoom at 05/23/2008 @ 1:55pm

7. When I was a boy, in the 50's, my pals and I were glad to get whatever the farmer would pay us for picking strawberries or bucking hay. We were glad to show off our muscles and get a suntan. Now, it seems, American children neither want to do any physical work, nor be parted from their electronic toys. And, people make a living even out of cutting someone's grass. It would be interesting if people would stop being so busy with supposed important matters, and return to making their own gardens, cutting their own grass, and generally being healthier in the long run. I'm not against social action for real ills, but I don't see where it's the responsibility of farmers or corporations to care for the indigent. If anything, they should be lauded for their generosity of spirit in providing any facilities or largesse to their workers. Sadly, we've allowed "the streets are paved with gold" to be supposed by immigrants, whether legal or illegal, as part of the American dream. Nothing substitutes for ingenuity, creativity and hard work -- unless it's inherited wealth. In my view, we should as a nation, return to enjoying physical labor as both exercise and regaining knowledge of how to plant and sow and reap, to our benefit. Thanks.

   Posted by Show Me at 05/23/2008 @ 2:05pm

8. well, other than in MY pocket!

   Posted by HAPPY3 at 05/23/2008 |

   Whoa put it in MY pocket. I could use it more than you.

   Posted by Cccomfo1 at 05/23/2008 @ 6:16pm

9. Remember how the cons used to say "put the money in the hands of the people, they know how to spend it"?

   what ever happened to that idea? Whatever happened to their idea that putting money in the hands of consumers leads to more growth?

   [ I'm not against social action for real ills, but I don't see where it's the responsibility of farmers or corporations to care for the indigent. If anything, they should be lauded for their generosity of spirit in providing any facilities or largesse to their workers. -osted by Show Me at 05/23/2008 |}

   Let me show you "generosity of spirit", my new friend:

   [The coalition has uncovered several slavery rings in Immokalee-area farms. In one case, based on two years of undercover work and investigation by the coalition in 2002, three Florida-based farm bosses were convicted in federal court of slavery, extortion and weapons charges and sentenced to nearly 35 years in prison. They were also ordered to forfeit more than $3 million in assets. The bosses had threatened more than 700 farm workers with death if they tried to leave and assaulted passenger van service drivers who gave rides to farm workers.

   In a 2000 case, a farm contractor was convicted of holding more than 30 tomato pickers under armed watch in two trailers in an isolated swamp near Immokalee. When three workers escaped, the employer tracked them down, running one of them down with his car.]

   Posted by crabwalk at 05/24/2008 @ 09:47am

10. the GREAT ann coulter

    Posted by frankshitz at 05/24/2008

    That single phrase renders everything else you post worthless.

    Posted by Cccomfo1 at 05/24/2008 @ 1:35pm

11. Posted by frankshitz at 05/24/2008

    There are several million Muslims here in the US. Are you petitioning your congressman to have concentration camps ala WW2 Japanese internment style built? Got any ideas for torture devices you might want to patent? Must be nice for you to have over a billion potential targets worldwide. Something you can hand down to your grandchildren.

    Posted by Sorelish at 05/25/2008 @ 12:43am

12. ["Liberals think the way to deal with dangerous tyrants is to send in a sensitive president who will make Ahmadinejad fall in love with him." ----]

    We should do like Reagan, send Rummy and boxes of cash, weapons systems and intel. Or we could do like Chimpy McFlightsuit and send Cheney, with boxes of cash, to meet with Nazarbayev

    [Tuesday, August 29, 2006; Page A01

    President Bush launched an initiative this month to combat international kleptocracy, the sort of high-level corruption by foreign officials that he called "a grave and corrosive abuse of power" that "threatens our national interest and violates our values." The plan, he said, would be "a critical component of our freedom agenda."

    Three weeks later, the White House is making arrangements to host the leader of Kazakhstan, an autocrat who runs a nation that is anything but free and who has been accused by U.S. prosecutors of pocketing the bulk of $78 million in bribes from an American businessman. Not only will President Nursultan Nazarbayev visit the White House, people involved say, but he also will travel to the Bush family compound in Maine.

    ...Nazarbayev is hardly the only controversial figure received at the top levels of the Bush administration. In April, the president welcomed to the Oval Office the president of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev, who has been accused of rigging elections. And Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice hosted Teodoro Obiang Nguema, the president of Equatorial Guinea, who has been found to have millions of dollars stashed in overseas bank accounts.

    n addition to Nazarbayev's upcoming visit, Vice President Cheney went to the former Soviet republic in May to praise him as a friend, a trip that drew criticism because it came the day after Cheney criticized Russia for retreating from democracy. The latest invitation has sparked outrage among Kazakh opposition.

    Nazarbayev, 66, a blast-furnace operator-turned-Communist functionary, has led Kazakhstan since 1990, when it was part of the Soviet Union, and has since won a series of tainted elections. His government has banned or refused to register opposition parties, closed newspapers and harassed advocacy groups. Two opposition leaders were found dead of gunshots in disputed circumstances.]

    (Low prices on Nazarbayev. Free shipping on orders over $25. Amazon.com)

    Posted by crabwalk at 05/25/2008 @ 08:12am

13. Why is it the Bush Family COMPOUND? Shouldn't it be like estate or something? What the hell are they doing there to make it a compound?

    Posted by Cccomfo1 at 05/25/2008 @ 1:18pm