Join the Cincinnati Interfaith Workers Center and the Coalition of Immokalee Workers for a RALLY at the Kroger Annual Shareholders meeting at Music Hall! (meet at the steps on Elm Street)

We urge Kroger to work with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), an internationally recognized farmworker organization, to address the sub-poverty wages and abuses faced by the farmworkers who pick your tomatoes by signing the CIW's Fair Food agreement.

THE CIW HAS REACHED GROUNDBREAKING AGREEMENTS with nine of the world's leading food retailers, including McDonald's, Subway and Whole Foods. Through these Fair Food agreements, these corporations are paying one more penny per pound for the tomatoes they buy directly to the workers who picked them and have established a stringent, worker-designed code of conduct in their tomato supply chains. The agreements also ensure a voice for farmworkers in monitoring improvements and reporting abuses.

The human rights crisis in Florida’s fields is urgent. Tomato harvesters are still paid by the piece. The average piece rate today is 50 cents for every 32 lbs. of tomatoes they pick, a rate that has remained virtually unchanged since 1980. As a result of that stagnation, a worker today must pick more than 2.25 TONS of tomatoes to earn minimum wage in a typical 10-hour workday – nearly twice the amount a worker had to pick to earn minimum wage thirty years ago, when the rate was 40 cents per bucket. 

Farmworkers’ grinding poverty leaves them vulnerable to the most exploitative employers, often resulting in appalling labor rights abuses, up to and including modern-day slavery. Indeed, there have been nine federal slavery prosecutions in Florida’s fields in the past dozen years alone.

Please help spread the word and join CIW in urging Kroger to respect farmworkers! 

You can learn more about the CIW at www.ciw-online.org

Contact Sameerah@cworkers.org or 513-621-5991 for more information

 

 

Please see attached Flyer