Two Sentenced for Slavery; PC(USA) calls on Gov. Crist to Act

December 2008 – On Friday, December 19, two members of the Navarette family were sentenced to 12 years in federal prison for enslaving tomato pickers in Immokalee, Florida. The crew leaders chained workers to a post and beat them repeatedly, locked them in a box truck every night and forced them to work without pay for two prominent Florida growers, Six L’s corporation and Pacific Tomato Growers. 

A farmworker harvests tomatoes in Immokalee. Photo Courtesy of Scott Robertson.

This human rights travesty is not without precedent. The Navarette case is the seventh case of modern-day slavery to be successfully prosecuted in recent years. The Coalition of Immokalee Workers has worked closely with the U.S. Department of Justice and the FBI to free workers and assist with these prosecutions. 

Despite the epidemic of slavery in the Florida fields, Gov. Crist has remained silent while his designated spokesperson from the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services has characterized slavery as “rare” and denied that “legitimate” growers have been involved.

On December 18, the PC(USA) and four executive presbyters from the state of Florida joined other prominent signatories from the religious and human rights community in an open letter calling on Gov. Charlie Crist to publicly renounce statements by a spokesperson for the Florida Department of Agriculture which downplayed the existence and severity of modern-day slavery in the fields and to work with the CIW and federal officials responsible for prosecuting slavery cases to use the full resources of his office to address this scourge. Read the full text of the letter.

The open letter was paired with statements from Mary Robinson (former U.N. Commissioner of Human Rights and former President of Ireland), Larry Cox (president of Amnesty International), the RFK Center for Human Rights and the Rev. Noelle Damico, national coordinator of the PC(USA) Campaign for Fair Food. Read Noelle’s statement and pertinent General Assembly policy visit. All statements noted above may be found at on the CIW Web site. 

The open letter was penned following an article by the Fort Myers News-Press in which Gov. Crist of Florida was asked to comment on the rash of slavery cases and referred the reporter to the Florida Agriculture spokesperson who stated, "Of course, I say any instance is too many, and any legitimate grower certainly does not engage in that activity (slavery) but you're talking about maybe a case a year”. [Read full story] .

Given that seven cases of modern-day slavery involving over 1,000 workers have been successfully prosecuted and that crew leaders who engaged in these practices worked for some of the leading growers in the Florida tomato industry, it was doubly surprising that when asked by the News-Press to respond to the open-letter and statements, the spokesperson incredibly defended his statement saying that “it is quite a rarity when a case pops up. [Read full story]

In the News-Press report on the slavery sentencing it came as no surprise to learn Six L’s and Pacific Tomato Growers are members of the Socially Accountable Farm Employers (SAFE) program that you may remember growers set up with McDonald’s backing in 2006. SAFE was designed to counter the stringent human rights-based agreement that the Coalition of Immokalee Workers had made with Taco Bell to improve workers wages and address human rights abuses in the field. [Learn more]

Since then the CIW has won meaningful agreements with McDonald’s, Burger King, Subway and Whole Foods Market. But the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange (FTGE) continues to impede the penny wage increase from getting to the farmworkers and to cling to the anemic, SAFE program which was designed and has been implemented without worker input.  During hearings before the Senate’s Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee this past April, you may recall the FTGE trotted out SAFE as a fig leaf to defend itself against the widespread poverty and rampant exploitation that has been documented over and over in the Florida fields. 

Will this most recent case of slavery be a turning point for the growers?  For the governor? Over the Christmas holiday, stay tuned to the CIW Web site for breaking news.

In Advent the church looks forward to that time when all barriers to Love’s full reign in our world will cease; a time when the world will embody the just-peace God has always and ever intended; a time when our world will be ordered by love. As we prepare to celebrate the incarnation of God in Jesus of Nazareth at Christmas, we are reminded that our world still desperately needs the justice-rooted love that our savior embodied and shared. 

In our worship and in our witness may God’s “good news” be made known. Happy Advent and Merry Christmas.