workers@ciw-online.org

The farmers who harvest our food need our help to end forced labor, poverty wages, and other human rights abuses historically faced by Florida farm workers who harvest out tomatoes. For decades the farmers have undergone stagnant and extreme poverty wages, lack of fundamental labor rights such as no overtime pay, no breaks, no benefits, no right to organize in order to improve such conditions, and modern-day slavery; with extreme cases where workers were forced to labor against their will through threat of physical violence and sexual assault/harassment. People have been injured on the job and forced to go home, and some have even died on the job. 

The Fair Food Program allows for ratification and justice for these farmers. All they ask is for a commitment to the program which will demand for more humane standards from their Florida tomato suppliers, paying a small premium (1 penny) to improve the workers' pay, and purchasing exclusively from growers who meet the program's higher standards. 

Publix Supermarkets must seize this opportunity to join this program. Since 2001, only 13 corporations such as Wal-Mart, Taco Bell, and Whole Foods have joined the program. We can do better than that.

Publix Founder, George Jenkins, "Don't let making a profit get in the way of doing the right thing."

Publix CEO, Ed Crenshaw, "Social Responsibility is the life blood our company.

Please sign this petition for Publix Supermarkets to join the Fair Food Program, and by doing so will improve the lives of the many, many people who make our very survival possible by harvesting the food for America.