"Labor trafficking is so preventable in this country, that’s why it’s all the more outrageous that it’s still existing. Because there is actually a solution, it is very clear. To end slavery, to end human trafficking, you have to end sweatshops. If the big buyers, the major corporate buyers, if they were to say “We don’t ever want to see modern day slavery again in our supply chain,� it would disappear."

Laura Germino
Anti-Slavery Campaign Coordinator
Coalition of Immokalee Workers

Some human trafficking experts and human rights activists believe there is a connection between the US fast food industry and modern slavery in the United States.

In March of this year the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, a farm worker group based in Immokalee Florida, came to Chicago to launch a national campaign against McDonald's. Chicago is home to McDonald’s corporate headquarters.

The Coalition of Immokalee Workers has helped free over 1000 people held in peonage, forced labor, debt bondage and conditions of trafficking in the United States.

This year the CIW was awarded the Paul Wellstone Award by the Freedom Network USA for their efforts to combat human trafficking in the United States.

In 2003 Julia Gabriel, Lucas Benitez and Romeo Ramirez of the CIW were the first US recipients of the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award. Per the RFK Human Rights Award’s web site “Farm workers themselves, they [Gabriel, Benitez, and Ramirez] have become leaders in the fight to end slave labor, human trafficking and exploitation in agriculture fields across the U.S.�

This is an audio documentary of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers' visit to Chicago.

In 2001 the Coalition of Immokalee Workers began a national boycott of Taco bell in an effort to increase farm worker’s wages and develop procedures that would lead to better working conditions. Universities around the United States began to push Taco Bell restaurants off their campuses. The US Presbyterian Church and several student organizations became national organizing forces behind the boycott.

In 2005 Taco Bell, through its parent company Yum brand foods, became the first, and to date, only fast food restaurant to establish a working relationship with the Immokalee Workers in Florida. The Coalition’s national boycott of Taco Bell ended when Taco Bell agreed to pay one additional cent per pound of tomatoes.

The additional penny per pound increases a tomato pickers wage by approximately 75%.

In response to the penny per pound campaign, McDonalds commissioned a report to look at wages, benefits and conditions of Florida tomato pickers within the McDonalds supply chain. The report sated that McDonald’s suppliers had made a public commitment to provide their workers with compensation equal to or better than the proposed “penny-per-pound� increase.

In a public petition, 30 US labor experts claimed the McDonalds report did not meet accepted standards of research, was riddled with errors, and that the conclusions should not be taken seriously.

Former Secretary of Labor, Robert Reich along with two colleagues issued a response to the McDonalds’ report. The response stated “McDonalds has refused to act constructively in the face of serious infringements of the rights of farm workers who pick tomatoes that go into McDonalds’ products.�

The letter highlighted miserable conditions experienced by generations of farm workers, including forced labor.



The music in this piece was performed during the CIW march in Chicago by members of Son del Centro.