On its website, Chipotle explains its Food With Integrity campaign by saying, “it’s had tremendous impact on how we run our restaurants and our business. It’s a philosophy that we can always do better in terms of the food we buy. And when we say better, we mean better in every sense of the word – better tasting, coming from better sources, better for the environment, better for the animals, and better for the farmers who raise the animals and grow the produce.”
So they are building a better world environment eschewing harmful additives, raising farm animals where they have “free range,” and improving things for the farmers who raise and grow our food.
Notice how they left out the farm worker? Tomato pickers in Florida, the Carolinas and other states perform backbreaking work for long hours in the hot Southern sun. If they are strong enough and industrious enough to pick TWO TONS of tomatoes they might get $50 – not even minimum wage for a 12-hour day. The conditions these workers endure are appalling.
The Coalition of Immolakee Workers (CIW) was formed in 1993 when a young boy working in a Florida field was badly beaten for stopping to take a drink of water. “We hired you to work, not to stand around and drink,” a foreman remarked. In fact, wage theft was common at the time. Frequently workers are kept away from any public contact by armed guards, housed in substandard conditions, forced to buy goods from their employers in a virtual state of slavery.
In its first year, CIW recovered over $100,000 in unpaid wages. Thanks to their efforts six of these farm businesses, often owned by faceless corporations, have been prosecuted under slavery laws. The workers are still getting the same wages they did ...