Rural Laws: April, 2001 - Number #8

About 300 farm workers and their supporters marched to Tallahassee in January 2001 to pressure Florida Governor Jeb Bush to organize negotiations with tomato growers aimed at raising wages, currently $0.40 to $0.50 a 32-pound bucket. Bush said it is not his role to get involved in a private labor dispute. Evelina Bearden of Dade City's Farmworker's Self-Help said: "This is the beginning of big things in Florida."

One tomato grower, Gargiulo, agreed to raise the piece rate from $0.40 to $0.50 a 32-pound bucket.

The Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) mounted demonstrations outside Taco Bell restaurants; Taco Bell buys tomatoes from Six L's Packing Co. Inc. Luis Rodriguez of Fort Lauderdale, Governor Jeb Bush's farm worker liaison, says that the CIW does not represent most tomato pickers. State Rep. Frank Peterman (D-St. Petersburg) introduced a bill that would regulate housing transportation charges when growers own the housing and buses or vans.

In April 1998, 16 people were indicted for smuggling young women they knew from Veracruz, Mexico to rural Florida and holding them as prostitutes. The Cadena Sosa family was convicted of forcing girls and women who were promised restaurant and maid jobs into prostitution, and then holding them in trailers to pay off their smuggling debt. Most of the women were held in isolated trailers near groups of farm workers, who paid $20-$25 for sex, of which the woman kept $3. According to investigators, each woman served up to 30 men a day, and generated $100,000 a year for the family.

The Cadenas were convicted and ordered to repay the women. However, they pleaded poverty. One was sentence to 15 years in US prison, but several others disappeared. The Cadena case was often cited for persuading Congress to approve a new anti-trafficking law in October 2000 that makes up to 5,000 visas a year available to foreigners who testify against smugglers.

Oranges. Florida expects to harvest 230 million boxes of oranges in 2000-01, about the same as 1999-2000, with 130 million boxes of navels (on tree prices of $2.60 a box) and 100 million boxes of Valencias ($4.10 a box). Brazil produces about twice as many oranges, 400 million boxes a year. About 55 percent of Florida oranges are processed into frozen concentrated orange juice, but 40 percent are processed into not-from-concentrate orange juice, a product in which Brazil has trouble competing with because of high transportation costs.

South Miami-Dade County agriculture suffered $200 million in losses in Fall 2000, as storms led to flooding followed by a freeze in January 2001. South Dade county is believed to attract as many as 10,000 migrants from Mexico, Guatemala and El Salvador pick tomatoes, potatoes, okra, squash, peppers and cucumbers.

On February 28, 2001, six farm workers were killed when the ex-school bus in which they were riding to pick oranges crossed the center line and hit a truck. The bus was owned by Florida Harvesters Inc. in Lakeland.

Farm workers often keep their earnings in cash with them where they live, which makes them targets for robbers. In Florida, there were a rash of home invasion robberies targeting farm workers just after payday.

US floriculture product sales reached $4.1 billion in 1999, led by California and Florida ($671 million).

Jose' Patin O Girona, "Robbers target fieldworkers," Tampa Tribune, February 26, 2001. Ryan Davis, "Fighting for Fairness," St. Petersburg Times, January 13, 2001.