Trader Joe's Locks the Doors to Rabbis and Ministers

[n2doc]

hings are getting ugly in the tomato patch.

Last week, about 400 workers' rights advocates from the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), a labor- and human-rights organization founded two decades ago by migrant tomato pickers in the southwestern Florida city of the same name, marched to the headquarters of Trader Joe's outside Los Angeles. The group was accompanied by about 20 religious leaders. They wanted to present management with two letters, one signed by 109 rabbis, the other by more than 80 California pastors.

Both letters asked Trader Joe's executives to work with the coalition to address labor abuses in the tomato fields.

In the past 15 years, seven cases of slavery involving more than 1,200 workers in Florida agriculture, including tomato workers, have been successfully prosecuted. Noting that the story of their own religion began with the "journey of our ancestors from slavery to freedom," the rabbis' letter said, "This legacy informs our moral imperative to fight modern slavery and uphold the right of every individual to be free."

For the last several months, the coalition has been trying to persuade Trader Joe's, a 360-plus store chain that brands itself as a worker- and customer-friendly bastion of all things sustainable, organic, and fair-trade, to sign a Fair Food agreement. Companies who sign the agreement promise to pay one penny more per pound for tomatoes harvested by the workers (the difference between $50 and $80 a day for a worker) and insist that growers who sell to them abide by a code of conduct that mandates no slavery or sexual harassment in the fields, accurate time keeping, a grievance procedure, first-aid training for workers, and tents to provide a bit of shade. Complying with the agreement would cost the billion-dollar company about $30,000 a year.

The religious leaders were disappointed when they were greeted at the locked doors to Trader Joe's headquarters by a uniformed security guard who said that no one at the company would accept the letters and that he didn't even know the name of anyone who worked in the building.

more
http://www.theatlantic.com/life/archive/2011/10/trader-joes-locks-the-doors-to-rabbis-and-ministers/247527/

[xchrom]

1. Recommend

[FarCenter]

2. Trader Joe's is overpriced already

[Codeine]

7. Huh?

People who say that have clearly confused TJ's with places like Whole Foods. Trader Joe's is inexpensive as hell.

[FarCenter]

8. Aldi's, which is owned by the same company, is less

[occupyeverywhere]

3. last paragraph

typical

[madrchsod]

4. got to love a 360+ chain that claims it`s consumer friendly...

by making the consumer think they give a shit about them. the company knows the consumer gets a warm feeling knowing they are buying organic foods,fair trade,and all the other buzz words. would`t it be the consumers concern that the company screw over those who pick and process those warm and fuzzy foods..?

[spin]

5. We need to pass a rational immigration policy ...

that would not only allow workers to legally enter our nation but would also protect their rights.

We hold ourselves up as a beacon of freedom and democracy to the world but because of our failure to reform our immigration laws we have effectively created a modern slave class for business owners and corporations to abuse for profit.

[Cleita]

6. Isn't "The Atlantic" a RW mag?

I think there might be more to this story than a smear on TJs. I wonder how those people were received at Ralph's or Albertson's? They sell tomatoes too. It seems the article is silent on those markets' response.