Trader Joe’s: Sell slave-free tomatoes             

A remarkable number of major supermarkets, restaurants and food  service companies have joined farm workers to fight wage theft,  widespread sexual harassment — even slavery — in Florida’s tomato  fields. But not Trader Joe’s.

Burger King, Subway and others are on board, paying $0.01 more per  pound of tomatoes to the farm workers who pick them and guaranteeing  their tomatoes are slave-free. But Trader Joe’s, despite their  progressive image, refuses to follow suit.

The Student Farmworker Alliance has started a petition on Change.org calling on Trader Joe’s to sell only slave-free tomatoes. The Florida tomato season starts in October, so getting an agreement  from Trader Joe’s in the next few weeks would be a huge victory. Will you sign the petition to get Trader Joe’s to join the Campaign for Fair Food and sell slave-free tomatoes now? http://www.change.org/petitions/ask-trader-joes-to-sell-slave-free-food

More than, 1,000 cases of real-life slavery in Florida’s tomato  fields have been investigated by the Department of Labor in the past 10  years. In these cases, workers were housed in overcrowded shacks on the  fields, paid poverty-level wages, had their identification documents  taken away and were robbed of their wages by employers who fabricated  debts to keep them working.

Trader Joe’s works hard on its image and prides itself on responding  to customers’ preferences. If enough customers (and potential customers)  tell Trader Joe’s they’ll only buy slave-free tomatoes guaranteed  through the Coalition of Immokalee Workers’ Campaign for Fair Food, it  will have to join.

Sign the Student Farmworker Alliance’s petition to get Trader  Joe’s to make sure its tomatoes are slave- and abuse-free by joining  CIW’s Campaign for Fair Food now:

http://www.change.org/petitions/ask-trader-joes-to-sell-slave-free-food

Thanks for being a change-maker,

Amanda and the Change.org team