Blocked by lawmakers, Florida farmworkers seek help on heat protection from food industry
Seeking relief from South Florida’s soaring heat, outdoor workers in the region appealed to politicians in Miami-Dade County and Tallahassee for help.
They got none. A Miami-Dade measure intended to ensure basic protections like water and breaks wound up derailed by construction and agriculture lobbyists. Florida lawmakers are poised to double down on the denial, in the past week approving a bill to block not just Miami-Dade but any county in the state from drawing up their own health standards for extreme heat.
Now, a coalition of farmworkers from SouthDade and Immokalee intend to take their campaign directly to the powerful
fast-food and grocery industries that buy the produce they harvest. They’re gathering this weekend for the Farmworker Freedom Festival in Palm Beach County to rally support for the effort — in an event that includes a plan to place a giant farmworker puppet in front of the
mansion owned by the chairman of the board of Wendy’s.
They call the two-story effigy Esperanza.
“Her name is Esperanza, or hope, because we hope for a better world,” said Lupe Gonzalo, a leader of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers. “A world where we are all treated with dignity and respect as human beings.”
It’s not the first time South Florida farmworkers have tried pressuring powerful corporations — and they have a record of success. They have won contracts for workplace improvements with some of the largest tomatoes buyers in the world, including McDonald’s and Walmart.
Their fight to get businesses to agree to what they call “the Fair Food agreement” isn’t always easy. In the best-known effort, billed as “Boycott the Bell,” the coalition spent four years working with college students, who are Taco Bell’s biggest market, to remove the fast-food outlets from 20 campuses. Even former U.S. President Jimmy Carter voiced his support of the boycott before Taco