Coalition of Immokalee Workers

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The Coalition of Immokalee Workers (Coalition of Workers of Immokalee CIW) is a grassroots organization, working for the labor rights of farm workers in the Southwest Florida begins. It includes around 4,000 farm workers, mainly of Mexican , Guatemalan and Haitian origin, who work on tomato and other plantations in Florida. The CIW has raised the mostly low wages in the past and received the Anti-Slavery Award 2007 for its work against cases of slavery in the region's agriculture .

history

In 1993 an initially small group of farm workers began to organize themselves with regular meetings. With strikes and public actions, the CIW campaigned for an improvement in the situation of workers in the following years; by 1998 she had achieved wage increases of 13 to 25% according to her own statements.

From 1997 onwards, the CIW also increasingly “fought” cases of slavery in the agricultural sector in Florida. By 2001, she brought three such cases to court, freeing hundreds of bonded migrant workers. At the same time, she turned directly to companies like Taco Bell and McDonald’s as the largest buyers of fruits and vegetables from Florida and got them to work for better working conditions in agriculture.

The campaign against slavery made the CIW better known nationally and internationally, and in 2007 it won the Anti-Slavery Award .

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