A chilling reminder of farm labor conditions in Mexico: 80 farmworkers go missing after reporting labor abuses in the state of Chihuahua…
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Farmworkers are transported to the fields crowded into the back of a truck in Mexico’s tomato fields in a photo from the Los Angeles Times’ devastating 2014 exposé on labor conditions in the Mexican produce industry. |
Meanwhile, at last month’s annual meeting, Wendy’s execs tell shareholders concerned about labor rights abuses that the company is “perfectly happy with the quality and taste of the tomatoes [we are sourcing] from Mexico.”
And OSU administrators condone their corporate neighbor’s callous indifference…
Late last month, news broke of the disappearance of 80 indigenous Mexican farmworkers who vanished from a farm near Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, after they reported illegal wage deductions for food and housing that cut in half their already desperately low wages. When the authorities arrived to the farm to investigate the complaint, all 80 workers had disappeared, along with the unidentified recruiter who had originally brought them from the small indigenous town of Camargo.
Here is the full translated report from El Proceso from May 29:
CIUDAD DE MÉXICO (apro).- One week after being removed from a farm where they worked as day laborers, the Labor and Social Security Secretariat (STPS) of Chihuahua reported that Monday it began to search for 80 indigenous people who were exploited at work.
According to information released by El Diario Mx, staff from the STPS and other agencies came to the Camargo shelter for temporary workers to investigate the report of labor abuse that they received on Sunday the 21st, but the farmworkers had already been taken away and could not be located…
