The struggles of farmworkers in the US have long been shaped by race, migration, and exploitation. Black farmworkers–especially Haitian migrants—are often overlooked in this fight, despite the crucial role they played and continue to play in transforming US agriculture.
From slavery to sharecropping to the brutal conditions of Florida’s sugarcane and tomato fields, Black workers have been at the center of US agricultural labor, resisting exploitation at every stage.
In Immokalee, Florida, Haitian and Mexican farmworkers–many fleeing poverty and US-backed repression in their homelands–faced extreme exploitation in the 1960s and beyond. With wages stolen through debt peonage, brutal working conditions, and even modern-day slavery, these workers organized and fought back. The struggle of Black agricultural laborers in Immokalee is a critical chapter in both labor, farmworker, migrant, and Black history, showing how migrant and Black workers have led the fight for dignity and justice.
This struggle continues to this day, with farmworkers winning agreements with major retail food companies in recent years.
The H-2 migrant program: brutal exploitation and even slavery
In 1965, the H-2 migrant program admitted temporary migrant workers into the US under special provisions to alleviate labor shortages. Under this program, farm owners hired tens of thousands of workers. They generally preferred workers from the sugar producing countries in the Caribbean, such as Haiti. The swamp-like conditions in Florida meant that sugar cane had to be cut manually, making the work grueling, dangerous, but also requiring proficiency. At this time, many Haitians were also fleeing the US-backed Duvalier dictatorship. But political asylum seekers from Haiti were almost always denied during the same time that H-2 workers from Haiti were imported to the fields.
Also during the 60’s, the US implemented the Bracero Program. This program opened a legal pathway for farmers to essentially import specifically Mexican laborers. Thanks to these programs, Florida’s agricultural hub employed large numbers of Haitian and Mexican workers in the Immokalee sugar, tomato, and other farms.
Yet, H-2 farmworkers in Florida’s agriculture industry suffered high levels of exploitation and worked in brutal conditions, with some writers and activists calling it involuntary servitude and akin to slave labor. Similar conditions continue to this day.
Workers labor for long hours in harsh, dangerous conditions, often subjected to extreme heat without adequate water, operating sharp tools and machinery without adequate safety equipment, and suffering physical and sexual abuse.
According to reports, in the 60s and 70s, some workers made less than USD 3 per ton of cut cane. On top of the low wages, employers often make deductions for housing, food, the daily ride to the fields, the H-2 visa, and other fees. In many cases, these deductions lead to debt peonage that forces migrant workers to labor to pay off their debt.
Debt isn’t the only tactic used to force involuntary servitude. Sometimes farmers take workers’ passports, use their undocumented status as blackmail after their visas have expired, or employ outright force and violence to keep them on the farms.
Recognizing their common conditions, Haitian and Mexican workers, in spite of their different languages and cultures, came together to fight for changes on the farms. In the 70s, they organized with the Farm Worker Association of Florida. The workers conducted strikes and walkouts for better pay and working conditions. In the early 80’s, sugarcane companies began seeking temporary workers from Jamaica to replace striking Haitian and Mexican workers.
The US’s National Labor Relations Act of 1935, intentionally excludes agricultural workers. So rights like collective bargaining, and certainly striking, are not protected by law.
Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW)
In 1989, class-action lawsuits were filed against growers for USD 100 million in backpay to migrant workers who claimed they were cheated out of wages. In 1992, a Florida court upheld the lawsuit and the sugar mills were ordered to pay each cane cutter up to USD 1,500 in back pay and interest.
In the early 1990s, farmworkers in Southern Florida formed the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), following the resistance of the workers of the previous decades. The migrant farmworker organization unites Haitian, Mexican and other workers to fight against modern-day slavery and for better conditions. Anchored in the principles of popular education and farmworker leadership, the CIW uses a variety of tactics to demand justice: sit-down strikes, protests, 30-day hunger strikes, and more. The CIW’s organizing against involuntary servitude has been central in shining a spotlight on various cases of modern-day slavery in Immokalee, Florida.
The first successful prosecution of a forced labor and labor trafficking operation in Immokalee happened in 1997. Since then, six other similar cases have been successfully prosecuted.
As the CIW grew in strength, it organized a student-farmworker alliance, a global network of supportive religious organizations, and a mass base of farmworkers.
Campaign for Fair Food
In 2001, the CIW created the Campaign for Fair Food, which continues to this day. Farmworkers developed a code of conduct that stipulates freedom from forced labor, physical harassment, sexual assault, racism, and guarantees better working conditions and wages for farmworkers. It also demands a penny more per pound of tomatoes picked.
Photo: CIW
After years of targeting farmers with little success, the CIW changed their strategy based on their analysis of conditions in the food industry:
“The CIW identified that the root of their exploitation actually lay in the increasing degree of consolidation in the retail food industry: Multi-billion dollar brands were leveraging their unparalleled purchasing power to demand ever-lower prices from growers, which in turn created a downward pressure that perpetuated farmworkers’ poverty and abusive conditions.”
This Campaign for Fair Food provided an avenue for farmworkers to make direct agreements with the retail food-buyers, and leverage their power over the whole supply chain.
Its first major target was Yum! Brands, which owns Taco Bell and other major fast food chains. Taco Bell is one of the biggest retail purchasers of tomatoes. The fight took the form of a national boycott. Thanks to the Student/Farmworker Alliance built by the CIW, the boycott expanded to universities. 25 campuses won “Boot the Bell” victories, removing Taco Bell from their schools as part of the campaign.
Yum! Brands finally signed a binding agreement to the Fair Food code of conduct in 2005. Since this first groundbreaking victory, the CIW has won agreements with:
- Ahold USA (2015)
- Aramark (2010)
- Bon Appetit Management Company (2009)
- Burger King (2008)
- Chipotle Mexican Grill (2012)
- Compass Group (2009)
- The Fresh Market (2015)
- McDonald’s (2007)
- Sodexo (2010)
- Subway (2008)
- Trader Joe’s (2012)
- Walmart (2014)
- Whole Foods Market (2008)
- Yum Brands (2005)
After these breakthrough agreements with food retailers, the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange (FTGE) finally signed its own agreement with the CIW. The FTGE represents 90% of the state’s tomato industry.
“We are putting the food on the table for the country. We deserve to be able to have the same ability for our own families in a dignified manner,” said Gerardo Reyes Chavez, a leading CIW organizer, on Food Talk.
Photo: CIW
The Fair Food Program has since expanded to several other states, and been recognized globally as a model for implementing and enforcing human rights in low-wage agriculture supply chains around the world.
To this day, the CIW is made up of mostly Haitian, Mexican and Guatemalan migrant workers.
Black history is migrant and farmworker history
The story of struggling migrant workers in Immokalee is a reminder that Black History in the US is inseparable from the migrant struggle and some of the boldest labor organizing campaigns. From the forced labor of enslaved Africans on Southern plantations to the exploitation of Black migrant workers in Florida’s farms, the fight against racialized exploitation is a defining feature of the Black struggle.
The story of Haitian farmworkers in Immokalee is part of this long tradition–one that connects the struggles of enslaved people seeking freedom, sharecroppers resisting debt peonage, and today’s migrant workers organizing against modern-day slavery.
Understanding Black history means recognizing how the exploitation of Black and migrant workers has fueled US capitalism and how their collective resistance continues to challenge it.
