A recent LA Times investigation has revealed horrible working conditions at Agricola San Emilio, a large Mexican farm that supplies tomatoes to Subway.
Workers are paid as little as $8 day, but they won’t see the money for months, as the farm illegally withholds workers’ wages until the end of the picking season. Living in cinder block buildings with concrete-floors and no furniture, the workers are surrounded by barbed-wire fences to keep them from leaving without settling up at the company store.
Food is minimal, unless the workers supplement from the overpriced store. Run like a prison, one farmworker put it clearly “We arrive here fat and leave skinny.”
This inhumane worker treatment is against Subway’s vendor code of conduct, so tell Subway to demand better treatment for their farmworkers!
Read the LA Times series here.
Dear Mr. DeLuca,
A recent LA Times investigation has revealed horrible working conditions at Agricola San Emilio, a large Mexican farm that supplies tomatoes to Subway.
Workers are paid as little as $8 day, but they won’t see the money for months, as the farm illegally withholds workers’ wages until the end of the picking season. Living in cinder block buildings with concrete-floors and no furniture, the workers are surrounded by barbed-wire fences to keep them from leaving without settling up at the company store.
Food is minimal, unless the workers supplement from the overpriced store. Run like a prison, one farmworker put it clearly “We arrive here fat and leave skinny.”
This inhumane worker treatment is clearly against Subway’s vendor code of conduct. Please act immediately to ensure that your code of conduct is followed at all levels of your supply chain, beginning with concrete action to improve farmworker treatment at Agricola San Emilio. Aggressive independent monitoring of vendor worker treatement is needed, and should be implemented as soon as possible.
