Letter: Furthermore ...

Editor, Daily News:

I commend you on publishing your special report on slavery in Southwest Florida. This is an important issue which needs to be exposed, explored and abolished once and for all.

However, there are a few problems I had with your report. The report tended to position the traffickers as the sole group responsible for these crimes. However, both the companies that grow produce and the companies that buy produce contribute to trafficking in humans by refusing to follow modern practices in labor relations and by demanding the cheapest product possible despite the human costs. But the report generally didn't examine this.

For example, in the first part of the report, you highlighted the successful prosecution of Abel Cuello but in the third part you commended Ag-Mart for the steps it has taken to prevent trafficking even though Ag-Mart employed Cuello recently.

I am not suggesting that growers want slavery to exist, but they set the stage for traffickers to control workers' lives when they refuse to guarantee workers' basic rights such as overtime pay, the right to organize, or steady, secure employment. Slavery will not end with prosecutions of traffickers; it will require a change in the larger economic context.

The only group in Collier County which is confronting this larger context (in addition to doing the important work of helping prosecute traffickers) is the Coalition of Immokalee Workers. Unfortunately, your report largely marginalized their work. The first part of the report mentioned the CIW only in passing. The third and fourth parts both had great reporting about the CIW but relegated that information to the end of the articles.

All who are contributing to ending this problem deserve fair recognition of their work.

Robert McGoey, Immokalee