March 12, 2005: Headlines: COS -Burkina Faso: Labor Organizer: Unions: Charlottesville Daily Progress: Burkina Faso RPCV Laura Germino helped found the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, an advocacy group made up largely of immigrant tomato pickers in southwest Florida
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March 12, 2005: Headlines: COS -Burkina Faso: Labor Organizer: Unions: Charlottesville Daily Progress: Burkina Faso RPCV Laura Germino helped found the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, an advocacy group made up largely of immigrant tomato pickers in southwest Florida
Burkina Faso RPCV Laura Germino helped found the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, an advocacy group made up largely of immigrant tomato pickers in southwest Florida
Burkina Faso RPCV Laura Germino helped found the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, an advocacy group made up largely of immigrant tomato pickers in southwest Florida
Ex-resident a key figure in labor fight
By Liesel Nowak / Daily Progress staff writer
March 12, 2005
When advocates of migrant workers converge on Louisville, Ky., today to celebrate the end of a nationwide fast-food boycott, one former Charlottesville resident instrumental in the fight for labor rights will be there.
Educated in Charlottesville public schools, Laura Germino helped found the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, an advocacy group made up largely of immigrant tomato pickers in southwest Florida.
This week, the coalition and Yum Brands Inc., headquartered in Louisville, reached an agreement that will improve wages for the laborers. Germino and her husband, Greg Asbed, will join hundreds of other activists in Kentucky to celebrate a victory for the farmworkers.
Yum is the parent company of KFC, A&W, Long John Silver’s, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell, a large purchaser of the Florida tomatoes and the target of a long-running nationwide boycott.
“We’re just extremely pleased. This is a very big step forward for farmworkers and for social responsibility in general,” Germino said. “The role of the consumer is so important. They can say we’re not going to accept this in our society.”
Germino’s mother, Virginia, who lives in Charlottesville, said she too would mark the end of the boycott with a celebratory lunch at Taco Bell on Emmet Street today.
“The goal ultimately is to make fast food fair food,” she said.
Her daughter specializes in investigating slavery cases and helping to bring modern-day slave drivers to justice. With Germino’s help, five have been successfully prosecuted.
Germino and other coalition members argued that Taco Bell had kept migrant workers in poverty by pressuring tomato suppliers to provide a volume discount. According to the coalition, the workers earn 40 cents for each 32-pound bucket of tomatoes they pick, a rate that hasn’t changed in 30 years.
A trio of Germino’s colleagues won the $30,000 Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award, thanks to her nomination. Julia Gabriel, Lucas Benitez and Romeo Ramirez spoke to a Charlottesville church in 2003 about the fight against farm-labor slavery in America.
“I’m extremely proud of all of these farmworkers,” Virginia Germino said.
After graduating from Charlottesville High School in 1980, Laura Germino studied at Brown University, where she met her husband.
Before helping to establish the coalition in Florida, where she now lives, Germino joined the Peace Corps, volunteering in Burkina Faso in Africa, and attended Johns Hopkins University for post-graduate work.
Germino said she would continue her work in Florida - a state with a long growing season and therefore many migrant workers - in the hopes that it would “trickle upstream” and benefit states such as Virginia, with an increasing immigrant population.
“Laura has always had a powerful sense of justice and injustice,” Virginia Germino said. “This is such an incredibly important part of their lives.”
Contact Liesel Nowak at (434) 978-7274 or lnowak@dailyprogress.com.
When this story was posted in March 2005, this was on the front page of PCOL:
| The Peace Corps Library Peace Corps Online is proud to announce that the Peace Corps Library is now available online. With over 30,000 index entries in over 500 categories, this is the largest collection of Peace Corps related reference material in the world. From Acting to Zucchini, you can use the Main Index to find hundreds of stories about RPCVs who have your same interests, who served in your Country of Service, or who serve in your state. |
| RPCVs in Congress ask colleagues to support PC RPCVs Sam Farr, Chris Shays, Thomas Petri, James Walsh, and Mike Honda have asked their colleagues in Congress to add their names to a letter they have written to the House Foreign Operations Subcommittee, asking for full funding of $345 M for the Peace Corps in 2006. As a follow-on to Peace Corps week, please read the letter and call your Representative in Congress and ask him or her to add their name to the letter. |
| March 1: National Day of Action Tuesday, March 1, is the NPCA's National Day of Action. Please call your Senators and ask them to support the President's proposed $27 Million budget increase for the Peace Corps for FY2006 and ask them to oppose the elimination of Perkins loans that benefit Peace Corps volunteers from low-income backgrounds. Follow this link for step-by-step information on how to make your calls. Then take our poll and leave feedback on how the calls went. |
| Coates Redmon, Peace Corps Chronicler Coates Redmon, a staffer in Sargent Shriver's Peace Corps, died February 22 in Washington, DC. Her book "Come as You Are" is considered to be one of the finest (and most entertaining) recountings of the birth of the Peace Corps and how it was literally thrown together in a matter of weeks. If you want to know what it felt like to be young and idealistic in the 1960's, get an out-of-print copy. We honor her memory. |
| Make a call for the Peace Corps PCOL is a strong supporter of the NPCA's National Day of Action and encourages every RPCV to spend ten minutes on Tuesday, March 1 making a call to your Representatives and ask them to support President Bush's budget proposal of $345 Million to expand the Peace Corps. Take our Poll: Click here to take our poll. We'll send out a reminder and have more details early next week. |
| Peace Corps Calendar: Tempest in a Teapot? Bulgarian writer Ognyan Georgiev has written a story which has made the front page of the newspaper "Telegraf" criticizing the photo selection for his country in the 2005 "Peace Corps Calendar" published by RPCVs of Madison, Wisconsin. RPCV Betsy Sergeant Snow, who submitted the photograph for the calendar, has published her reply. Read the stories and leave your comments. |
| WWII participants became RPCVs Read about two RPCVs who participated in World War II in very different ways long before there was a Peace Corps. Retired Rear Adm. Francis J. Thomas (RPCV Fiji), a decorated hero of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, died Friday, Jan. 21, 2005 at 100. Mary Smeltzer (RPCV Botswana), 89, followed her Japanese students into WWII internment camps. We honor both RPCVs for their service. |
| Bush's FY06 Budget for the Peace Corps The White House is proposing $345 Million for the Peace Corps for FY06 - a $27.7 Million (8.7%) increase that would allow at least two new posts and maintain the existing number of volunteers at approximately 7,700. Bush's 2002 proposal to double the Peace Corps to 14,000 volunteers appears to have been forgotten. The proposed budget still needs to be approved by Congress. |
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Story Source: Charlottesville Daily Progress
This story has been posted in the following forums: : Headlines; COS -Burkina Faso; Labor Organizer; Unions
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