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In a sunlit field in Lakeland, Florida, outside the headquarters of Publix Supermarkets, a group of around a hundred and fifty clergymembers, farmworkers in blue T-shirts, and community members have been holding vigil since Monday, March 5. And about sixty of them haven’t eaten since then.

The Fast for Fair Food is part of a campaign by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, one of the country’s most innovative labor-rights organizations, to get Publix to join the CIW’s Fair Food Program, guaranteeing better conditions and pay for the thousands of workers who pick the tomatoes sold in the grocery chain’s more than 1,000 stores across the South.

Publix prides itself on being an “employee-owned” company, which its website explains means that “Publix associates – as a group – own more shares of stock than any one stockholder – 49% to be exact.” It’s number 102 on Fortune’s 500 largest American corporations, last year it raked in over $1.3 billion in profits, and was ranked number 78 on the list of “best companies to work for.” Yet for three years it has balked at providing a penny more per pound of tomatoes picked for the workers who spend 10-hour days in the Florida sun, or complying with the Code of Conduct that would ensure conditions on the farms-still grueling, even with their new protections-don’t include forced or child labor, or sexual harassment.