DAPHNE, Ala.—Students from the University of West Florida and the University of South Alabama — along with members of the Worker’s Solidarity Alliance — stood along Highway 98 and protested the grand opening of Publix Supermarket in Daphne.

Protestors led chants and held up signs, some of which read: “Publix, where shopping is oppression”; “End farm worker exploitation”; and “Publix pay fair!”

The Coalition of Immokalee Workers’ campaign for Fair Food is requesting food retailers to pay 1 cent more per pound of Florida tomatoes to improve workers’ wages, and the alliance said Publix Supermarkets Inc. has not agreed to do so.

According to the CIW’s website, Florida tomato pickers work for 50 cents per 32-pound bucket of tomatoes with no benefits, and that rate has not changed since the 1980s. The website also states that most Florida farm workers earn less than $12,000 a year in wages.

“We’re asking Publix to sit down with the CIW and agree to pay 1 cent more per pound of tomatoes to Florida farm workers,” said Peter Stedman, a Pensacola, Fla., resident. “The wage price for picking tomatoes has been stagnant since the 1970s.”

Stedman said that if Publix pays 1 cent more per pound of tomatoes, the wage price for Florida farm workers would increase to poverty level.

“They’re working right now at sub-poverty,” he said. “At these wages, what we’re finding is that there is still slavery in Florida’s tomato fields.”

Publix’s stance is that this issue, while it may be a concern, does not involve the supermarket chain company.

“We don’t have any plans to sit down with the CIW,” Publix’s Media and Community Relations Manager Dwaine Stevens said, also citing that the company sells around 36,000 products in the stores and it cannot get involved with each product’s labor issues. “If there are some atrocities going on, it’s not our business. Maybe it’s something the government should get involved with.”

The alliance stated that some food retailers — including McDonald's, Burger King, Subway, and Whole Foods —  have agreed to work to address human-rights issues in Florida’s fields.

“Fairhope, Gulf shores and Orange Beach, all the Publixes in the area, they can expect us to come,” alliance representative Lee Pryor said. “We’re just expanding this campaign, and we will continue to do this until Publix sits down with the CIW.”

The grand opening saw a high number of residents coming to the supermarket store to do their shopping, and Publix is happy with the turnout and the event, Stevens said.

“We’ve been steady all day. We had people standing outside 45 minutes before we opened. The mayor and the chamber of commerce came out and they did a nice ribbon-cutting for us.”