Jonathan Blundell just posted an exchange he had with the PR people at Chipotle regarding the wages they pay to the farmers who pick their produce. Chipotle has been under much pressure recently to ensure that it’s workers are paid a fair wage. They say they are working with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers to attempts to bring better wages to the farmers. Agreements have been made to increase the wages of farm workers – most of who get paid nearly nothing and work in near slave-like conditions, but issues arise in that the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange has blocked the distribution of the wages to the workers. The money is there, but the workers just aren’t getting it.

Read the whole conversation over at Jonathan’s site.

Exchanges like these bring a couple of things to mind. 1. Working for justice is messy. Even when one group tries to do what is right and help people, there are others out there working against them. And 2. It can be hard to know who to trust. Can we believe that Chipotle is doing everything they can to pay the workers fairly, or are they hiding behind the messiness of the system in order to not make changes. It’s complicated and it’s the workers who continue to pay while the mess gets sorted out.