Sarah Seltzer writes for Alternet and other online publications and sends us this.

Trader Joe’s, the popular food chain, which caters to the socially conscious set, had been falling short of its healthful and “progressive” image recently—by refusing to sign onto an agreement to protect tomato pickers. But after a tireless campaign by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), the company has agreed to sign on, and planned protests in front of a Trader Joe’s were canceled.

For well over a year—since fall 2010—the CIW has been pushing for Trader Joe’s to sign on to its Fair Food program, which aims to improve the lot of tomato pickers by calling for better wages, a “penny-per-pound premium” on tomatoes and, most important, a thorough and strict code for fair working conditions.

The CIW is based out of Florida, where the majority of the country’s tomatoes are grown and harvested. After a two decades-long push, including protests, letter-writing campaigns and hunger strikes aimed to educate buyers and suppliers, the CIW is having considerable success in changing conditions for workers on the ground. In recent years, CIW has successfully pushed both major suppliers and major chains, including Whole Foods and McDonald’s to sign onto the Fair Food agreement, with the latter pledging not to deal with tomato suppliers whose practices don’t comply.

At In These Times, Josh Eidelson offers an end-game analysis of both the success of the activism and the reason Trader Joe’s held out for so long:

Throughout the months that it rebuffed CIW’s call for a Fair Food Agreement, Trader Joe’s insisted that it was already paying the extra penny-per-pound. Given that major growers were already signed on, that may well have been true—which suggests that Trader Joe’s true objection may have been less about spending money than about sacrificing power.
Although CIW never called a boycott of Trader Joe’s, “it was always a possibility if we needed to get there,” says CIW staffer Julia Perkins….“The persistence of fair food activists,” says Perkins, “and of their consumers, too, who kept going over and over to them…helped to show them that this was something they wanted to do.”

In a previous story for AlterNet, Eidelson spoke to workers who told him that although tomato pickers still may not make a living wage, these Fair Food agreements over working conditions have curtailed many of the ongoing abuses, including rampant threats and sexual harassment.

Tomato pickers in Florida have suffered terrible working conditions up to and including those tantamount to slavery.

As for Trader Joe’s, it’s taken far too long for the company to do the right thing—but following the company’s agreement with CIW, thank you notes are pouring into the chain’s inbox.

Activists say they will monitor these new agreements for genuine compliance and move on to the next supermarket chain, which has yet to sign on: Publix, which they plan to target with a fast.