After a lot of debate and controversy about Florida and Michigan’s delegates, the DNC decided to reinstate the delegates to the party convention, but at half-vote as penalty for moving their primaries. Here’s the breakdown:

→ Clinton receives 105 pledged delegates from Florida and 69 pledged delegates from Michigan, giving her 87 votes. 

→ Obama receives 67 pledged delegates from Florida and 59 pledged delegates from Michigan, giving him 63. This lessens his lead over Clinton from 202 to 174.

You cheered with them when they took on Taco Bell and Yum Brands.  Now, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers has done it again!  For the past 2 years, the CIW has run a campaign to expose the dismal conditions and treatment farmworkers who supply McDonald's receive.  Today, McD's and suppliers have agreed to the following as a result of the campaign:

1. A penny more per pound to workers harvesting tomatoes for McDonald's;
2. A stronger code of conduct based on the principle of worker participation;
3. And a collaborative effort to develop a third party mechanism for monitoring conditions in the fields and investigating workers' complaints of abuse.

Yay CIW!  And we can't forget the important role students played in supporting the campaign, through the spearheading organization Student/Farmworker Alliance, that works in solidarity with the CIW.

The Truth Tour is still on though!  This weekend, organizers, students, workers, and even some celebs will gather in Chicago to demand the dignity and just treatment of farmworkers.

Via Feminist Law Professors: A Florida fruit and vegetable wholesaler will pay $215,000 to five Haitian women tomato graders who were repeatedly sexually molested and verbally harassed. Three of the workers were fired in retaliation for their complaints. The suit was initiated by the Southern Poverty Law Center, one of those saintly non-profits that each and every time you read about them, are doing God's work.

This case reminds us that discrimination and other labor abuses are always against the law -- even when workers are undocumented (it's unclear whether or not the women in this case were legal immigrants). I grew up in Ossining, New York, a de-industrialized Hudson River village that is home to Sing Sing Prison and an ever-growing Ecuadorian immigrant community, many of them undocumented day laborers. Back in Ossining,  Catholic social justice volunteers associated with Marymount College did amazing pro bono legal work for undocumented Ecuadorian workers who had consistenly been denied promised wages. Depending on the region of the country in which an immigrant lives and works, there are shifting risks in pursuing this kind of justice, since most immigrants are unwilling to risk deportation.

But when such cases suceed, the progress can be meaningful for frequently-victimized populations such as migrant female agricultural workers. In the Florida settlement, Gargiulo Inc. has promised to provide Spanish and Creole language training on reporting sexual harassment, as well as adopt a written anti-sexual harassment policy.