Greg Asbed

UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights 'Impressed' With Fair Food Program

2013-05-16T18:03:37-04:00

UN: Fair Food Program "innovatively addresses core worker concerns," has "independent and robust enforcement mechanism," addresses "governance gaps relating to labour issues"

At a press conference in Washington, D.C., last week, the United Nations Working Group on Business and Human Rights issued its formal end-of-visit statement publicizing the group's initial findings from its 10-day mission to the United States. The goal of the mission -- which took the delegation to communities across the country, from the Navajo Nation in Arizona to coal towns in West Virginia to the farmworker community in Immokalee -- was "to explore practices, challenges and lessons relating to efforts on implementing the UN Guiding Principles ("GPs") on business and human rights."

During the delegation's two-day visit to Immokalee, UN representatives met with the full spectrum of Fair Food Program participants -- workers, growers and buyers alike -- as well as with the staff of the FFP's independent monitoring organization, the Fair Food Standards Council. Rounding out its investigation, the delegation spoke to at least one buyer that is not part of the program in an effort to view the FFP from all relevant angles.

The Working Group's assessment of the implementation of the Guiding Principles in the U.S. as a whole was strongly negative, captured in this passage from the delegation's press release, which also offered some sage advice for companies looking to do a better job of monitoring and addressing the human rights impacts of their business:

"With a few exceptions, most companies still struggle to understand the implications of the corporate responsibility to respect human rights. Those that do have policies in place, in turn face the challenge of turning such policies into effective practices," Mr. Selvanathan said.

"Much more awareness-raising and education needs to take place," Mr. Addo underscored. "Effective implementation of the Guiding Principles by companies requires first and foremost a good understanding of the processes involved, mobilization of significant buy-in and commitment from the top of a company."

Against this rather bleak backdrop, the UN team's glowing assessment of the Fair Food Program stood in stark relief:

"The Working Group was impressed by how such governance gaps relating to labour issues were addressed by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), a multi-stakeholder initiative to enhance the working conditions of the largely immigrant workforce in the Florida agricultural sector. The CIW innovatively addresses core worker concerns, relies on market incentives for participating growers, and has an independent and robust enforcement mechanism. To overcome abuses in their industry workers, tomato growers and corporate buyers developed the Fair Food Code of Conduct setting-out minimum standards for workers and pay. We met participants who spoke of the advantages enjoyed by their business operations and workers who related the improvements in working conditions as a consequence of the scheme.

The merits of such a multi-stakeholder scheme are clear and have not required a government role, but the Working Group notes that the ultimate responsibility to ensure that rights are protected remains with the government. Concerted action by stakeholders in the tomato sector in Florida arose from two decades of campaigning even though the government was aware of the risks faced by workers."

The UN statement comes as the latest in a series of strong, high-level endorsements of the Fair Food Program, including last month's recognition by President Obama's Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, which lauded the FFP as "one of the most successful and innovative programs" in the world today in the fight to uncover -- and prevent -- modern-day slavery. Those endorsements, and the undeniable, measurable benefits of the program to all of its participants, make the facile arguments against joining the Fair Food Program put forward by companies like Publix, Ahold, and Wendy's ring all the more hollow.

From Corporate Social Responsibility to Human Rights

The UN statement also comes at a crucial moment in the relatively short history of efforts to address the human rights issues that arise in the supply chains of today's multibillion-dollar, multinational corporations.

The latest tragedy in Bangladesh's garment industry, last month's building collapse that has now claimed well over 500 workers' lives, marks the beginning of the end of the traditional corporate-led, audit-based approach to social responsibility. The utter failure of audits to protect workers in Bangladesh -- again, with the building collapse coming on the heels of last winter's factory fire that killed more than 120 workers -- signals a coming paradigm shift in the still evolving field of business and human rights.

A recent article in The Huffington Post eloquently sums up the situation

"Major clothing brands like to say they have a system in place to avoid doing business with overseas suppliers that mistreat their workers: The corporate-funded factory audit, performed by credentialed inspectors and designed to weed out bad actors...

... The death of more than 520 workers in the horrific collapse of Rana Plaza last week has raised fresh questions about the effectiveness of factory audits underwritten by Western brands. Two of the factories inside the building had undergone audits overseen by a monitoring group, the Business Social Compliance Initiative, which was created by a European industry group, the Foreign Trade Association. Similarly, last year, after more than 260 workers died in a factory fire in Pakistan, it was revealed that the plant had recently been green-lighted by a different industry-funded auditing group, U.S.-based Social Accountability International.

Many worker advocates criticize these auditing systems as well-meaning, but flawed, pointing to an inherent conflict of interest: The groups are largely funded by the very corporate members whose contracted facilities they're meant to monitor. The auditing process, these critics claim, ends up catering more to the brands involved than the workers toiling on the line..."

As the FFP wraps up its second season in operation across the vast majority of the Florida tomato industry, the advantages of its worker-led approach as a variation on the traditional "multi-stakeholder" model for social responsibility are increasingly clear. The active participation of farmworkers (or the "rights holders" themselves, in the parlance of the social responsibility world) in the FFP model, from its inception to its day-to-day operation, distinguishes the program from virtually any other approach active in the field today.

As we mentioned in last week's post on the inadequacy of codes of conduct without sufficient resources and procedures for their enforcement, the FFP contains several elements essential to its success that are simply not part of the traditional audit-based approach:

a code of conduct developed in a decade-long process led by the workers whose rights are at stake and involving the participation of all relevant actors, including growers and buyers;

worker-to-worker education, on the farm and on the clock;

a 24-hour complaint line and effective complaint investigation and resolution mechanisms;

market consequences, based in the CIW's Fair Food agreements with participating buyers, for the most egregious violations and/or the failure to correct violations uncovered through the complaint system or field and office audits;

a monitoring organization specific to the FFP and independent of the brands whose suppliers are audited for compliance.

Even with that array of safeguards in place, the Fair Food Program is still very much a system in development. Audit protocols continue to be refined with feedback from the field, education curricula continue to be tweaked, and participating farms continue to adjust to the demands of the 21st century marketplace.

But bracketed by worker education on one end, and market consequences on the other, the very worst abuses of the past are becoming increasingly rare or vanishing altogether. Florida's tomato fields are gradually becoming the more modern, more humane workplace first imagined by CIW members when they began meeting at the local Catholic church to chart a path together toward a better future in the early 1990s.

Meanwhile, in a parallel process, the United Nations has been on its own multi-year path, studying the all-too-often appalling failure of corporations to protect human rights in their supply chains and constructing a set of principles designed to give workers and communities a voice in the decisions that affect their lives in order to eradicate the worst abuses.

Both processes began, interestingly enough, from a basis in the United Nation's Universal Declaration of Human Rights, with CIW members gathering to reflect on the relevant articles in the UN's little blue book at countless Wednesday night community meetings over the years and UN officials taking those same articles as the mandate for their efforts across the globe. And this past week, those two paths finally crossed in Immokalee, the CIW's Fair Food Program and the UN's Guiding Principles for Business and Human Rights arriving at the same place from very distinct points of departure: The human rights crisis is urgent, the safeguards in place are undeniably inadequate, and the key to a real, lasting solution is the participation -- better yet, the leadership -- of those affected by the abuses themselves.

Now met on this road, the two efforts are sure to work more closely together in the months and years ahead.

All photos by CIW.

Super Bowl Ad Extolling Virtues of Farm Labor Fails to Value, Include Farmworkers

2013-02-06T16:35:52-05:00

Millions of people watching the Super Bowl this past Sunday were treated to a two-minute, lyrical paean to America's farmers. Beautifully paced to a slideshow background of stunning images of rural life, the ad -- promoting a popular line of pick up trucks -- featured the words of Paul Harvey, from a 1978 address to the Future Farmers of America. Here's an excerpt:

"God said, 'I need somebody willing to get up before dawn, milk cows, work all day in the fields, milk cows again, eat supper, then go to town and stay past midnight at a meeting of the school board.' So God made a farmer."

The ad was one of the most discussed in the aftermath of the annual advertising gala that is the Super Bowl, and its YouTube version has garnered more than two million views since Sunday. We have embedded the original version here above for those who have yet to see it themselves.

All in all, the ad was a huge success. Except... The vision of rural America at the heart of the ad -- the visual definition of the farmer God made that is the subject of the two minute poem -- is, almost without exception, monochrome as can be. Out of 21 images of people representing farmers, 19 are white, one is African American, one is Latino.

Yet, today, the vast majority of physical labor done on the vast majority of commercial fruit and vegetable farms in this country is done by farmworkers -- the vast, vast majority of whom are not white. There are an estimated three million farmworkers toiling on farms in rural communities from California to Florida and everywhere in between, yet, in an ad extolling the virtues of farm work, the people who work on farms are almost nowhere to be found.

And it didn't take long for people to notice. Here's one video response to the ad, and there are more:

So how could the ad get it so wrong? How could an ad celebrating the American farmer paint such a distorted picture of the people who actually work on farms today? How could it make it through the intense editing and review that a multi-million dollar Super Bowl ad faces before airing on the big day?

There are many answers to this question -- the country's original sin of racial discrimination chief among them. But there is another answer that isn't as immediately obvious, and that is the traditional undervaluation of agricultural labor -- from chattel slavery to convict lease and sharecropping to the present-day migrant farm-labor system. We have written about this before, in the context of the draconian anti-immigrant laws passed in recent years in Georgia and Alabama that cost local farms billions of dollars in lost crops when the laws chased experienced farmworkers away from their jobs harvesting watermelons, peaches, and other crops. But it is at work here again when the team that put this ad together chose to portray a vision of farm life that ceased to exist a century ago, if it ever existed at all.

It is not wrong to extol the labor, daily sacrifices, and invaluable contribution to American life of our nation's farmworkers. It is wrong to paint farmworkers white in order to do so.

The reality is that farmworkers pick the food we eat, and most of those workers are immigrant workers whose backbreaking labor -- the selfsame noble labor exalted in the ad's moving words -- is systematically underpaid and under-appreciated. If the words read so powerfully by Paul Harvey are able to reach deep inside of us and move us to buy a truck, they should be powerful enough to move us to reward the work of our country's three million farmworkers and provide a living wage and dignified working conditions in return for their virtuous labor.

Could Congressional Indifference Kill the 'Most Important Anti-Trafficking Law Ever Passed'?

2013-01-17T10:34:23-05:00

Twenty years ago, Laura Germino and I left the dusty streets of Immokalee, Florida, and headed north, bound for the Justice Department in Washington, DC. We carried with us a binder full of evidence from our investigation into a brutal modern-day slavery ring that was holding tomato pickers captive in Florida and South Carolina -- evidence of homicide, of brutal public beatings, of systemic sexual assault.

We assumed our carefully compiled files would spark a DOJ investigation and, ultimately, a prosecution of the farm bosses behind those unconscionable abuses. But instead, following a short meeting with attorneys from the Civil Rights Division, we found ourselves right back on the street, asking each other what had just happened. The DOJ lawyers had told us in no uncertain terms that there was nothing they could do. Our clear and compelling evidence of an ongoing slavery ring was met with what can only be described as astounding indifference by those government officials charged with addressing the problem.

Much has changed for the better since that encounter, but, disconcertingly, the battle to rid this country of forced labor and human trafficking is once again threatened with a monumental setback at the hands of governmental indifference.

The Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) sparks unprecedented progress in the fight against modern-day slavery. After the Justice Department sent us packing, it took five more years of hard work -- both by those of us at the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) and by a new team of DOJ attorneys who reopened the file and took on a complicated prosecution -- before Miguel Flores and Sebastian Gomez, the farm bosses behind the slavery operation we had uncovered, were ultimately sentenced to 15 years each in federal prison on slavery, extortion, and firearms charges. US v. Flores was a landmark case in that it brought to light the problem of modern-day slavery in the U.S., which had been largely invisible for decades, prompting then Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Deval Patrick to say, "Today's case shows that slavery is not a thing of the past. No person should be denied the right to freedom, and we will continue to prosecute these cases for as long as necessary."

But despite the positive outcome, no one would look back today at the pace of the Flores prosecution and call it a success. In the five long years between discovering the operation and sentencing the perpetrators, countless victims continued to suffer abuse. For those workers, justice delayed was indeed justice denied.

That was soon to change, however, with the enactment of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) in 2000. Since the conclusion of US v. Flores in 1997, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) has worked with the Justice Department on six more successful forced labor prosecutions, the most recent of which, US v. Navarrete, resulted in lengthy sentences for two more farm bosses on charges of conspiracy, holding workers in involuntary servitude, and peonage. While the Flores and Navarette cases were in many ways similar, the tools available to prosecute them were decidedly not, thanks to the TVPA. In the 12 years between those cases, the ability to combat modern-day slavery had undergone a sea change. The Navarrete case took less than a year from its discovery to sentencing. In just over a decade, the work of investigating and trying a complex slavery prosecution had grown far more efficient, sparing thousands of workers across the country untold suffering at the hands of their employers.

Break the Chains, the widely-respected anti-trafficking organization based in Washington, has called the TVPA "arguably the most important anti-trafficking law ever passed." The TVPA penalizes modern-day forms of slavery, updating the anti-peonage laws passed during Civil War Reconstruction to fit the forced labor and human trafficking still occurring in the homes, brothels, and workplaces of the 21st century. It provides desperately-needed emergency services and protections to victims of these crimes, empowering them to do their part in bringing abusive bosses to justice. And it both enables and requires numerous federal agencies to attack this egregious human rights abuse, creating a mandate that didn't exist when Laura and I innocently knocked on DOJ's door 20 years ago.

Today the TVPA, and the progress it made possible, is in danger. Yet today the TVPA languishes in a state of limbo, unfunded, its reauthorization in doubt. It seems impossible, but as we celebrate the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, the "most important anti-trafficking law ever passed" may well be allowed to expire. Once again, government indifference threatens the effort to address modern-day slavery.

The stakes could not be higher. In the words of Susan French, a former federal prosecutor with an unrivaled track record of successful slavery prosecutions, "If we as a nation are serious that slavery in all its forms is morally and legally wrong, then we must bring justice to trafficking victims, provide for their essential needs, and attempt to make them whole. Without the TVPRA extension, victims will not be able or available to participate in the judicial process. Traffickers will go unpunished and victims will not receive justice or restoration."

The CIW's Laura Germino, who in 2010 became the first domestic recipient of the State Department's Trafficking in Persons Hero Award for her contributions to the fight against modern-day slavery in our own country, agrees, adding, "It seems the height of dysfunction to allow the law, in this year of commemoration of our country's enduring fight to end slavery, to expire. Modern-day slavery is prosecutable and preventable, and it is outrageous to allow more people to suffer when the solution is proven, workable, and has a steady and long tradition of bipartisan support."

The TVPA simply works. Congressional indifference threatens the existence of the TVPA, a seminal act of national vision that is fundamental to the cause of human rights and the eventual eradication of modern-day slavery. Such indifference will, with certainty, encourage those who would enslave others and result in an increase in forced labor. We as a nation cannot allow this to happen.

The TVPA works to fight modern-day slavery and must be re-authorized. There is simply no justification for returning to the dark days when forced labor went mostly unrevealed, and vulnerable workers were forced to suffer in silence at the hands of their employers.

March for Rights, Respect and Fair Food

2012-12-14T14:49:12-05:00

Spring action announced! CIW, allies to march 150 miles to Lakeland in March for Rights, Respect and Fair Food!
2/20/2000: The two-week, 230-mile "March for Dignity, Dialogue, and a Fair Wage" (right) begins in Ft. Myers...
... 3/3/2013: Join us as we take to the streets again for the two-week "March for Rights, Respect and Fair Food" from Ft. Myers to Lakeland, Fla!

The Fair Food movement began nearly thirteen years ago, in February of 2000, when farmworkers from Immokalee -- who until then had been largely locked in anonymous battle with Florida tomato growers within the boundaries of Immokalee -- joined forces with students, people of faith, and everyday consumers to take their call for "Dignity, Dialogue, and a Fair Wage" on the road. With little more than a map to guide them, a field truck to carry their supplies, and a 12-ft tall replica of the Statue of Liberty made of fabric, plaster and duct tape to lead the way, they took off on a two-week long trek from Ft. Myers to the offices of the Florida Fruit and Vegetable Association in Orlando.

Among the marchers' number were several workers whose testimony led to convictions in two seminal slavery prosecutions (U.S. vs. Flores, U.S. vs. Cuello); an 18-yr old Romeo Ramirez, 23-yr old Lucas Benitez, and 22-year-old Julia Gabriel who three years later would receive the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award for their leadership in the struggle for farmworker rights; and the core of young student activists who came together in the wake of those two unforgettable weeks to form the Student/Farmworker Alliance, now a key ally in the Fair Food movement. The march marked the first major excursion of Immokalee farmworkers outside the confines of southwest Florida and onto the cognitive map of the nation as a creative, and courageous, new force for social change.

We would like to announce that the Fair Food movement is returning to its roots. This coming spring (March 3-17) we are taking to the streets again in a two-week march, from Ft. Myers to Publix headquarters in Lakeland, the "March for Rights, Respect and Fair Food."

The march will have two goals. First, we will march to mark the progress we have made since the turn of the new millennium, progress culminating in the historic changes underway today thanks to the Fair Food Program. And second, we will march to underscore the hard work that remains to be done as supermarket industry leaders -- chief among them Publix -- continue to undermine that progress and deny their responsibility to do their part to end decades of farmworker poverty and degradation.

Thirteen years is a long time in the life of a movement, and as we prepare in the coming months for two weeks on the road, we begin by taking a quick look back at what has transpired in this remarkable period.

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The March:

The Naples Daily News article from the launch of the march on Feb. 20, 2000, began:

Florida Gulf Coast University professor Judith Lee, left, prays with supporters of the CIW at St. Francis Xavier Church in Fort Myers on Saturday. The group was preparing to begin a 230-mile walk from Fort Myers to Orlando to call attention to wage and other concerns.

"At first glance, the tall statue on the back of the pickup looked like a small-scale replica of the Statue of Liberty.

The pickup inched along U.S. 41 shortly after 9 a.m. Saturday for the start of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers' walk from Fort Myers to Orlando. The 230-mile march is aimed at calling attention to workers' efforts to get higher wages and scheduled to end on March 4.

The statue, which workers say also represents liberty, was a bit different than the one of New York fame.

In the statue's left arm was a bucket of tomatoes; her right hand extended outward, offering up a single tomato.

On the pedestal, a simple message: "I, too, am America!"

The words echoed the concerns of about 200 people who gathered for a short rally in Fort Myers before the march began.

"We march for dignity and respect," said Samuel Mar, a member of the coalition. He was among workers who held a month-long hunger strike two years ago that was aimed at improving wages and working conditions... " Read more.

The march ended two weeks later at the locked doors of the Florida Fruit and Vegetable Association, to which Julia Gabriel affixed the Ten Principles of Farm Labor Justice, founded on this fundamental principle: "By virtue of the hard and dangerous work we do we have earned the right to talk with our employers about wages and other working conditions."

Since the March:

Though they were turned away that day, the marchers' efforts were by no means in vain. Here are just a few of the highlights since those two hundred intrepid marchers crossed the Caloosahatchee River on their way north from Ft. Myers:

The statue has moved to Washington, D.C., where it now resides as part of the permanent collection at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History:

"'It's wonderful and it's evocative. It's a democratic movement for a political voice and it's great because it reminds us of some of the core values we think of as Americans and the freedom to participate,' said Barbara Clark Smith, museum curator of social history."
Read more.

The award-winning Student/Farmworker Alliance has gone on to become one of this country's most successful student movements for social justice.

"The spark that ignited SFA was the 230-mile March for Dignity, Dialogue and a Fair Wage from Ft. Myers to Orlando, Fla., led by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers in February 2000. This march provided the opportunity for students from several Florida colleges to learn about and directly participate in the movement to end 'sweatshops in the fields.'" Read more.

And Florida tomato growers have moved from their original posture of unwavering resistance in the face of the pending march, captured in these quotes from industry leaders at the time:

"... Meanwhile, (Ray) Gilmer said the FFVA's Board of Directors has no way of knowing if the Coalition is a 'bona fide representative' to all of Immokalee's migrating farmworker population...

... "We are struggling to try to make ends meet," [Reggie Brown, executive vice president of the Florida Tomato Exchange] said. "I personally would not want to ask for any more money at this point...the dollars are not there." Read more.

There is cooperation and partnership, sealed with an historic breakthrough a decade later, when the CIW and the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange came together in 2010 for a joint press conference to announce their landmark Fair Food agreement:

"This is a watershed moment in the history of Florida agriculture," said Lucas Benitez of the CIW (above, second from the left, with Reggie Brown of the FTGE at his side). "With this agreement, the Florida tomato industry -- workers and growers alike -- is coming together in partnership to turn the page on the conflict and stagnation of the past and instead forge a new and stronger industry." Read more.

Even more important than that phenomenal victory, however, has been the development of the worker-driven Fair Food Program that it made possible. Under the Fair Food Program, participating growers have:

Adopted the Fair Food Code of Conduct as their own;

Agreed to a worker education program conducted by the CIW on company premises and company time;

Agreed to have compliance with the program independently monitored by the Fair Food Standards Council;

Agreed to an independent and verifiable complaint investigation and remediation mechanism in which they participate equally with the CIW and the FFSC;

Agreed to pass on to their workers the "penny-per-pound" price premium paid by participating retailers; and

Agreed to implement a system of health and safety volunteers which affords workers regular and structured input into the safety of their work environment.

The Fair Food Program has created a new world within the Florida tomato industry, one in which workers have new rights on the job, are able to learn about those rights while at work, and are free to complain, without fear of retaliation, when those rights are violated, knowing that those complaints will be effectively investigated. (Below, workers learn about their rights under the Fair Food Program at an Immokalee area farm during a worker-to-worker education session last month.)

And this new world is built upon the Fair Food agreements established over the nearly 13-year history of the Campaign for Fair Food, under which buyers agree both to help increase workers' pay, through the penny-per-pound price premium, and to purchase Florida tomatoes only from those growers who are in compliance with the Fair Food Code of Conduct. This second condition supports the changes underway today in the Fair Food Program in two essential ways: 1) It provides growers a market incentive to join the Program and leave behind the world in which workers' rights are routinely violated without recourse, and 2) It creates market consequences when workers' rights are violated within the Program, which both makes those rights real in the event of a violation and encourages the prevention of abuse before it happens.

This new world stands in stark contrast to the old way of doing business, where tomatoes were grown, sold and purchased with "no questions asked," where crewleaders ruled the fields with an iron fist for decades, and where growers turned a blind eye to repeated headlines exposing sexual harassment, wage theft, and slavery, as long as sales remained unaffected.

Today:

But while much has changed -- prompting "Tomatoland" author and longtime Florida tomato industry observer Barry Estabrook to describe Florida tomato growers today as "on the road to becoming the most progressive group" in the U.S. produce industry -- one thing has remained the same. Despite the growing acceptance of the Fair Food Program among the nation's retail food giants -- with eleven multi-billion dollar food corporations now on board -- the supermarket industry, including Florida-based Publix, has stubbornly refused to recognize the changes sweeping through Florida's fields, and refused to contribute its fair share to those changes.

In fact, it was almost two years ago to the day when Publix spokesperson Dwaine Stevens told the Baldwin County News:

"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." (emphasis added) Read more.

In the two years since that statement, Publix has only grown more entrenched in its unconscionable resistance to joining the most promising program for farm labor justice in a generation. The company's justifications for refusing to do its part are as varied as they are disingenuous. Here are just a few:

"As a community partner for more than 80 years, it would be unconscionable to believe that our company would support a violation of human rights. We are unaware of a single instance of slavery existing in our supply chain."

"This is a labor dispute and we have a practice of not intervening in labor disputes."

"We suggest... [the Fair Food Program] put the cost of the tomatoes in the price they charge the industry for the goods... Publix is more than willing to pay a penny more per pound or whatever the market price for tomatoes will be in order to provide the goods to our customers."

All of these public relations responses to a human rights crisis represent a daily betrayal not only of the most basic tenets of modern corporate social responsibility, but of the eloquent words of Publix's own founder, Mr. George Jenkins, who once famously described his guiding business philosophy in this simple, honorable, phrase: "Don't let making a profit stand in the way of doing the right thing."

In its decision to reject the opportunity to join the more modern, more humane world of ethical supply chain management represented by the Fair Food Program, today's executives at Publix have besmirched their founder's vision of social responsibility and shamed the company he helped build into the $27 billion giant it is today.

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And so we will, once again, march. We will march to celebrate the changes underway today in Florida's tomato industry. We will march so that Publix does, finally, support the Fair Food Program. We will march so that those growers who refuse to meet the new standards no longer get solace, and sales, from retailers like Publix who remain willing to purchase tomatoes produced the old way -- "no questions asked." And we will march so that, one day, farmworkers across this country might enjoy the unprecedented new rights and working relationships being born today in the fields of Florida.

Join us, and help us win the participation of Florida's wealthiest corporation in a program that is changing the lives of Florida's poorest workers, workers who harvest the food for Publix's shelves and still bear unimaginable poverty for its profit.

It is time for Publix to "do the right thing." Until they do, it is time for us, all of us, to march. Stay tuned in the months to come for how you can be a part of the March for Rights, Respect and Fair Food!

A Tale of Two Thanksgivings

2012-11-22T10:20:46-05:00

This holiday season, ask Publix to join us at the Fair Food table...

The holiday season is upon us, which means it's time again to gather around the table with loved ones to celebrate another year of life together, of new beginnings and old friends, of triumphs and of the challenges ahead.

The holiday table unites us, and reminds us that -- no matter how high, or low, our day to day lives may take us -- in the end, we always make our way back to those whom we love the most, and when we are with them, the world feels right.

(click on the expand icon -- the four arrows in the bottom right corner -- for optimal viewing)

Love is the essence of the holidays. Love for our parents and their parents, love for our children and their children. Love for our friends, and love for all men and women with whom we share this fragile world. The holiday table reminds us that, in the end, we are all family, and that we can only truly enjoy the bounties that life gives us if we all enjoy them together, as one.

No one knows this better than Publix. Its holiday commercials (right) are a tour de force in touching that place deep inside each of us that loves not just our families and friends, but our fellow man, too, regardless of the divisions that may separate us in our daily lives. Publix commercials never fail to remind us just how much we have to be thankful for, and how powerful an emotion our love can truly be.

But love without goodwill is an empty emotion. And, sadly, the holiday season has become an annual reminder that Publix -- a company founded by a man, George Jenkins, who famously said the words "Don't let making a profit stand in the way of doing the right thing" -- is a company that has lost its way. Like any family, the families who own and run Publix gather around their holiday tables and reflect on their joys and struggles. For the families who run Publix, among those joys, year after year, are soaring profits. Yet they inexplicably continue to turn their backs on the farmworkers who make those profits possible.

Despite the tremendous strides made by the Fair Food Program in recent years -- progress made possible thanks to tens of thousands of consumers, dozens of Florida tomato growers, and eleven multi-billion dollar food corporations that have joined farmworkers at the Fair Food table -- Publix refuses to do its part to help farmworkers live a dignified life for the backbreaking, essential work they do day in and day out. In the words of the CIW's Lucas Benitez, "Publix doesn't want us at the table. They want us under the table."

No matter what your faith or philosophy, the holiday season is a time to remember that no one was born into this world to suffer, and that, in some real way, the suffering of one diminishes us all. This year, let's remind Publix of the true meaning of love, a love that goes beyond the bottom line and embraces all the people that make up Publix's extended family, including the farmworkers that put food on their shelves and the consumers who ask their favorite grocery store to make that food Fair Food.

To do so, you can click here to sign a change.org petition to Publix today. Ask Publix CEO Ed Crenshaw to ensure that his company "be part of a proven model to address the root cause of farmworker poverty across Florida, and demonstrate that it values the hard work of farmworkers who make possible the food we share this holiday."

Here below is the text of the petition, so take a look and click on the link above to send it to Publix today:

To: Publix Super Markets, Inc.

As the holiday season approaches, we pause to spend time with friends and family, give thanks, and reflect on the importance of community.

We know that Publix takes pride in giving back to communities across Florida, especially in donating food during the Thanksgiving season. It is true that food insecurity -- as Publix defines, "a condition that arises from a lack of enough income and other resources for food" - is a persistent, sobering reality in our communities. We recognize, as signs hanging in your stores this year state, that local families are going hungry. Indeed, many of these families will enjoy a hearty Thanksgiving meal because of Publix Super Markets Charities and Publix customers' donations.

Paradoxically, many of these Florida families who cannot afford to purchase their own turkey dinners are the very people who harvest the bounty that we celebrate on Thanksgiving Day. Some of these families work hard picking tomatoes, laboring 10+ hour days, six days a week to put food on their - and our - tables. Despite this strenuous work, farmworkers' pay is often so low that they do not have the resources to adequately provide for their own families. Farmworkers deserve fair pay and dignified working conditions for that hard work.

Thankfully, tremendous progress has been made towards these aims through the Coalition of Immokalee Workers' Fair Food Program, a historic partnership between farmworkers, 90 per cent of tomato growers in Florida, and 11 major food retailers including McDonald's, Whole Foods, and most recently Chipotle Mexican Grill. Under the program, major retailers pay a small premium on their tomato purchases, to be passed through to farmworkers by the growers for whom they work, and target their purchases to growers who meet higher human rights standards. Since 2011, the Fair Food Program has distributed over $7 million to workers through the penny-per-pound premium. This money gives farmworkers resources to be able to provide for their families all year round.

As we gather for Thanksgiving, we will give thanks for the Fair Food Program and the transformation it has brought to Florida's tomato fields that is dramatically improving farmworkers' quality of life. We ask you, Publix Super Markets, to deepen your commitment to giving back to the community by joining the Fair Food Program - a real, sustainable solution to food insecurity and poverty in our shared communities. Publix's participation in the Fair Food Program would dramatically expand its impact.

Today, we ask Publix to take the opportunity to be part of a proven model to address the root cause of farmworker poverty across Florida, and demonstrate that it values the hard work of farmworkers who make possible the food we share this holiday.

click here to sign

Have a happy, and safe, Thanksgiving.

Fighting Sexual Harassment in the Fields

2012-07-26T14:35:38-04:00

Photo: CIW/Forest Woodward

Major EEOC Settlement Underscores Value of Fair Food Program

In early 2009, two women walked into the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) office complaining of some truly horrific conditions at an Immokalee tomato farm, one of the largest tomato growers in Florida. Here, excerpted from a story on last week's settlement of the EEOC charges stemming from their complaint, are some of the details of their story:

"... The women, who worked in DiMare Ruskin's Immokalee fields for three months, were sexually harassed by supervisors then fired when they complained, the suit alleged.

The complaint details how father-and-son crew leaders, Ricardo and Richard Lee Campbell, bullied the women. The elder Campbell, for example, told one woman he wanted to kiss her all over her body and on her breasts, that he wouldn't stop pursuing her, told her she'd regret turning him down because he was well-endowed and forced her hand to his crotch." (Read more here.)

Many more details emerged, most of them too vile to repeat here. But suffice it to say that, even by the dismally low standards of the fields, the picture of a hostile workplace painted by the women was exceptional for its harshness and depravity.

There was no Fair Food Program at the time -- in fact, the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange was still fighting the Campaign for Fair Food tooth and nail -- and so CIW staff members listened to the women's complaints, informed them of their rights, and helped get them in contact with federal authorities at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).

And this past week, three and a half years -- and many depositions, affidavits, and legal motions -- later, the women who walked into the CIW office to seek justice found some measure of relief for the humiliation they suffered at the hands of their supervisors in the tomato harvest.

From the EEOC's press release announcing the settlement:

"DiMare Ruskin, Inc., a Florida-based tomato grower and produce provider, will pay $150,000 to two female farmworkers and take other steps to prevent and address unlawful harassment and retaliation at its farms and facilities nationwide as part of a three-year consent decree that will resolve a lawsuit brought by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the agency announced today...

... As required by the three-year consent decree settling the suit, DiMare Ruskin will establish a nationwide anti-harassment policy for employees to use to communicate complaints to the company. Further, DiMare Ruskin will provide nationwide training to its management and non-management employees on the anti-discrimination laws enforced by EEOC, and will provide information to EEOC concerning its handling of discrimination complaints for three years." (Read more here.)

Photo: CIW/Scott Robertson

The settlement is good news for everyone involved, first and foremost, of course, for the women who suffered the abuse first-hand (and for their families, as both of the complainants are wives and mothers outside of their jobs in the fields). It is also good news for all the workers from this day forward at DiMare Ruskin Farms who will undoubtedly benefit from the changes brought about through the courage and tenacity of these two remarkable women.

But the settlement is not just good for the workers, it is good for the Florida tomato industry as a whole. For too long, the industry responded to accusations of farm labor abuse with denial and opposition, and this settlement is a vestige of that approach. But today there exists a better way forward embraced by the vast majority of Florida growers, the Fair Food Program, based on an honest, transparent, and compassionate partnership between farmworkers and their employers. This latest settlement can only reinforce for tomato industry leaders -- and for the supermarket giants like Publix, Kroger, Ahold, and Walmart that buy their produce -- the wisdom of this new approach.

Labor abuse in the fields is real, and it won't go away by sticking our heads in the sand. Rather we have to confront that reality, work together to expose and eliminate the abusers, and move forward together as a stronger industry. If we do that, if the Fair Food Program continues to grow and thrive, we can look forward to the day when sexual harassment complaints like this one will be a thing of the past.

Until then, industry leaders that continue to fight the Fair Food Program -- growers and retail purchasers alike -- need to look deep within themselves and ask how they can, in good conscience, stand aside and do nothing while another young child's mother is abused in the fields.

Field Notes on Food Justice: Why Your Local Grocery Store Makes Farmworkers Poor

2012-05-22T15:39:12-04:00

"Fresh and Fair from Florida"...

Five words that would look so beautiful stamped on your next tomato purchase.

Five words that would signify a revolution in agricultural working conditions.

Five words that today remain tantalizingly just out of reach, even with two decades of tireless organizing by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) and our allies and, most recently, several years of unprecedented victories. With the victories, of course, has come increased recognition of the CIW and its work. One such honor that we are most proud of, and humbled by, is being recognized as the first-ever Food Justice Winner for this year's Natural Resources Defense Council's Growing Green Awards.

But more importantly, these recent victories have begun to shine a spotlight on the value and meaning of fair food, and on the workers without whose who labor and input that term has no meaning, and on the CIW's Fair Food Program, implemented this season on over 90 percent of Florida's tomato fields. We now know that the day when we can certify Florida tomatoes as the fairest in the world is not far off, and the Fair Food Program is mapping the path for getting there.

Let's back up a bit and share a little about the CIW and the environment in which its members toil before we get to what lies ahead.

The CIW is a worker-led human rights organization based in the farmworker community of Immokalee, the heart of Florida's (and the nation's) $600 million fresh tomato industry.

The CIW and its more than 5,000 members spearhead the Campaign for Fair Food, the national collaboration of consumers and workers designed to harness the purchasing power of the country's largest food retail corporations to improve the lives of the farmworkers who harvest the tomatoes they sell. To date, ten retail food corporations have signed binding agreements to participate in the Fair Food Program, including McDonalds, Subway, Burger King, Sodexo, Aramark, Compass Group, Whole Foods, and Trader Joe's.

According to the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange (FTGE), "Florida produces virtually all the fresh-market, field-grown tomatoes in the U.S. from October through June each year, and accounts for about 50 percent of all fresh tomatoes produced domestically."

Farm labor remains among the worst-paid, least-protected jobs in the country. Farmworkers face a daunting combination of back-breaking, hot, dangerous labor with sub-poverty wages (according to the USDOL, farmworkers earn between $10,000-$12,000 per year), few or no benefits or fundamental labor rights (farmworkers are excluded from the right to overtime pay and to bargain collectively, for example), no job security and a high rate of labor rights abuse (sexual harassment and systemic minimum wage violations remain prevalent in the industry). "Home" is too often a dilapidated two-bedroom trailer, well past any rational expiration date, that is shared with numerous other workers.

CIW's Campaign for Fair Food begins from this simple premise: If we can diagnose what makes farmworkers poor -- the forces that result in farmworker exploitation -- then we can redirect those forces in ways that reduce farmworker poverty. In Immokalee, we realized years ago that the volume purchasing practices of today's retail food giants, massive multi-billion dollar companies that didn't exist a generation ago, create a tremendous downward pressure on produce prices at the farm level. That downward pressure is passed on to farmworkers -- the weakest link in the food supply chain -- in the form of ever lower wages.

In other words, your local grocery store makes farmworkers poor. But not just your store, all the food industry giants, from Kroger to Stop & Shop, Publix to Safeway, that enhance their profits year after year from pricing policies that drive farmworker poverty and exploitation.

In the words of a Swahili proverb, "when the elephants fight, the grass suffers." It isn't that the retail chains set out to impoverish farmworkers. It's just that in the regular course of competing against each other for market dominance, they fight for the lowest prices possible from their suppliers, and our nation's two to three million farmworkers ultimately pay the price.

But if the market is the problem, then the market can also be the solution. The Fair Food Program seeks to reverse the process that now exploits farmworkers, by requiring buyers to send pennies per pound of tomato purchases back down the supply chain to increase farmworker wages and to leverage their overwhelming purchasing power to demand more modern working conditions from their Florida suppliers.

Of course, changing the market also means changing the demands consumers make on the retail chains. By creating a new demand for the fair treatment of farmworkers, consumers and the CIW have moved participating buyers to commit to purchasing only from growers who comply with the Fair Food Code of Conduct, the most progressive code of conduct in the produce industry today. This has changed the market incentives facing growers at the bottom of the supply chain, which in turn elevates the day-to-day working environment of farmworkers in the fields.

The theory of change behind the Campaign for Fair Food has been shown to work. With protests that began a decade ago in front of Taco Bell's headquarters outside Los Angeles, California, the CIW has managed to change wages and working conditions in the fields outside of Immokalee, Florida.

And so, after twenty years of organizing, today we have a strong national network of consumers pressuring retail food corporations to support the Fair Food principles, a growing mass of buyers committed to the Fair Food Program, over 90 percent of Florida tomato growers signed on to the Fair Food Code of Conduct, and an organized, mobilized work force ready to do its part to enforce the new standards. We're strides closer to labeling tomatoes with those five beautiful words -- "Fresh and Fair from Florida."

However, for two key reasons, it is still not quite time to start ordering those labels.

First, the degree of change that we are able to make in the fields is directly dependent on the number of retail giants participating in the Fair Food Program. More participating buyers means more change, in both wages and working conditions. The penny-per-pound bonus that workers are receiving on their weekly paychecks today depends on the number of pounds purchased under our Fair Food Agreements; every pound the participating buyers purchase is accompanied by a surcharge that goes to increase workers wages, but there are many more companies out there -- Publix, Kroger, Stop & Shop, and Giant among them -- who are still buying their Florida tomatoes the old way, "no questions asked." To realize the full potential of the wage increase promised by the Fair Food Program, all the major buyers must do their part.

Second, the hard work of implementing the Fair Food Code of Conduct takes time. Codes of conduct, if not enforced, are nothing more than words on paper. That fact is not lost on the corporations that use their supplier codes of conduct as cost-free tools for damage control when faced with accusations of abuse in their supply chains. But enforcement of a code of conduct is expensive, hard, time-consuming work. That is why so few corporations are interested in doing it and why so few social auditing enterprises are able to effectively monitor.

Of course, the Fair Food Code of Conduct is just a set of standards, too, although one developed by farmworkers themselves, in conjunction with buyers and growers, that improves farmworkers wages and working conditions well beyond the current requirements of law. The critical difference in the Fair Food Program, however, is that the CIW, a worker-led organization, is a constant presence doing whatever it takes to enforce the code. And it takes a lot. The day-to-day, field-to-field, worker-to-worker job of implementing the CIW's agreements has just begun. Years of neglect have left behind a stubborn residue of bad farm bosses, abusive labor practices, fear and mistrust in Florida agriculture that must be scrubbed away before any kind of credible claim of fairness is possible.

But the cleansing process is well underway. Through the Fair Food Program, the CIW has put together all the tools necessary to strip away the abuses of the past. Today, the Fair Food Standards Council, a third-party monitoring organization, is up and running, auditing the farms where the Code of Conduct is in effect, tracking the penny-per-pound payments from buyers to growers to workers, and investigating and resolving complaints as they come in from over 30,000 workers across the industry. Failure to adhere to the Code of Conduct will ultimately cost a grower the business of all the participating buyers, as that is an element of the Fair Food Agreement that each buyer has signed with the CIW.

At the same time, the CIW is crisscrossing the state to do worker-to-worker education, on the farm and on the clock, to ensure that the workers themselves understand not only their rights under the program, but also that they, as the ever-present eyes and ears in the fields, are an indispensible part of its ultimate success.

All of this takes time, hard work, and collective commitment. And as the saying goes in Spanish, it is not something done "de la noche a la manana" (overnight). Winning NRDC's Food Justice Award will hopefully help take the Campaign for Fair Food and the Fair Food Program to the next level, so that we can turn the dream of branding a truly fair tomato into a reality.

Your support for more humane working conditions for farmworkers in Florida's fields and beyond is more important than ever; both today, in taking action to convince more retail food corporations to support the Fair Food principles, and tomorrow, in supporting these principles when a labeled, certified fair tomato finally makes it to your local grocery store.