This Labor Day weekend I'll remember what unions have done to improve lives and working conditions in our country. I'll also remember that there are woefully underpaid, abused and even enslaved workers in America today who need our support.
Recently I've written here about the exploitation of tomato workers in Florida, where nearly all of our winter tomatoes come from. The harvesters have been paid at the same rate for almost 30 years for back-straining work in the hot fields (amounting to about $40 per day), often subject to threats and abuse, being forced to work during chemical spraying, and in extreme cases actually held in involuntary servitude.
It took 15 years but late last year the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), a grassroots organization of field workers, got the major co-op of Florida growers to sign on to its Fair Food Agreement. The FFA provides for a 1.3 cents per pound raise, a code of conduct to protect workers from abuse, and independent audits to assure that the agreement is being kept. The provisions will be implemented over the next couple of growing seasons.
In order to give that agreement teeth, the CIW and its supporters are focusing on large retailers and restaurants who purchase the fruit. They want these big-scale purchasers to commit to using only Fair Food tomatoes. After all, success of
the Fair Food principles depends on the participation of all the major purchasers of
Florida tomatoes... Each buyer must commit to direct its purchases to those growers
complying with the code of conduct [and paying the increased rate]-- and away from those who don't ---- for working conditions to get better and stay better(.)
The CIW has some hard-won Fair Food agreements from Taco Bell, Bon Appetit, Burger King, Subway, McDonald's and Whole Foods Markets. It is now is focused on supermarket chains like Publix (a southern chain headquartered in Florida) and the national Trader Joe's.
Calling itself "Your Neighborhood Grocery Store,"Trader Joe's is privately held by the Albrecht family of Germany, some members of which also own Aldi's. TJ has 344 stores in 34 U.S. states. It took in $8 billion in sales last year--about the same amount as Whole Foods.
Trader Joe's has repeatedly refused to sign the Fair Food Agreement. The status quo TJs is protecting means the harvesters continue to get paid what they did the early 1980s. The status quo means Trader Joe's maintains its see-no-evil stance in relation to the poverty and maltreatment of many. TJ claims that the goals of the Fair Food campaign can be met by CIW entering into agreements with its various wholesalers, implying that it has little or no say in what they do. The company says its wholesale suppliers have agreed to sign the Fair Food Agreement with CIW; CIW says this is not the case.
Significantly, TJ refuses to stop using a supplier that is not living up to the terms of the FFA. In other words, TJ wants to continue to pressure suppliers for the lowest price possible regardless of the human cost.
Here in a May 9th letter to activists in the Bay Area, Trader Joe's Chairman and CEO Dan Bane raises a straw man argument against the FFA:
We do not agree, however, to sign an agreement that requires us to pay directly to or negotiate our buying with an undefined activist middle group...
..implying that the CIW is somehow demanding direct payments from Trader Joe's to it or some "undefined activist middle group." Not true, says CIW:
It should go without saying at this point, but here it is again: The CIW is not asking Trader Joe's to pay a single penny to the CIW or to any other "activist group," and we have never asked any company to do that. The Fair Food premium goes from the buyers to the growers who distribute it to their workers through the payroll system...The money is never touched by the CIW or any other "undefined activist middle group."
In August a CIW group toured the northeastern U.S., picketing with supporters outside TJ stores and speaking to community groups. The NYC Community/Farmworker Alliance, one of many locally-based groups who support the Fair Food Campaign, handed out samples of "justice" (each a single penny in one of those little sample cups) outside the Union Square TJ store as a conversation-starter.
The Community/Farmworker Alliance is also holding a Fair Food Festival in Brooklyn on September 24, with workshops, videos, art, children's activities, and a rally at the Brooklyn TJ store.
In honor of labor this Labor Day weekend, how about using this handy link and sample email letter to contact Trader Joe's CEO Dan Bane?
Resources FFI
CIW's Debunking and Decoding Trader Joe's
CIW's point-by-point response to Trader Joe's "Note to Our Customers"
2010 Labor Day essay from Huffington Post
2005 PBS's NOW report, with background and early Fair Food Campaign including successful boycott of Taco Bell (in 2 parts)
Part 1
Part 2
2009 Grist article on Immokalee workers' living conditions
A Summit for Fair Food is scheduled for September 15-18 in Immokalee--"three days of reflection, strategizing, and skill-building, laying the groundwork for a season of sustained and escalating action" on Trader Joe's.