The Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) is using their Fair Food Program to improve conditions for farm workers in the United States. As they seek to scale their impact, CIW is continuing its calls for Wendy’s and Kroger to sign onto the program.
CIW’s Fair Food Program (FFP) is a partnership between growers, farm workers, and retail food companies. Participating growers and buyers agree to implement a code of conduct, informed by farm workers themselves, which outlines health and safety protections. It also mandates the Fair Food Premium—a bonus added to farm workers’ paychecks on top of their regular income.
The FFP was created as the solution “to address the imbalance of power between workers and their employers,” Gerardo Reyes Chavez, a former farm worker and a key leader for the CIW, tells Food Tank. Chavez describes conditions of “modern day slavery” in agriculture fields, where sexual assault and harassment are rampant and farm workers are forced to work under “threat of death,” including in times of extreme heat.
The FFP’s legally binding Fair Food Agreements, which are enforced through market consequences, guarantee that farm workers are free from these conditions. Buyers participating in the Program are required to suspend purchases from growers when they fail to comply with the CIW’s code of conduct. But outside of the FFP, these abuses “continue to be the status quo,” Chavez says.
Companies from Burger King to Walmart have signed onto the FFP since its launch in 2011. But some chains such as Wendy’s have refused, despite calls to join. “They continue to refuse to do the right thing,” Chavez tells Food Tank. But, he adds, “the last word is with the consumers.” That’s why Chavez hopes that eaters will boycott the fast food chain and apply the necessary pressure to push Wendy’s to sign on.
“If you can do something to help some of the most vulnerable workers in this country, do it,” he implores.
The FFP is particularly important now, when Chavez believes that there is “no doubt” that attacks on immigrant communities from the Trump-Vance Administration will make conditions harder for farm workers. But he remains hopeful that the Program has an opportunity to expand and increase protections.
“We can choose to let [the abuses] break us, or we can use that as the fuel to propel us forward,” Chavez says, “And I think that we, as a community, refuse to wear the cape of victims, and we decided to become the propellers of change together.
And while Chavez encourages eaters to support farm workers, he implores them to never defend them out of pity. “Do it,” he says, “because you understand that the solution and the fight is not something that is the responsibility of the workers alone.”
Listen to the full conversation with Gerardo Reyes Chavez on “Food Talk with Dani Nierenberg” to learn more about the development of the FFP, the harsh conditions that many farm workers endure without protections in place, and how the CIW is continuing to combat human rights abuses.
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Photo courtesy of Marie, Wikimedia Commons
