Fair Work Means Dignified Pay and Working Conditions
Too often the people who produce our food and apparel are exploited.
Fair World Project advocates for dignified pay and working conditions for workers globally who are too often marginalized and exploited.
Agricultural work is some of the most dangerous work in the world. Farmworkers who plant, tend, and harvest our food and fiber crops are too often exposed to pesticides and other toxins, vulnerable to heat-related illness, and at risk of injuries and accidents at rates greater than most workers. And the vulnerability doesn’t stop at the farm gate.
Food workers in the U.S. earn low wages and are at high risk for accidents and injury. Many people who work in the food system are themselves food insecure. Food workers also face high levels of racism, discrimination, and sexual harassment.
Apparel supply chains are complex. To turn cotton into a t-shirt can takes many steps including ginning, spinning, weaving or knitting, and cutting and sewing. Many hands are needed to produce apparel and significant human rights violations and deep poverty mark most apparel supply chains.
VICTORIES
Familias Unidas por la Justicia
Familias Unidas por la Justicia was locked in a four-year labor dispute with Sakuma Brothers Farm, a large berry farm in Washington that supplies berries to Driscoll’s among others. They were fighting for the right to be recognized as a union and to collectively bargain. When they asked for Fair World Project’s help, over 10,000 consumers in our network signed a petition to Driscoll’s asking them to intervene. Fair World Project helped facilitate dialogue among Driscoll’s, Sakuma, and FUJ, and after two years FUJ was finally recognized as a union and started the 2017 season with a union contract. Read more of FUJ’s story.
PAST CAMPAIGNS AND ALERTS
Stand with Working People, Support the PRO Act!
As corporations have gotten bigger and more consolidated, it’s clear that the rest of us need to build power to match them. The United States is ranked dead last for workers’ rights of all industrialized nations. That’s why we need far-reaching legislation to safeguard worker organizing and provide legal recourse for violations of workers’ rights. That’s why we need to pass the PRO Act now. Send a message to your senators today!
Tell Fyffes: Melon Pickers Are Not Expendable!
COVID-19 has highlighted both how essential the people who pick our food are – and how shamefully they are treated. A shocking new report, Fyffes Farms Exposed*, details the treatment of farmworkers on Fyffes’ Honduran melon plantations and documents Fyffes’ failure to provide adequate safety protection for workers. Now, with COVID-19 posing additional threats, it’s even more critical that Fyffes negotiate in good faith with the workers’ union, STAS. Tell Fyffes management it’s time to negotiate with the workers’ union, STAS!
Tell Congress: Support the Future of Farming
Despite recent aid packages, small-scale farmers, and especially young farmers, first-generation farmers, and farmers of color continue to be unable to access much needed COVID-19 relief.
So far, federal aid has been a one-size-fits-all model that has left out small-scale farmers and those growing fruits and vegetables—the foods we eat every day.
Tell Congress to act now to ensure that the young farmers and farmers of color who make up the future of farming get the COVID-19 relief funding they need.
Safety Isn’t Optional: Workers Need Mandatory Protections
Meatpacking plants are making headlines as COVID-19 infection hot spots. Workers have been sounding the alarm, but without clear government rules on workplace safety in a pandemic, workers keep getting sick, and they’re facing repercussions for organizing to protect themselves.
Take Action: Tell Your State’s Attorney General to Investigate Amazon
While working people are struggling to make ends meet, Amazon’s stockholders and owner, Jeff Bezos, are making a killing. Between mid-March and mid-April, Bezos’s personal fortune has grown $25 billion dollars as the company’s value has soared over $1.14 trillion. Despite massive earnings, Amazon workers continue to work for poverty wages, with few workplace protections and limited benefits. Amazon must be held accountable for the health and safety of its workers during this time of crisis!
Tell Congress: Don’t Let the USDA Slash Farmworker Pay
The US Department of Agriculture is trying to slash wages for guest workers. The goal: drive down pay for essential farmworkers instead of safeguarding workers and farmers.
Farmworkers already get poverty wages, substandard housing, and few legal protections. Amidst a global pandemic, these essential workers need additional support, not a reduction in pay.
Support Strong Pesticide Regulations
The Agricultural Worker Protection Standards are the EPA’s regulations that aim to reduce pesticide exposure among farmworkers and others who handle toxic chemicals. Although ideally we want to reduce and eliminate the use of these toxins, in the short term, we need to protect the workers who are required to handle them. These standards are now under threat. Let your Senators know you support strong pesticide regulation.
Tell Congress Fair Wages Can’t Wait
The Agricultural Worker Protection Standards are the EPA’s regulations that aim to reduce pesticide exposure among farmworkers and others who handle toxic chemicals. Although ideally we want to reduce and eliminate the use of these toxins, in the short term, we need to protect the workers who are required to handle them. These standards are now under threat. Let your Senators know you support strong pesticide regulation.
Protect the Dreamers
U.S. trade policy has restructured the global economy, forcing changed migration patterns and variable economic opportunities. Yet our immigration policy hasn’t kept up with changing needs, especially for sectors like the food system that rely on immigrant labor. We facilitated thousands of leaders on behalf of the Dreamers—children brought to the U.S. by immigrant parents, and continue to fight for fair trade and immigration policies that meet the needs of working families and a sustainable food and agriculture system.
Major Food Retailers: Be Leaders in Farmworker Justice
Major retailers like Safeway, Trade Joe’s, and Kroger are talking more and more about sustainability but have yet to include farmworker justice as a core part of their business model or sustainability plan. Thousands of consumers sent letters to these retailers asking them to be leaders on farmworker justice. We continue to advocate for farmworker justice and encourage all farms, brands, and retailers to make this a priority. Read our Who Grew My Food fact sheet to learn more and get involved.
The Pledge to Tell Walmart to Be Fair
For International Food Workers Week 2013, nearly 5,000 people signed our pledge to stand in solidarity with Walmart employees and the workers and farmers who supply them, in the face of chronic mistreatment and unfair payment by Walmart. Since then, Walmart has shown some hope for improvement by signing the Coalition of Immokalee Workers’ Fair Food agreement, but that only helps workers in one supply chain. We continue to work within the Food Chain Workers Alliance and with other allies to advocate for more widespread change at this mega retailer.
Toxic Pesticides Have No Place in a Just Food System
The EPA has all the information it needs to ban chlorpyrifos and other toxic pesticides like it and a bill was introduced into Senate to do just that. FWP facilitated over 7500 letters in support of this ban and will continue to advocate for a less toxic, more just food system and the prohibition of chlorpyrifos and other pesticides like it.