Business

March 2019

A program created by a group that organizes farmworkers has persuaded companies like Walmart and McDonald’s to buy their tomatoes from growers who follow strict labor standards. But high-profile holdouts have threatened to halt the effort’s progress.

Now the group, a nonprofit called the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, is raising pressure on one of the most prominent holdouts — Wendy’s — which it sees as an obstacle to expansion.

The Immokalee workers’ initiative, called the Fair Food Program, currently benefits about 35,000 laborers, primarily in Florida. Over the last decade, it has helped transform the state’s tomato industry from one in which wage theft and violence were rampant to an industry with the some of the highest labor standards in American agriculture.

“They’ve already been successful in a measurable way at effectively eliminating modern-day slavery and sexual assault, and greatly reducing harassment,” said Susan L. Marquis, dean of the Pardee RAND Graduate School in Santa Monica, Calif., who has written a book on the program. “Pay is substantially higher for these people.”…

End of visit statement, United States of America (6-16 December 2016) by Maria Grazia Giammarinaro, UN Special Rapporteur in Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children

PREVENTION

I am pleased to learn about the extensive awareness raising work undertaken by authorities at the Federal, State and local levels, as well as by CSOs and businesses to prevent human trafficking among population at risk, often developed in cooperation with trafficking survivors. These range from the Department of Homeland and Security’s nationwide human trafficking awareness Blue Campaign for front-line responders at State, local, and tribal levels; the Department of Justice’s guidance to immigration judges with respect, notably, to immigration court cases involving unaccompanied alien children, applied with professionalism and sensitivity by the judge I had the opportunity to meet in New York after observing a hearing at the New York Immigration Court; the Department of Health and Human Services’ continued awareness raising campaigns and targeted training in the health care sector; the Department of Education’s efforts to integrate trafficking information into school curricula; the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Health and Human Services’ initiative to raise awareness for food and agricultural industry partners in rural communities; the Department of Defence’s training for all its personnel, including troops prior to their deployment; the Department of Interior’s task force to combat trafficking of Native American and Alaskan Native populations; and the Department of Transportation and the Department of Homeland and Security’s human trafficking trainings for airline personnel and the car industry.

Furthermore, the “Know your rights” pamphlet delivered to temporary workers at US embassies has been praised by numerous interlocutors, including trafficking survivors I met, which should encourage the authorities to continue to translate it into numerous languages and to share it widely with every individual entering the United States, regardless of the type of visa held.

Here, I would also like to mention what I consider pertinent additional measures to prevent human trafficking in the US, especially in relation to labour exploitation:

I welcome the U.S. Government’s zero-tolerance policy on trafficking in persons for labour exploitation which notably consists of Executive Order 13627 which strengthens protections against trafficking in persons in Federal contracts and establishes specific requirements for Federal contractors and subcontractors to prevent trafficking in persons in government contracts. In this regard, I would suggest strengthening the responsibilities of labor attachés in US embassies to help the Federal Government making sure the Federal Acquisitions Regulations and other pertinent laws are implemented in practice.

In addition, I welcome the California Transparency in Supply Chains Act, which requires companies to report on their actions to eradicate slavery and human trafficking in their supply chains, though it is urgent to strengthen its implementation. I am also hopeful that the National Action Plan on Responsible Business Conduct that aims “to promote and incentivize responsible business conduct, including with respect to transparency and anticorruption, in compliance with the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and the OECD Guidelines on Multinational Enterprises”, which is due to be released on 16 December 2016, will further strengthen the struggle against labor exploitation.

While welcoming the abovementioned initiatives, I note the considerable efforts that will now be required to implement and enforce them, including through raising awareness and building the capacity of contractors.

Finally, I would also like to pay tribute to civil society’s commendable efforts to address labor trafficking, such as the Coalition of Immokalee Workers through its Fair Food Program which empowers farmworkers in Florida. It is now implemented in other States, and must be considered as an international benchmark.

Greg Asbed

Human Rights Strategist | Class of 2017

Transforming conditions for low-wage workers with a visionary model of worker-driven social responsibility.

About Greg’s Work

Greg Asbed is a human rights strategist developing a new model—worker-driven social responsibility (WSR)—for improving conditions for low-wage workers within the twenty-first-century labor market. WSR is a bottom-up approach that ensures human rights are respected in the workplace; workers play a central role in establishing work condition standards and codes of conduct and have transparent channels for monitoring and enforcing those standards.

WSR emerged from the decades-long work of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), an organization co-founded by Asbed, with Lucas Benitez and Laura Germino, in 1993 to redress injustices in the Florida tomato industry, including forced labor, sexual assault, and wage theft. Asbed was a principal architect of the coalition’s Fair Food Program (FFP), a mechanism by which the purchasing power of consumers and large food companies is tapped to compel growers to improve farmworkers’ working conditions. Growers agree to adhere to a code of conduct in the treatment of workers, and workers are educated (by other workers) about their rights and responsibilities. Purchasers have a zero-tolerance policy for abuses by their suppliers and also agree to pay a penny-per-pound premium that goes directly into growers’ payrolls as a line-item bonus on workers’ paychecks. Asbed helped devise the Fair Foods Standards Council, an independent monitoring organization, to ensure compliance through regular audits and complaint investigations. Since 2010, the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange and over a dozen purchasers, including Walmart, have signed on to the Fair Food Program. With the success of the FFP in the tomato industry, Asbed envisioned the potential for wider economic and social change, and together with colleagues, he designed the WSR framework.

Workforces engaged with other crops in Florida, the garment industry in Bangladesh, and the dairy industry in Vermont have already or are in the process of adopting the WSR approach, and Asbed’s expertise is being sought by international organizations for the development of customized variants of the WSR model to address such issues as child labor in Africa and gender-based violence in domestic work settings in Mexico. Asbed’s visionary strategy for WSR has the potential to transform workplace environments across the global supply chain.

Audacious Philanthropy

Susan Wolf Ditkoff & Abe Grindle

From the September–October 2017 Issue

Private philanthropists have helped propel some of the most important social-impact success stories of the past century: Virtually eradicating polio globally. Providing free and reduced-price lunches for all needy schoolchildren in the United States. Establishing a universal 911 service. Securing the right for same-sex couples to marry in the U.S. These efforts have transformed or saved hundreds of millions of lives. That we now take them for granted makes them no less astonishing: They were the inconceivable moon shots of their day before they were inevitable success stories in retrospect.

Many of today’s emerging large-scale philanthropists aspire to similarly audacious successes. They don’t want to fund homeless shelters and food pantries; they want to end homelessness and hunger. Steady, linear progress isn’t enough; they demand disruptive, catalytic, systemic change—and in short order. Even as society grapples with important questions about today’s concentrations of wealth, many of the largest philanthropists feel the weight of responsibility that comes with their privilege. And the scale of their ambition, along with the wealth they are willing to give back to society, is breathtaking.

But a growing number of these donors privately express great frustration. Despite having written big checks for years, they aren’t seeing transformative successes for society: Think of philanthropic interventions to arrest climate change or improve U.S. public education, to cite just two examples. When faced with setbacks and public criticism, the best philanthropists reexamine their goals and approaches, including how they engage the communities they aspire to help in the decision-making process. But some retreat to seemingly safer donations to universities or art museums, while others withdraw from public giving altogether.

Donors don’t want to fund homeless shelters; they want to end homelessness.

Audacious social change is incredibly challenging. Yet history shows that it can succeed. Unfortunately, success never results from a single grant or silver bullet; it takes collaboration, government engagement, and persistence over decades, among other things. To better understand why some efforts defy the odds and what lessons today’s philanthropists can learn from successful efforts of the past, we dived deep into 15 breakthrough initiatives, ranging from broad access to end-of-life hospice care to fair wages for migrant farmworkers in the U.S. to a lifesaving rehydration solution in Bangladesh (see the exhibit “Audacious Social-Change Initiatives of the Past Century”). Our research revealed five elements that together constitute a framework for philanthropists pursuing large-scale, swing-for-the-fences change. Successful efforts:

Build a shared understanding of the problem and its ecosystem
Set “winnable milestones” and hone a compelling message
Design approaches that will work at massive scale
Drive (rather than assume) demand
Embrace course corrections

Coalition of Immokalee Workers gets Presidential Medal
Ft. Myers News-Press, January 30, 2015

The Coalition of Immokalee Workers has received the 2014 Presidential Medal for Extraordinary Efforts to Combat Human Trafficking.

Secretary of State John Kerry presented the medal to members of the group at a ceremony Thursday at the White House’s annual Forum on Human Trafficking.

In his remarks, Kerry said, “This is an extraordinary accomplishment, and reminds all of us not just of the work that we have to do, but that dedicated individuals, like those here with us today from the coalition, can strike out against injustice, break down barriers, and make a world of difference.”

The grass-roots group began working 20 years ago to improve wages and often abysmal labor conditions in Florida’s tomato fields, which supply the nation with 90 percent of its winter tomatoes.

Kerry detailed the nonprofit’s partnership with local and federal law enforcement over the years, as it’s helped uncover farm slavery operations across the Southeastern United States. “I hope everybody hears that,” he said. “Farm slavery operations across the Southeastern United States. Over the past 15 years, nine major investigations and federal prosecutions have freed more than 1,200 Florida farmworkers from captivity and forced labor, with the coalition playing a key part in seven of those operations.”

One who was on the front lines with them was Fort Myers attorney Doug Molloy, who prosecuted a number of high-profile slavery cases and was an internationally acclaimed anti-trafficking crusader until retiring as chief assistant U.S. attorney for Southwest Florida in 2013.

News of the honor was gratifying to area supporters, who’ve watched the coalition from its beginnings as a handful of workers meeting in a church. It’s now an organization that’s convinced Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer, as well as major fast-food chains, Whole Foods and the Fresh Market, among others, to join its Fair Food Program. In addition to improving working conditions, program participants pay an extra penny-per-pound premium to tomato harvesters.

That bonus means workers who once made 50 cents for every 32-pound bucket they picked, now make 82 cents, which can boost annual earnings from around $10,000 to more than $16,000.

The Fair Food Program includes worker-to-worker education and a complaint investigation and resolution process backed by market consequences for employers who violate the standards.

Yet for all the strides the coalition has made, it’s retained its original vision, said Cape Coral artist, film director and activist Daniel Herrera, whose movie, “Immokalee U.S.A.” details life in the group’s gritty Collier County town. “It’s picked up where Cesar Chavez left off,” he said, “while looking ahead to the vision he had for farmworkers across the country.”

Since the Fair Food Program became a reality four years ago, Florida’s $650 million tomato industry has undergone a major metamorphosis. Once plagued by sexual harassment, wage theft, modern-day slavery and subpoverty earnings, it’s now a model for solid practices — what best-selling author and journalist Bill Moyers, who features the coalition on his website, calls “the gold standard for human rights in the fields today.”

Co-founder Laura Germino said, “We are tremendously honored to have received the Presidential Medal for our work against the crime of forced labor, and especially honored by the White House’s recognition of the Fair Food Program for having moved beyond prosecution of the crime to actual prevention.”

In Florida Tomato Fields, a Penny Buys Progress

IMMOKALEE, Fla. — Not long ago, Angelina Velasquez trudged to a parking lot at 5 each morning so a crew leader’s bus could drop her at the tomato fields by 6. She often waited there, unpaid — while the dew dried — until 10 a.m., when the workers were told to clock in and start picking.

Back then, crew leaders often hectored and screamed at the workers, pushing them to fill their 32-pound buckets ever faster in this area known as the nation’s tomato capital. For decades, the fields here have had a reputation for horrid conditions. Many migrant workers picked without rest breaks, even in 95-degree heat. Some women complained that crew leaders groped them or demanded sex in exchange for steady jobs.

But those abusive practices have all but disappeared, said Ms. Velasquez, an immigrant from Mexico. She and many labor experts credit a tenacious group of tomato workers, who in recent years forged partnerships with giant restaurant companies like McDonald’s and Yum Brands (owner of Taco Bell, Pizza Hut and KFC) to improve conditions in the fields.

Workers harvest tomatoes in a field owned by Pacific Tomato Growers, a partner in the Fair Food Program. Credit Richard Perry/The New York Times

By enlisting the might of major restaurant chains and retailers — including Walmart, which signed on this year — the Coalition of Immokalee Workers has pressured growers that produce 90 percent of Florida’s tomatoes to increase wages for their 30,000 workers and follow strict standards that mandate rest breaks and forbid sexual harassment and verbal abuse.

The incentive for growers to comply with what’s called the Fair Food Program is economically stark: The big companies have pledged to buy only from growers who follow the new standards, paying them an extra penny a pound, which goes to the pickers. The companies have also pledged to drop any suppliers that violate the standards.

So far, the agreements between retailers and growers are limited to Florida’s tomato fields, which in itself is no small feat considering that the state produces 90 percent of the country’s winter tomatoes.

But gaining the heft and reach of Walmart — which sells 20 percent of the nation’s fresh tomatoes year-round — may prove far more influential. To the applause of farmworkers’ advocates, the retailer has agreed to extend the program’s standards and monitoring to its tomato suppliers in Georgia, South Carolina and Virginia and elsewhere on the Eastern Seaboard. Walmart officials say they also hope to apply the standards to apple orchards in Michigan and Washington and strawberry fields in many states.

“This is the best workplace-monitoring program I’ve seen in the U.S.,” said Janice R. Fine, a labor relations professor at Rutgers. “It can certainly be a model for agriculture across the U.S. If anybody is going to lead the way and teach people how it’s done, it’s them.”

Since the program’s inception, its system of inspections and decisions issued by a former judge has resulted in suspensions for several growers, including one that failed to adopt a payroll system to ensure pickers were paid for all the time they worked.

But progress is far from complete. Immokalee, 30 miles inland from several wealthy gulf resorts, is a town of taco joints and backyard chicken coops where many farmworkers still live in rotting shacks or dilapidated, rat-infested trailers. A series of prosecutions has highlighted modern-day slavery in the area — one 2008 case involved traffickers convicted of beating workers, stealing their wages and locking them in trucks.

“When I first visited Immokalee, I heard appalling stories of abuse and modern slavery,” said Susan L. Marquis, dean of the Pardee RAND Graduate School, a public policy institution in Santa Monica, Calif. “But now the tomato fields in Immokalee are probably the best working environment in American agriculture. In the past three years, they’ve gone from being the worst to the best.”

Amassing all these company partnerships took time. The workers’ coalition organized a four-year boycott of Taco Bell to get its parent company, Yum Brands, to agree in 2005 to pay an extra penny a pound for tomatoes, helping increase workers’ wages. In 2007 the coalition sponsored a march to Burger King’s headquarters in Miami, pushing that company to join the effort. Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, Chipotle and Subway have also signed on.

Perhaps the coalition’s biggest success is luring Walmart, which joined the program in January without a fight. Walmart officials said they were looking for ethically sourced produce as well as a steady supply of tomatoes. The giant company’s decision coincides with its major inroads into organic foods and fresh fruits and vegetables.

“We try to sell safe, affordable, sustainable sources of food — that’s the only way we will be able to grow the way we want in the future,” said Jack L. Sinclair, executive vice president of Walmart’s grocery division. “These guys have a pretty good set of standards in place that we think will allow our growers to get a consistent level of labor.” He told of Arizona growers whose tomatoes had rotted in the fields because of a lack of pickers.

The program’s standards have raised pay and mandated sessions on safety and workers’ rights. CreditRichard Perry/The New York Times

The Fair Food Program’s standards go far beyond what state or federal law requires, mandating shade tents so that workers who request a rest break can escape the hot Florida sun. Remedying a practice that Ms. Velasquez abhorred, growers must clock in workers as soon as they are bused to the fields.

Every farm must have a health and safety committee with workers’ representatives, and there is a 24-hour hotline that workers can call, with a Spanish-speaking investigator.

Under the program, tomato pickers may receive an extra $60 to $80 a week because of the penny-a-pound premium. That means a 20 to 35 percent weekly pay increase for these workers, who average about $8.75 an hour. The extra penny a pound means that participating companies together pay an additional $4 million a year for tomatoes.

“We see ourselves as a standard-setting organization,” said Greg Asbed, co-founder of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers.

Established in 1993, the coalition was one of the nation’s first worker centers dedicated to aiding migrants. It has since grown steadily, to 4,500 members, and its tactics have become more sophisticated. Last spring, a group of 100 workers and their supporters marched 200 miles from Immokalee to Lakeland, Fla., to press Publix Super Markets to join the program. Publix said it already used growers that adhered to high standards.

Mr. Asbed attributes the program’s success to getting giant corporations like Walmart to join.

“We’ve harnessed their market power to eliminate worker abuses,” he said. “There has to be real and believable market consequences for growers that refuse to comply.”

In late 2007, after McDonald’s signed on, the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange, an industry association, sought to scuttle the coalition’s efforts. It threatened growers with $100,000 fines if they cooperated with the coalition, stalling its efforts.

But the logjam was broken in 2010 when Pacific Tomato Growers — one of the nation’s biggest producers, with large operations in Florida — joined. Weeks later, Lipman, the nation’s largest tomato grower, also signed on, and eventually the Tomato Growers Exchange did, too.

Beau McHan, Pacific’s harvest manager, said, “We’re trying to run a business and make a profit, yet everyone wants to know they’re changing the world for the better.”

Joining, he acknowledged, has cost Pacific hundreds of thousands of dollars — $5,000 a year for shade tents and $50,000 for an improved drinking-water system as well as the money to pay workers for waiting time that was once off the clock. A former New York State judge, Laura Safer Espinoza, oversees the inspection apparatus, which interviews thousands of workers, audits payrolls and conducts in-depth interviews with farm managers. There are lengthy trainings for crew leaders, and six of them were fired after her team investigated allegations of verbal abuse and sexual harassment.

“Supervisors have gotten the message, and we’re seeing far fewer allegations of harassment than three years ago,” she said.

Now that the three-year-old program has stopped much of the abuse and harassment, participants are planning to give tomatoes produced under its watch a “Fair Food” label that could reassure — and attract — shoppers who want ethically sourced produce.

By Holly Burkhalter September 2, 2012

Holly Burkhalter is vice president of government relations at International Justice Mission.

Since 1997, the Justice Department has prosecuted seven cases of slavery in the Florida agricultural industry — four involving tomato harvesters — freeing more than 1,000 men and women. The stories are a catalogue of horrors: abductions, pistol whippings, confinement at gunpoint, debt bondage and starvation wages.

Thankfully, those enslaved workers may be among the last found in Florida’s tomato fields. Today, virtually all Florida tomato growers have joined the Fair Food Program, which includes a code of conduct outlawing debt bondage and requiring humane conditions of labor and a more livable wage. Shade stations, toilets and drinking water are appearing in the fields, and educators are spreading word about the code to the harvesters.

This miracle didn’t come about overnight. The Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), an organization of migrant workers based in Immokalee, Fla., has strived for 19 years to upgrade working conditions and eradicate slavery in the state’s tomato industry. Pressure on growers, whose profit margins have shrunk over that period, was only marginally successful; growers feared that pay increases raising the price of tomatoes would drive buyers to Mexico or other places for cheaper produce. But when the coalition changed tactics and demanded that tomato buyers join the Fair Food Program, reforms came thick and fast. Profitable and image-conscious retailers, pressed by consumers and civil society groups, saw the market and publicity benefits of ethical buying practices.

Over the past seven years, the food service industry and fast food restaurants have come on board, promising to purchase tomatoes only from growers who agree to comply with the code of conduct. What’s more, the buyers pledged to pay a penny-a-pound premium for every box of tomatoes they purchased from participating growers, who pass on the increase to their workers.

An indispensable aspect of the agreement is the Fair Food Standards Council, an independent monitoring body supported entirely by private donations and grants. The council investigates complaints of sexual harassment, wage disputes and other code violations. Its enforcement is what makes the program work: Without it, the code is simply a statement of good intentions. Growers who violate the code can be ejected from the program, denying them access to a growing market of buyers for Florida’s fairly picked tomatoes that includes food chains such as Subway, McDonald’s and Burger King and grocers such as Whole Foods, Aramark and Compass.

International Justice Mission, a nonprofit human right organization — for which I work — that locates and rescues bonded labor slaves in South Asia has an additional reason to support the initiative. The State Department’s diplomatic efforts to combat slavery in the countries where the International Justice Mission works are much-needed, but they’re undermined if the United States tolerates exploitative labor practices at home. Getting our house in order with regard to modern-day slavery would show other nations that we’re serious about this problem.

The CIW model is one of the great human rights success stories of our day. But the Fair Food Program won’t be sustainable unless the largest buyers of tomatoes — grocery stores — reward the growers in the program with their purchases and pay the price premium. Despite years of pressure from the CIW and from consumers, major supermarket chains including Ahold, Kroger’s and Publix have snubbed the Fair Food Program. They prefer their private production codes, which don’t benefit from the Fair Food Standards Council’s independent monitoring and evaluation.

But these private buyers aren’t the only major purchasers of Florida tomatoes who have yet to sign on to the Fair Food Program. President Obama should set an example to private buyers by announcing that from now on, the tomatoes the U.S. Agriculture Department purchases for the school lunch programs and for market stabilization will be purchased from the Fair Food Program.

This Labor Day, like every other day, the world’s most exhausting, dangerous, poorly paid and degrading jobs are being performed by the world’s most impoverished and vulnerable people. But that is not true anymore in Immokalee. The Coalition of Immokalee Workers has changed Florida and U.S. agriculture for the better. May their brilliant model flourish and inspire producers, buyers, consumers and workers in every industry where labor slavery persists.

Recognition