In Focus: Women in the Fields

Before launching into a detailed analysis of the Program’s results that makes up the body of the document, the 2017 Report takes a look at the experiences of three key groups of workers: Women in the fields (both outside of and within the FFP), farmworkers in the Mexican produce industry, and farmworkers in the U.S. beyond the protections of the Fair Food Program.

First, women in the fields, both within the FFP and beyond its critically-important protections:

If you’ve read the news lately, you already understand: sexual abuse at work is ubiquitous in the United States, but obstacles to reporting abuse make it difficult to quantify sexual harassment and sexual violence. Research suggests that at least 1 in 3 women experience sexual harassment in the work- place; however, an estimated 75% of workplace sexual harassment is never reported to employers or the government.

Sadly, women who do step forward are unlikely to achieve a successful outcome. In 2015, the EEOC investigated 6,822 allegations of sexual harassment in the workplace. Claimants were successful only 25% of the time, and these cases normally take years to resolve. Victims may want closure quickly. Witnesses may be reluctant to come forward. Beyond this, the legal system presents real challenges related to burden of proof and proof of injury.

For the hundreds of thousands of farmworker women in the US, the situation is much worse.

Human Rights Watch cites a 2010 survey of farmworker women in California’s Central Valley which found that 80 percent had experienced sexual harassment or assault. Indeed, sexual harassment and violence are so common that some farmworker women “see these abuses as an unavoidable condition of agricultural work.” As one female worker succinctly put it, “You allow it or they fire you.” […]

[…] Women employed at Fair Food Program farms now live a different reality.

With education on their rights effectively conveying the message that women no longer have to tolerate abuse, coupled with access to a protected complaint mechanism, farmworker women now speak up without fear of retaliation or inaction. Supervisors found by the FFSC to have engaged in sexual harassment with physical contact are immediately terminated and banned from employment at other FFP farms for up to two years. Participating Growers must carry out these terminations, or face suspension from the FFP with the accompanying loss of ability to sell to Participating Buyers. Supervisors terminated for less severe forms of harassment or discrimination also face a program-wide ban. Allegations of sexual harassment are investigated and resolved with unprecedented speed, averaging less than three weeks.

In Contrast: The Mexican Produce Industry

The second group of workers highlighted are those in the Mexican produce industry, which — during Florida’s growing season, between November and May — is the principal sourcing alternative for the country’s largest restaurant and supermarket chains:

The emergence of the Fair Food Program rapidly and significantly widened the human rights gap between the U.S. tomato industry and its competition in Mexico. At the same time that workers, growers, and retailers are making unprecedented investments to address poverty and human rights concerns in the U.S. tomato industry, the Mexican industry remains mired in gross and largely unchecked human rights abuses.

Due to the rapid growth of exports by lower-cost producers in Mexico, Florida growers have faced increasing price pressure. In Mexico, cost advantage is driven in large part by lower wages and inferior, often grossly abusive working conditions. […]

[…]  In stark contrast to the situation in Mexican agriculture, Fair Food Program growers’ partnership with farmworkers and Participating Buyers has helped forge the most modern, humane workplace in global agriculture.

In Contrast: Outside the FFP, Inside the US

Finally, the report looks at the progress that remains to be made inside the U.S., where hundreds of thousands of farmworkers continue to work under perilous and degrading conditions:

The Fair Food Program has made tremendous progress since it was first implemented across the Florida tomato industry in 2011. However, much work remains to be done.

While key food industry leaders have joined the FFP, many more corporate buyers remain on the sidelines of what has become the most important farm labor reform movement in over a century for the East Coast’s agricultural industry. By refusing to join the Program, these non-participating buyers not only fail to shoulder their rightful share of the costs of safeguarding human rights in their supply chain but in fact undermine the progress that has already been made by exerting a destructive downward pressure on farmworker wages through their traditional volume purchasing practices. As importantly, non-participating buyers also continue to provide a “low bar” market for growers who are unwilling to meet the high standards and rigorous enforcement of the Fair Food Program. […]

[…]  Outside the protections of the Fair Food Program, U.S. farmworkers remain subject to a well-documented array of unfair labor practices and abuses that contribute to hostile and dangerous work environments. Even a small sample of news head- lines from recent years (see right) underscores the breadth and severity of these problems. In 2015, the EEOC won a jury verdict of more than $17 million in damages to female farmworkers who had been subjected to coerced sex, groping, and verbal abuse by farm managers while employed by Moreno Farms in Florida. Unfortunately, that judgment is unlikely to ever be collected from the company which ceased operations after the case was decided, leaving the owners free to reorganize and create similarly abusive environments for other workers.

In 2016, Red Diamond Farms, one of the largest Florida tomato suppliers that has refused to join the Fair Food Program, was assessed $1.4 million in penalties by the Department of Labor for unlawful hiring and pay practices.  In 2017, Bland Farms – the largest grower of sweet onions in the United States – was ordered by a U.S. district court in Georgia to pay more than $1.4 million in back wages and damages to farmworkers. And a lawsuit filed in January 2018 alleges that operators of Saraband Farms, a Washington blueberry farm, repeatedly threatened immigrant workers with deportation, provided them with insufficient meals and told them to work “unless they were on their death bed.” Last summer, workers at Saraband Farm went on strike after one of their coworkers was hospitalized. Workers said that managers at the farm had ignored his requests to see a doctor before his death.

Unfortunately, until market-incentives are aligned so that it is more profitable to adhere to humane labor standards than to ignore them – until there is a credible, enforceable threat of losing market share as a result of unfair treatment of farmworkers – these headlines about remedies sought after abuses have taken place represent the best case scenario for many farmworkers.

The Road Ahead: Worker-driven Social Responsibility

That, however, is not the end of the story.  Following the troubling reports of life outside of the Fair Food Program, the Annual Report documents the creation of the Worker-driven Social Responsibility Network, a group of diverse organizations set on bringing the remarkable changes wrought by the Fair Food Program to new industries and regions around the world:

The Fair Food Program, which is currently negotiating opportunities for expansion in two additional geographic regions and new crops, influences workplaces and supply chain initiatives far beyond itself. The FFP was the first comprehensive, fully functional model of the new Worker-driven Social Responsibility (WSR) paradigm, a human rights approach designed by workers themselves and anchored by legally binding agreements between the workers’ organization and the signatory retail brands who are the major customers of the suppliers who employ the workers. WSR holds tremendous promise for addressing human and labor rights abuses in global supply chains.

Internationally, WSR has been implemented through the 2013 Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh in that country’s garment sector. This followed a series of horrific factory fires and building collapses in the supply chains of major US and European clothing brands. Union and witness signatories to the Accord included two global labor unions, eight Bangladeshi labor federations, and four NGOs. With more than 200 brand signatories, the Accord covers some two million workers. Many of the factories that employ these workers have undergone a tremendous transformation to ensure their structural integrity and fire safety. In 2018, the Accord was extended five years to continue its progress. […]

[…] One of the [Worker-driven Social Responsibility] Network’s promising accomplishments on the ground is a nascent WSR adaptation on Vermont dairy farms known as Milk with Dignity. This program was created by Migrant Justice, a worker-based human rights organization, with multi-year technical assistance from CIW, FFSC, and other network members during four overlapping stages: exploration, standards development and program design; campaign and negotiations; and implementation. On October 3, 2017, Migrant Justice signed a legally binding agreement with Ben & Jerry’s to launch the program in that iconic brand’s supply chain. As of 2018, Milk with Dignity is now operational on Vermont dairy farms and monitored by the newly established Milk with Dignity Standards Council.

Results

In the central, deep-dive section of the report, readers get to dig into both concrete numbers and nuanced analysis of each of the Program’s core mechanisms, from Worker-to-Worker Education…

… to Auditing …

… to Market Consequences.

Following the mechanisms, the report provides a detailed look at the levels of compliance achieved for each of the rights under the Program, documenting the tireless back and forth of inspection and correction that has fundamentally transformed the working environment in Fair Food Program fields.  This is the true meat of the 2017 report and its conclusions will be discussed in a second post later this week.

The 2017 report closes with voices of the workers themselves, collected in the process of thousands of audit and complaint interviews, a qualitative measure of the remarkable transformation on the ground:

While this post provides an overview of the Report, we once again encourage every single member of the Fair Food Nation to sit down with the Fair Food Program Report and read it cover to cover.  The 2017 report, which covers two years in detail and tracks the broader trajectory of progress over the course of six seasons, is a comprehensive record of the profound progress we have been able to achieve together — as well as the challenges that the Program has faced along the way and the progress that remains to be made in the years ahead. 

Please share the report far and wide with your networks, and keep an eye out for the second update on the 2017 annual report later this week!