Harvard-based policy consortium calls on Congress, US Department of Agriculture to help drive expansion of FFP and other WSR initiatives in agriculture:

“By incentivizing the growth of WSR [Worker-driven Social Responsibility] initiatives and focusing attention at the “top” of the supply chain — specifically, by preferentially providing the many forms of financial support government provides to those farms that join WSR programs — Congress can advance the twin aims of ending working exploitation and supporting the diversity and vibrancy of the farming sector.”

… And on US Department of Labor to collaborate with FFP in protecting farmworkers’ rights to maximize efficiency, impact of limited law enforcement resources:  

“Support for proven worker-driven enforcement mechanisms, like the complaint hotline and investigation and enforcement process established in CIW’s Fair Food Program, could reduce the need for DOL scrutiny among producers participating in such WSR programs and thus extend DOL’s capacity to strategically target its investigations…”

Today, we bring you yet another high-level endorsement of the Fair Food Program and its Worker-driven Social Responsibility model — this time from the world of public policy, and from one of the country’s top law schools!

Just last week, a consortium of eight law schools across the United States – anchored at the Harvard Law School’s Food Law and Policy Clinic – released an in-depth report with key policy recommendations in advance of the much-anticipated 2023 Farm Bill.  The June report, the first of five forthcoming this summer, is focused on farmworkers and explicitly endorses the Fair Food Program and the Worker-driven Social Responsibility (WSR) model.  Throughout the report, researchers praise the “proven” model and its groundbreaking mechanisms for the enforcement of fundamental — but long-ignored — labor rights in the fields, and go on to echo the recommendations that CIW itself has made for policy improvements in Congress, the Department of Labor (DOL), and US Department of Agriculture (USDA).  The report’s recognition of the FFP’s unique effectiveness comes on the heels of strong praise from federal law enforcement officials from the DOL and Customs and Border Protection following the recent wave of modern-day slavery prosecutions in US agriculture.

The thoroughgoing report includes several concrete, practical suggestions for leveraging the federal government’s market power and existing resources to expand the FFP and other WSR initiatives in the agricultural industry and to better protect US farmworkers from longstanding labor abuses.  In a section highlighting the power of the WSR model, researchers recommend that Congress preferentially direct federal financial incentives to farms that choose to participate in WSR programs: 

“By incentivizing the growth of WSR [Worker-driven Social Responsibility] initiatives and focusing attention at the “top” of the supply chain—specifically, by preferentially providing the many forms of financial support government provides to those farms that join WSR programs—Congress can advance the twin aims of ending working exploitation and supporting the diversity and vibrancy of the farming sector.”

Further, the report’s recommendations include a call for the DOL to pilot a partnership agreement that would enable the department to make better use of its limited resources by strategically focusing enforcement efforts on non-FFP farms:

“Support for proven worker-driven enforcement mechanisms, like the complaint hotline and investigation and enforcement process established in CIW’s Fair Food Program, could reduce the need for DOL scrutiny among producers participating in such WSR programs and thus extend DOL’s capacity to strategically target its investigations. Congress should establish and fund a pilot program to test partnership models and other innovative approaches and direct DOL to develop the program in consultation with USDA and NIOSH.”

Finally, the report echoes a long-standing recommendation from the Fair Food Program itself.  After the initial launch and implementation of the FFP in 2011, it quickly became clear that the Program’s unique mix of monitoring and enforcement mechanisms — backed by the purchasing power of more than a dozen of the world’s largest buyers of produce —  signaled a new way forward for protecting farmworkers’ fundamental human rights in the fields.  By the second term of the Obama Administration, the evidence of the Program’s effectiveness had become indisputable, and on the basis of that evidence the CIW and its industry allies began to call for a simple, straightforward change in federal procurement policy: Wherever possible, the US government’s food purchases should flow away from suppliers who flagrantly violate US labor law and instead be directed to growers who agree to meet the industry’s highest human rights standards.  

On page 41 of the new report, the researchers likewise recommend that USDA incentivize growers with documented labor law violations to address those issues through worker-driven monitoring and enforcement — meaning either a WSR program, like the FFP, or a Collective Bargaining Agreement — by “specifying that employers who enter into such arrangements are presumptively in compliance with all required corrective action for adjudicated labor law violations.” Or, to put it in layman’s terms, the USDA should direct federal food purchases away from those who break the law, and encourage them to join the FFP to ensure it doesn’t happen again if they want to sell to USDA in the future:

“Several modifications could further strengthen the rule. First, as described previously, USDA could further encourage employers to participate in a WSR program or enter into a collective bargaining agreement with workers by specifying that employers who enter into such arrangements are presumptively in compliance with all required corrective action for adjudicated labor law violations. This change would help conserve USDA resources in making such determinations and provide vendors with a clear pathway for re-establishing eligibility for USDA contracts.”

The US government is, of course, among the largest food buyers in the country.  As a result, its purchases, if conditioned on compliance with the FFP’s human rights-based code of conduct, could help transform the agricultural industry across the board, much as the FFP’s fourteen Participating Buyers have transformed the country’s fresh tomato industry from “ground zero for modern-day slavery” to “the best working environment in American agriculture.”

In other words, a federal procurement policy supporting the FFP would be — to quote President Biden when discussing another massive policy reform with then-President Obama back in 2010 — a “big [expletive deleted] deal.”

Be sure to read the full report here!  It provides an excellent, wide-ranging analysis of complex, but hugely important, federal policy that shapes our country’s trillion-dollar food industry, and that — if lawmakers were to adopt the report’s recommendations on farm labor reform — could dramatically transform the lives of millions of farmworkers across the nation.