Gerardo Reyes Chavez, CIW in the Cincinnati Enquirer: “This latest horrific case of modern-day slavery in Kroger’s supply chain is a wake-up call… Tainted with forced labor in its supply chain twice in two years, Kroger’s record of social irresponsibility defies belief.”
“Given Kroger’s outsized presence in the retail economy, it is long past time for them to join the Fair Food Program, take on the great responsibility that comes with great power, and address the urgent human rights crisis in its supply chain by joining the Fair Food Program.”
For over a decade, while the Fair Food Program has steadily grown and emerged as the new gold standard for ending human rights violations in the agricultural industry, Kroger, one of the largest grocery store chains in the entire country, has steadfastly refused to join the FFP and ensure that the farmworkers who make its profits possible are protected by the program’s best-in-class monitoring and enforcement mechanisms.
And over that same time period, Kroger has been connected to not just one, but two forced labor operations discovered by law enforcement agencies in its supply chain.
When companies like Kroger, Publix, and Wendy’s refuse to join the Fair Food Program, their high volume produce purchases help reinforce the existence of two, parallel worlds within US agriculture: The world of dignity and respect under the protections of the Fair Food Program on the one hand, where farmworkers are the frontline monitors of their own rights backed by the purchasing power of the FFP’s 14 major buyers, and the world of grinding poverty and desperation outside the FFP on the other, where farmworkers toil in an atmosphere of fear and have little or no recourse when faced with abuse. Combined with the rise of forced labor in US fields — resulting, in part, from growers turning increasingly to the H-2A (or “guestworker”) program for labor in response to growing political pressure on the domestic immigrant workforce, and the near total lack of protections for H-2A workers, from their recruitment in Mexico to their employment here in the US — the continuing resistance of massive retail food chains like Kroger to worker-driven human rights programs like the FFP provides a market for low-bar producers and creates a ticking time bomb of forced labor prosecutions hidden behind the produce we buy every day in restaurants and grocery stores across the country.
One of those bombs exploded late last year when the US Department of Labor revealed that Kroger bought and sold watermelons harvested by workers trapped in a forced labor operation based in Florida. The workers from that case hid in the trunk of a car to escape from a labor camp in Pahokee, FL, and called the CIW for help. To demand justice for those workers and for all others who may be suffering silently in modern-day slavery, the CIW and our allies marched for five days and 50 miles from Pahokee to Palm Beach, calling on Kroger, Publix, and Wendy’s to do their part to end forced labor in US fields and join the Fair Food Program.
Last week, the CIW’s Gerardo Reyes amplified that call in the editorial pages of the Cincinnati Enquirer, the paper of record for Kroger’s hometown of Cincinnati, which published the op/ed the same week of Kroger’s annual shareholder meeting. We are sharing that op-ed today in its entirety here below:
The competitive prices Kroger offers its customers can sometimes come at a terrible human cost − and it may soon get much worse.
Earlier this year, the U.S. Department of Labor publicly outed Kroger as a buyer of watermelons harvested by workers trapped in a forced labor ring. In this multi-state forced labor conspiracy, farm bosses associated with Los Villatoros Harvesting held dozens of workers in debt bondage, kept them in crowded, decrepit housing, and threatened them with deportation − or worse − if they spoke out against their abuse. One worker later told prosecutors, “All this time, I could not return to Mexico for fear that something would happen to me. That the Villatoros had paid someone to kill me.”
Their suffering was brought to light when two of the workers escaped from a forced labor camp in Pahokee, Florida by hiding in the trunk of a car and calling our organization, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, for help. Though the abusive crew leaders of Los Villatoros Harvesting have since been convicted and sentenced − and a federal law enforcement agency directly connected those watermelons with Kroger’s produce aisle − Kroger never so much as issued a statement about the produce on its shelves made with forced labor, despite growing alarm from farmworkers, human rights leaders and journalists.
To make matters worse, this is not the first but the second time in the past two years that Kroger has been named in connection with forced labor abuses. Tainted with forced labor in its supply chain twice in two years, Kroger’s record of social irresponsibility defies belief.
At the same time, if antitrust concerns do not halt the planned merger with Albertsons, Kroger is set to become the second-largest food retailer, controlling nearly a quarter of the entire grocery market in the U.S., all fed by a sprawling produce supply chain.
A barbed wire fence in front of the forced labor camp in Pahokee, FL that two workers escaped from in the trunk of a car
The festering human rights problem in its supply chain will only grow once the merger is complete. At the annual shareholder meeting held June 22, shareholders gathered to vote on Kroger’s future. Their decisions will impact not only consumers at checkout, but hundreds of thousands of farmworkers across the western hemisphere.
This latest horrific case of modern-day slavery in Kroger’s supply chain is a wake-up call. It is time for Kroger not only to recognize the problem, but to turn to the only proven solution in the world of corporate accountability: the presidential-medal winning Fair Food Program, which has effectively eradicated forced labor and other extreme abuses on participating farms and has been upheld as a model for guaranteeing dignified working conditions for those who harvest the food on our tables.
The Fair Food Program is recognized by law enforcementagencies across the U.S. government and the United Nations as the best program for fighting forced labor in global supply chains. The program is built on legally-binding agreements with market consequences for farms that violate farmworkers’ rights. It represents a uniquely effective partnership among farmers, farmworkers and retail food companies that ensures humane wages and working conditions on participating farms. Large food retailers agree to give preferential access to participating growers that treat their workers fairly and to transfer their purchases to other growers if they do not.
Kroger’s silence when confronted with proof that it has bought and sold forced labor-harvested produce is chilling. It is all the more concerning since Kroger allegedly has a “zero tolerance” policy against forced labor in its supply chain and uses social compliance audit programs it claims are equally effective as the Fair Food Program.
Given Kroger’s failure to deliver on the promised protections for farmworkers from human rights abuses in its own supply chain, why should workers and consumers believe the CEOs of Kroger and Albertsons when they insist in the pages of the Enquirer that this merger will only benefit workers and consumers alike? What guarantees can Kroger make to the broader American public about its efforts at social responsibility as it seeks to become the second-largest grocer in the country?
Kroger will soon wield colossal purchasing power. Research has shown that this power will direct immense downward pressure on prices at the farm level, forcing suppliers to lower costs − and especially wages and working conditions − even further just to preserve their shrinking margin. The Los Villatoros Harvesting forced labor case demonstrates the depths to which some farms will go to slash their own labor costs and the ways that current temporary work visa programs can lead to systemic human rights abuses. Tragically, this combined market power and lack of effective oversight means cases like Los Villatoros Harvesting may become more common within Kroger’s supply chain.
Fortunately, this is not a problem without an answer.
Kroger’s competitors, like Walmart, Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods, have already joined the program. Given Kroger’s outsized presence in the retail economy, it is long past time for them to join the Fair Food Program, take on the great responsibility that comes with great power, and address the urgent human rights crisis in its supply chain by joining the Fair Food Program. Otherwise, the rise of Cincinnati’s most successful business risks being further tainted by the kind of horrific exploitation America has struggled to overcome for centuries.
Gerardo Reyes-Chavez is a senior staff member with the award-winning human rights organization, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW). A farmworker who has worked in the fields since age 11, first as a peasant farmer in Mexico and then in the fields of Florida, Mr. Reyes conducts workers’ rights education with thousands of farmworkers on farms across the US as part of the Fair Food Program.
