Lucas Benitez, CIW co-founder: “As workers ourselves – the men and women who built this new model and experienced this remarkable change – we are excited to continue the dialogue with workers around the globe about how they can transform their industries in similar ways through implementing WSR programs.”
Rafaela Rodriguez, Worker-driven Social Responsibility Network (WSRN): “When worker organizations lead the creation, design and implementation of solutions, the results are truly transformative…”
There is a human rights revolution underway across the world, and it all started right here in the tomato fields of Immokalee.
Facing abusive crewleaders and a pervasive climate of fear in the early 1990s, farmworkers in the dusty crossroads town of Immokalee decided they had had enough. They stood up for their rights, organizing strikes and marches and even a month-long hunger strike to press their demands for change, but they didn’t stop there. They brought the farmworker community together in an ongoing process of reflection and analysis — a process that continues in Immokalee to this day — seeking to get to the roots of their abuse and exploitation. Through years of this combination of community action and reflection, workers with the CIW located those roots at the top of the food supply chain, where retail food giants leverage their immense purchasing power to squeeze growers on prices at the farm gate, and that squeeze is translated into an unrelenting downward pressure on wages and working conditions for farmworkers in the fields.
Or, more simply put, in the words of the rallying cry that went up from Immokalee in 2001 when the CIW launched the boycott that started it all: “Taco Bell makes farmworkers poor!”
That analysis, and the resultant decades-long efforts of workers and their consumer allies to reverse the impact of the buyers’ massive market power on farmworkers’ lives, gave birth to the Fair Food Program and, with it, the broader Worker-driven Social Responsibility model; a novel way for workers to harness the purchasing power of those massive food corporations to become the frontline monitor of their own rights in the fields.
With legally binding commitments from corporate buyers to preferentially source from growers who comply with a worker-drafted Code of Conduct — their compliance monitored through a combination of a 24/7 complaint mechanism and deep-dive audits, all driven by workers informed of their rights though regular worker-to-worker education sessions on the farm and on the clock — the Fair Food Program gave farmworkers a real voice on the job for the first time in the centuries-long history of the Florida agricultural industry, and provided enforceable mechanisms to ensure their voice was heard. Within just a few short years of its launch, the FFP transformed the fields once dubbed “ground zero for modern-day slavery” by federal prosecutors into what one labor expert called “the best workplace environment in American agriculture” on the front page of the New York Times.
The FFP’s success quickly drew attention from workers around the globe who saw a potential solution to their own exploitation in the program’s unique underlying structure, driving the rapid replication and expansion of the WSR model to industries across the world. Since the FFP’s launch in 2011, the WSR model has spread to a wide range of industries on multiple continents, from the garment factories of Bangladesh, Pakistan and Lesotho, to the iconic dairy farms of Vermont. And at every stop it has demonstrated its extraordinary power to protect and improve workers’ lives through partnerships that, despite initial industry fears and resistance, have proven to be sustainable and beneficial for all, workers, producers, and buyers alike. As a result, WSR is rapidly becoming the new paradigm for protecting vulnerable workers’ fundamental human rights a the bottom of corporate supply chains.
Today, we are excited to announce the launch of a new partnership to extend the reach of this extraordinary model for human rights enforcement to the fields of southern Spain – a partnership that would mark the first-ever WSR initiative in the European Union — through a collaborative effort among the Sindicato Andaluz de Trabajadores (SAT) Almería, the Ethical Consumer Research Association, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, the Fair Food Standards Council, and the Worker-driven Social Responsibility Network (WSRN).
Read our full release on WSR’s latest expansion effort below!
Funding Secured to Explore Worker-driven Social Responsibility Program Development in Spanish Produce Industry
Media Contact: Ty Joplin, ty@fairfoodprogram.org – 832-549-7337
IMMOKALEE, FL – Funding has been secured to support the first exploration of an expansion of the Worker-driven Social Responsibility model in the European Union. The project will address working conditions for farmworkers, including migrant workers, in Spain’s produce industry. Project partners include the Spanish union SOC-SAT Almeria, the U.S.-based Coalition of Immokalee Workers, the Worker-driven Social Responsibility Network, and the UK-based Ethical Consumer Research Association.
This development represents a major step forward in implementing the recommendations of the report, Produce of Exploitation, UK Supermarkets and Migrant Labour in Southern Spain, published by Ethical Consumer in 2023. This report documented widespread abuses of farmworkers, and underscored the failures of multi-stakeholder initiatives and voluntary corporate commitments to protect workers’ rights. The report’s principal recommendations include addressing the lack of transparency and access to remedy for workers in the sector as well as the exploration of Worker-driven Social Responsibility (WSR) as a model that “[has] been successful in addressing insidious rights violations.”
“Workers in the Almeria region of Spain produce many of the fruits and vegetables sold in UK supermarkets,” said José García Cuevas of the SAT Almeria union. “Yet they experience wage theft and widespread exploitation. We are looking for ways to address the root causes of the issues we see in the fields every day.”
“In our research for the report, we saw that UK supermarkets have many codes of conduct and a range of voluntary commitments and certifications. Yet none of them has substantially improved conditions for workers – and often such superficial remedies prevent the adoption of more effective models,” said Jasmine Owens of Ethical Consumer. “We are delighted to have secured funding to support SOC-SAT and the farmworkers of Almeria in their exploration of what binding, enforceable worker-driven standards could look like in their industry given how the WSR model has transformed other industries.”
The Worker-driven Social Responsibility model is based on six interconnected principles, bringing together worker-driven codes of conduct, binding agreements between brands, including grocers, at the top of supply chains, and worker-driven enforcement.
A holistic combination of worker education coupled with a 24/7 complaint support line and comprehensive independent monitoring results in a mechanism that is trusted by workers – and aligned with the UN Guiding Principles for Business and Human Rights. Together, these mechanisms underpin programs that are gaining global recognition as a powerful new paradigm for protecting workers’ fundamental human rights in corporate supply chains. The first iteration of the WSR model was the Fair Food Program, which was forged by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers and protects tens of thousands of farmworkers across the US, Chile, and South Africa.
“Florida’s fields were once dubbed ground zero for modern slavery by federal prosecutors,” said Lucas Benitez of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers. “But through the Fair Food Program, we are ushering in a new era of human rights, and have virtually eradicated those abuses on participating farms, transforming those same fields into what one labor expert called ‘the best workplace-monitoring program I’ve seen in the U.S.’ As workers ourselves – the men and women who built this new model and experienced this remarkable change – we are excited to continue the dialogue with workers around the globe about how they can transform their industries in similar ways through implementing WSR programs.”
“When worker organizations lead the creation, design and implementation of solutions, the results are truly transformative,” said Rafaela Rodriguez of the Worker-driven Social Responsibility Network. “Our members have developed programs that are protecting more than three million working people globally. I’m excited that we have the opportunity to facilitate crucial exchange with the workers in Spain’s produce industry.”
The funding for the exploration comes from the Healthy Food Healthy Planet initiative, whose mission is “to steer collective efforts towards achieving systemic change in food systems in Europe.” Funding will also go to Focus on Labour Exploitation (FLEX), a U.K.-based organization to support a pilot of the WSR model in the fishing industry. This program includes some of the same industry partners who will be involved in the European expansion of the WSR model.
Sindicato Andaluz de Trabajadores (SAT) Almería combats labor exploitation in Almería. Its main objectives are social justice, gender equality and well-being of each human and worker.
The Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) is a worker-based human rights organization founded in Immokalee, FL, and committed to improving working conditions through enforceable human rights protections within supply chains. Internationally recognized for its achievements in the field of corporate accountability — with a particular focus on the fight against forced labor and gender-based violence at work — the CIW is built on a foundation of farmworker community organizing reinforced by a national consumer network. The CIW is credited with pioneering the Worker-driven Social Responsibility (WSR) model.
Worker-driven Social Responsibility Network (WSRN) builds understanding of the Worker-driven Social Responsibility (WSR) model among a wide range of relevant actors, provides support and coordination for worker-led efforts to replicate the model, and shifts the paradigm to establish the model as the baseline for workers’ rights programs within global supply chains.
Ethical Consumer Research Association is an independent, not-for-profit co-operative, founded in 1989 and based in Manchester UK. It is the hub of the ethical consumer movement, helping consumers to shop ethically, campaigners to challenge corporate power and businesses to improve their supply chains. Its mission is to make global businesses more sustainable through consumer pressure. Alongside its website and publication of a bimonthly magazine, Ethical Consumer provides consultancy services to a range of organisations and businesses such as Stop Funding Hate, Amnesty and Co-op Bank.