Would you pay a penny more for a pound of tomatoes if it meant the worker who picked those tomatoes was lifted from grinding poverty to ... maybe a little above poverty? It's a question that speaks to basic humanity, but it's not a question that most of us get to answer. We don't buy our tomatoes a pound at a time, negotiating the terms of the labor with each transaction. Rather, big corporations buy the tomatoes from the farmers who grow them, and it's those corporations, including grocery chains like Walmart and Publix and fast food chains like Taco Bell and Chipotle, that set the prices, telling farmers how much they will pay per pound (not just of tomatoes but of other fruits and vegetables as well) and exerting downward pressure on wages and working conditions for those at the bottom, the mostly immigrant workers in the fields.
And those corporations aren't going to pay a penny more unless they face a lot of pressure. The conditions farmworkers face when they can't create that pressure, and their fight to improve their wages and working conditions, are the two stories told in the new documentary Food Chains.
Follow below the fold for more.
Food Chains centers on the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, the group organizing for that extra penny per pound of tomatoes picked—a penny that would, it cannot be emphasized enough, double the farmworkers' wages. The group has had significant success getting major corporations to sign onto its Fair Food Program, which not only gets workers that extra penny per pound but includes a code of conduct to stem the rampant abuses and sexual harassment workers face. Companies participating in the Fair Food Program include:
Aramark, Bon Appetit Management Company, Burger King, Chipotle Mexican Grill, Compass Group, McDonald’s, Sodexo, Subway, Trader Joe’s, Walmart, Whole Foods Market, Yum Brands
That's big. But
Food Chains is a powerful reminder of how far this fight still has to go. The film centers on the Coalition of Immokalee Workers' push to get supermarket chain Publix to join the program, a push Publix is still refusing, completely disclaiming responsibility for the poverty created by the prices it demands from farmers. In fact, Publix executives have refused even to meet with the workers, even when they engaged in a fast—depicted in the movie—outside the company's headquarters.
"Workers are suffering at the bottom. Publix is creating that misery," one farmworker says.
The story Food Chains tells isn't just about Florida tomato pickers, though, because the exploitation they face isn't unique. It travels to Napa, where workers picking grapes for wine are paid the same poverty wages as other farmworkers. And if you've visited Napa, you know how expensive it is. The unacceptable hovels that farmworkers in other areas are forced to rent aren't even available in Napa, and if they were, they'd be expensive, too. Food Chains points to commonalities with other industries, as well, such as the garment industry in Bangladesh where clothes destined to be sold in the United States are made by workers earning a minimum wage of $38 a month and facing the kinds of conditions that led to the Tazreen factory fire and the Rana Plaza collapse, the former killing more than 100 workers and the latter killing more than 1,000.
The film also takes a historical view, highlighting how today's exploited migrant workers are just the latest of wave after wave of migrants from different countries—China in the 1870s, India in the 1910s, from within the United States during the Dust Bowl—who have provided a steady stream of low-wage labor since slave labor ceased to be an option.
And Food Chains is insistent that the solution to this poverty is systemic change. Publix, like vintners in Napa, is shown boasting of its charity toward farmworkers. But, as the film points out each time, the workers' efforts should be repaid not with charity but with fair wages. They have, after all, more than earned it through their work, if this was a more just country.
Food Chains is playing in some theaters and on iTunes.