Daily Archives: May 3, 2022

At least 33 companies unwittingly paid an organised criminal gang that placed hundreds of Romanian victims onto construction sites.

A report by the Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner revealed that a criminal gang placed up to 500 victims on building sites in London and the South East between 2009 and 2018.

The analysis was based on interviews across the supply chain and relied on an investigation by the Metropolitan Police, whose investigators said that the number of businesses uncovered was only a fraction of the total.

The companies that paid into the bank accounts of the Lupus gang included contractors, agencies and payroll umbrella firms. The cumulative transactions for each business ranged from 100s to 100,000s.

It is estimated that between 300 and 500 victims were placed on construction and demolition sites during the 10-year period. The gang is thought to have made about 2.4m from the slave-labour ring, while their victims received as little as 18 per day and were forced to live in cockroach and rat-infested properties owned or managed by the criminal network.

The organised criminal gang found various ways to skirt around security on construction sites. The victims were usually placed in roles such as cleaning or general labour jobs, since these were less scrutinised than skilled trades. However, the gang also worked in hand with a corrupt skills-testing facility, which helped them to get hold of CSCS cards which provide proof that individuals working on construction sites have the appropriate training fraudulently in order to place slave-labour victims in skilled roles.

The police also found that fake health and safety accreditation and qualifications were submitted and accepted by construction employers. Often, this meant that a worker was placed in a dangerous job without being trained to do it.

The flexibility of labour contracts was also misused, by which a replacement worker was sent to a job, and workers were therefore easily moved around.

Of the 33 firms that were identified, one was a subcontractor that learned that 12 workers were potential victims, but continued to keep them on site in order to protect them from the gang and assist the police.

The construction director also moved all of the victims onto one large site and reduced their workload, since the workers were frail and living in inhuman situations, without proper facilities and food. The contractor also introduced a pilot free-food scheme on a few sites, as a way to feed the workers. Once the investigation was complete, it was found that the members of the gang had themselves joined the company as self-employed workers in order to familiarise themselves with the system.

The construction director said it was very hard to spot the signs of modern slavery. Our advice to other organisations is: ask awkward questions. Make sure people are who you think they are. This is a bigger problem than the industry realises.

The anti-slavery report also warns that, given the shortage of labour in construction, there is a huge risk of modern slavery along the supply chain. There are concerns that, when under pressure, businesses could ignore the usual protocols and processes for bringing workers on site, it adds. The risk has worsened during the pandemic and amid the labour shortages that have been accentuated by workers leaving the UK following Brexit.

Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner Dame Sara Thornton, whose office published the report, said: "While the sector is striving to meet its sustainability and carbon targets, it faces particular challenges in the ethical management of labour. Operation Cardinas is a harrowing reminder that no organisation can afford to be complacent, and that every worker has a role to play in spotting the signs.

She also called on the government to make leadership-level changes by creating a single enforcement body that brings together the Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority, the Employment Agency Standards Inspectorate and HMRCs National Minimum Wage team.

The commissioners office declined to reveal the names of the 33 identified firms.

Three members of a Romanian family,the Lupus, who were involved in the gang were jailed for 10 years; six others people from the gang are awaiting sentencing in a Romanian court.

Construction News has previously gone undercover with a BBC team to report on the ease of acquiring slave labour in the UK.

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Dozens of firms 'unwittingly' paid for slave labour in London and South East - Construction News

Oren M. Levin-Waldman is faculty member in the School of Public Affairs and Administration at Rutgers University-Newark, and Socioeconomic Research Scholar at Global Institute for Sustainable Prosperity Research. Learn more at the professors Website: https://www.econlabor.com/. Direct email to olevinwaldman@gmail.com

Listen to SocioEconomic Research Prof. Oren M. Levin-Waldmans discussion of his most recent essay Polarization in the U.S.: A Tale of Two Economies.Listen to this broadcast Live or On Demand via the following hyperlink http://tobtr.com/s/12094687 this Wednesday, May 4, 2022. He can be heard every second Wednesday morning from 10-11am ET on the Westchester On the Level broadcast. Please note that the hyperlink changes every second week and is specific to the essay discussed. Listeners are welcome to share their inquiry with respect to the topic of the subject discussed. The call-in number to the broadcast is 1-347-205-9201. When calling, whether asking a question or sharing your perspective, you will be asked to reveal for first name so that you may be addressed respectfully.

NEWARK, NJ May 3, 2022 It has been commonplace to assume that the increased polarization in the nation is ideological, and on a certain level it is. But the polarization mostly results from what can be called a tale of two economies. Blue state economies are not the same as red state economies, and yet, policymakers, the chattering class, and other elites, who are primarily in blue states have little understanding of these differences. Because of this lack of understanding there is a deep divide.

Red states take policy proposals from these elites as attempts to tell them what to do. Worse, these proposals are presented as what is good for them. As an example, in red states where there is much more mining activity than in blue states, green energy proposals that assume the elimination of fossil fuels simply dont go over too well. The imperative for green energy just isnt that strong in red states. Moreover, for workers in the mining industry, they have good paying jobs, and the idea of making solar panels earning considerably less is not that appealing. And yet, these may be good jobs for blue state economies.

Red state economies still have remnants of what many blue state economies used to have, i.e. manufacturing bases. While the consequences of globalization are everywhere, they are more pronounced in blue state economies. In blue state economies there are more skilled and well paid workers at the top of the distribution and more poorly skilled and poorly paid workers at the bottom. In red state economies, there is less dispersion between the top and the bottom, and more in the middle. Which is to say, red state economies still have a middle class that blue state economies no longer appear to have.

On the contrary, blue state economies have over the last four decades seen a dwindling of the middle class. In blue states there is greater income inequality than in red states. In red states there is more of a middle class, and particularly a blue-collar middle class. In blue states, there are more people with at least college, graduate and/or professional degrees at the top, and more people with less than a high school education at the bottom. In red states there are more high school graduates and people with associates degrees.

Already we can see that more educated professionals/managers who are members of the elite live in blue states, and in many cases they have what they believe are answers to the nations problems. But their answers to problems which they may assume to be the same in red states are out of touch with the nature of red states.

Those in blue states typically believe that the answer to rising income inequality is higher taxes on the wealthy to pay for programs that will be of benefit to the poor. Clearly there are poor people in red states, but they may not be the dependent poor to the degree that they are in blue states; rather they are the working poor who could benefit tremendously from wage increases in an economy not attempting to stifle growth.

Because the dispersion between the top and bottom is not that great in red states, those in red states dont see the same need for redistributive policies as those in blue states may. In fact, because the wealthy arent concentrated in red states, they may not see greater taxation on the wealthy as a help to anybody. Instead, they see such statements as gimmicks for greater taxation that will only fall on the shoulders of the middle class.

If red state economies are perceived as providing greater opportunities, especially for skilled blue-collar workers, ordinary workers may not see the need for the same level of public spending that those in blue states see the need for. To the extent that those in red states favor smaller government it may have more to do with the nature of their respective economies than with ideology. In fact, it may be fair to say that it is ultimately economics that drives ideology.

At the same time, there may be a real anxiety among those in red states that may not be found in blue states. That is, workers are fearful that it is only a matter of time until their economies go the way of blue state economies. This can truly drive their politics. Politicians who talk about ways to boost wages and attract industries, or even bring back manufacturing, are more likely to gain traction than those who simply talk about more public spending.

Differences between blue states and red states have very little to do with liberal vs. conservative or Democrat v. Republican, but are a tale of two economies. By not understanding these economic differences as the source of polarization in the U.S., we greatly miss the point. It is true that one is more likely to find a commitment to woke politics in blue states than in red states, but woke politics is nothing more than a diversion from the economic problems that plague the nation.

Still, by not recognizing the relationship between economics and politics, and even political ideology, we only exacerbate the polarization. So deep is the polarization that one can conceivably see the country splitting into two separate nations driven by their own politics. One might recall that as much as the American Civil War was driven by slavery and whether it would be allowed to continue in newly admitted states to the union, it too was fundamentally about two very different economies.

The southern economy was an agrarian plantation economy very similar to the feudalistic order in old Europe. The northern economy was a commercial one at the beginning of an industrial revolution requiring wage labor. From the Norths perspective, a national industrial economy required wage labor and for that reason slavery had to be ended. For a plantation economy, wage labor would have been too expensive.

Obviously there are differences, but the nation finds itself in a similar position. Red state economies have not been ravaged by globalism to quite the same extent as blue state economies. The policies promoted by those in blue states are not seen as marks of progress. From the perspective of the red states, the elites of blue states are viewed as attempting to hasten the process of Schumpeters creative destruction. Although the model is often hailed as progress in capitalist markets because the old and obsolete are replaced by the new and technologically advanced, it also leaves much destruction in its wake, which is typically borne by ordinary workers.

It is only when the elites can begin to address the needs of ordinary workers that there might be a chance to finally end the polarization. But to date, the elites have only dismissed ordinary workers as nothing but deplorables.

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Oren M. Levin-Waldman, Ph.D

https://www.econlabor.com/

(914) 629-6351

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Dr. Oren M. Levin-Waldman is the Author of the following published books.

Restoring the Middle Class Through Wage Policy: Arguments for a Middle Class

Understanding Public Policy in the United States.

The Minimum Wage: A Reference Handbook

Wage Policy, Income Distribution and Democratic Theory

The Case of the Minimum Wage: Competing Policy Models

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Oren M. Levin-Waldman, Ph.D

(914) 629-6351

See the original post here:

Polarization in the U.S.: A Tale of Two Economies By Oren M. Levin-Waldman - Yonkers Tribune.

Socialist Equality Party (SEP) campaigners are finding widespread concern about the soaring cost of living, unaffordable housing and unsafe working conditions, as well as the COVID-19 pandemic, police violence and the danger of world war. The popular sentiments are at odds with the right-wing campaigns for the May 21 election being run by Labor, the Liberal-Nationals and all the other parliamentary parties.

In the north-eastern state of Queensland, the SEP is standing in the Senate. Its candidates are Mike Head, a longstanding leader of the party and contributor to the WSWS, along with John Davis, who plays a prominent role in the International Youth and Students for Social Equality, the SEPs youth movement.

Over recent days, the SEP has campaigned near Inala in Brisbanes western suburbs.

Together with surrounding areas, Inala has high levels of unemployment and increasingly unaffordable private rental housing. It is home to a diverse working-class population, including indigenous people, Pacific islanders and immigrants from throughout Asia and the Middle East.

It is also an industrial area, featuring an Australian Post distribution centre, supermarket warehouses, a Volvo truck plant and a Primo meat facility.

The SEP is focussing its election campaign in such working-class communities, which are being severely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and the soaring cost of living.

Asked for her thoughts on the election, Shannon, a young indigenous worker, told Head: Im worried. Im pretty appalled at the pissing contest between Labor and Liberal as to who can be more evil, particularly around issues with refugees.

I really want to see the prison system and the police system abolished because there is too much police brutality. There are too many deaths in custody. Nothings being done about it, and that needs to be a priority, and Im not seeing that as a priority from any of the parties.

Im a proud indigenous woman and I see the black deaths in custody as appalling and I want to see something done about that. Also the working class seems to be forgotten a lot of the time. We still have issues of homelessness and things like that. We have enough houses. There is enough housing. In my hometown there are so many houses empty or Airbnb.

Things like Airbnb have made it really hard for people to access housing. None of the parties are looking at housing affordability. They say they are, but Im yet to see any action, so that is disappointing for me. House prices, rents are just going up and up, and wages are not going up at the same rate. So housing instability is getting worse and worse, particularly since the pandemic hit.

Speaking about the rising cost of food, Shannon said: When you look at remote Aboriginal communities, its $6 for a can of tuna. Its an absolute crime. Its appalling that they put the prices up, just because they can, because theres nowhere else for those people to go to buy food.

Its just getting worse and worse. We are seeing more and more people living in poverty, and living with a lot of food instability and housing instability.

Shannon denounced government policy on the COVID-19 pandemic. Were forgetting immuno-compromised people, people with disabilities, the elderly, and poorer people who cant access medical assistance. Our government has forgotten vulnerable people in the name of getting travel and tourism back up and running.

My mums a teacher and they have 400 kids away in one week at her school because of COVID. Shes got to go to work every single day and be exposed and shes really worried. Shes 60 now and pretty healthy but her parents are quite elderly so shes always conscious about going to visit them in case she transmits COVID to them. So people are unable to visit their families, and things like that because our government is not taking things seriously. To have 400 kids away out of a school of about 3,000 is pretty hectic.

Shannon was disgusted with the Labor Party. Theres always been that idea that Labor is the lesser of two evils but were seeing, particularly in the lead-up to this election, that Labor is just as dismissive of human rights, like with refugees. I saw a tweet from the Labor Party saying they will send refugees back, theyre all for detaining people and sending people back.

We have enough room in this country to grant asylum to every single person seeking it. We have the resources, we have the money and we have the space. Most of the elders I speak to in the Aboriginal community are all for letting refugees come here, and call Australia home, but theyre not being listened to either.

Ive seen as well that Labor supports Israel. We need to stand in solidarity with Palestinians, especially at this time when things are happening there, and we are not seeing that from Labor.

My understanding is that the Australian government is obsessed with how they are viewed by the United States, and I feel that we dont really need their support. We dont need to be their bitch or deputy sheriff.

Andrew, a scaffolder and construction worker, spoke about the dangerous conditions that he and other workers are subjected to. Im working class and I want to make sure that when I go on a worksite Work Health and Safety is put in place so I can do my job and come home safe.

The way it is now, I see nothing being done about it. Like you said, the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. We are there slaving our backsides off every day. Theyre making bucket loads of money and were getting minimum wage. How is that fair?

Andrew said he had suffered a serious work injury. I was scaffolding on a job site and I wasnt issued a harness for the morning. I said to the boss I wouldnt go up to the two-storey level until I got my harness, and he said, suck it up and get up there. It was a wet day and five minutes later I slipped off and did my back in. I've been off work for three and a half months and I cant get back until at least the end of the year, which is another six to eight months.

I should have said no, and quit, but you have to pay your bills. As you said, take the money out of the hands of the wealthy. What are they going to do? What would they have to stand on? Its like wage slavery. The minimum wage is $22 an hour and they can make thousands a day. Come on, how is that fair?

Asked about what Labor and the Coalition were saying in the election campaign, Andrew said with disgust: I dont listen to them any more. Its all about money. Business should not be just about money. What about your employees? What about your duty of care? Take the money out of it! Think about us. I am a family man. I have two young kids. I couldnt even do anything for them for two or three months, due to my back.

Asked about the trade unions, Andrew commented: The unions are just a cover-up now I think. They put in claims and all sorts of things but theyre not going to do anything. Its been years since weve heard anything back from them. As long as they have money in their pockets, they dont care.

Contact the SEP:Phone:(02) 8218 3222Email:sep@sep.org.auFacebook:SocialistEqualityPartyAustraliaTwitter:@SEP_AustraliaInstagram:socialistequalityparty_auTikTok:@SEP_Australia

Authorised by Cheryl Crisp for the Socialist Equality Party, Suite 906, 185 Elizabeth Street, Sydney, NSW, 2000.

Join the SEP campaign against anti-democratic electoral laws!

The working class must have a political voice, which the Australian ruling class is seeking to stifle with this legislation.

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SEP (Australia) election campaigners find widespread opposition to inequality and cost of living crisis in Queensland - WSWS

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Ever since Standard Oil founder Henry Flagler arrived on its shores at the height of the Gilded Age andtransformed the landscape with quasi-slave labor, the southeast Florida island of Palm Beach has been a magnet for the US ruling class, the winter playground of presidents (Kennedy, Nixon, Trump), moguls (David Koch, Este Lauder, Ronald Perelman), and some particularly noxious financiers (Bernie Madoff, Jeffrey Epstein).

But on a hot Saturday afternoon in early April, a different kind of crowd filled the towns sunny streets. The farm-labor advocacy group Coalition of Immokalee Workers, representing tomato pickers, had convened several hundred farmworkers and activists for a march. Holding red tomato-shaped signs that said Respeto and Dignidad, they made their way past the opulent boutiques and hulking resorts, chanting, Get up, get down, fair food has come to town. The pickers normally toil two hours inland from Palm Beach, in fields that produce two-thirds of the countrys winter tomatoes. On this day, they had traveled to the coast to target one of the islands reigning masters of the universe: billionaire Nelson Peltz.

If youve heard of Peltz, its likely because he made tabloid headlines recently for the wedding of his daughter Nicola to Brooklyn Beckham, son of soccer legend David Beckham and Victoria Posh Spice Beckham, at Peltzs $94.9 million Palm Beach mansion. Peltz, a Trump supporter worth $1.6 billion, has drawn the ire of the CIW because he chairs the board of Wendys; the hedge fund he co-founded, Trian Partners, holds an 11.5 percent stake in the square-burger giant. (Several past and current Trian execs also serve on Wendys 11-person board, including Peltzs son, Matthew.)

Wendys is an outlier among the United States five biggest fast-food companies: Its the only one that has refused to sign on to CIWs Fair Food Program, a worker-driven initiative that ensures pickers get a bonus on top of their poverty wages and that their farm employers abide by a code of conduct. (Wendys said in an emailed statement that it wont join the program because it sources its tomatoes from greenhouses and has its own code of conduct.)

The Fair Food Program, launched by the CIW in 2011, has been an essential safeguard in a state that has all but banished unions. On top of its commitment to fair wages, the program employs third-party monitoring to prevent abuses in the field, which can include sexual harassment, stolen wages, denial of breaks, and even outright slavery. Since 2016, the CIW has urged consumers to boycott Wendys until it joins. While that effort has yet to bear fruitWendys officials and Peltzs team have refused to even meet with the groupthe same strategy has succeeded in pushing other big tomato buyers to commit. In 2005, Yum! Brands (Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, KFC) became the first to sign. Since then, Subway, McDonalds, Chipotle, and Burger King have all joined, in some cases after protracted battles, as have retailers Trader Joes, Walmart, and Whole Foods.

Workers from other industries are taking note of the CIWs successes. Joining the tomato pickers, college-student activists, and aging lefties at the Palm Beach protest were six employees of the meat giant Tyson. These workers made the trek from Springdale, Arkansas, as members of Venceremos, a poultry workers-rights group, to learn firsthand how their counterparts in Immokalee have organized to improve their lives. In isolated, largely white rural communities, you feel so powerless, says Magaly Licolli, the groups co-founder and director. Seeing what the coalition has accomplished gives us back a sense of hope.

Building worker power in Floridas tomato field required a long and ongoing struggle. Draconian right to work laws effectively make traditional union organizing impossible throughout the South. Back in the 1990s, after years of fruitless organizing to push the Immokalee areas local land barons to raise wages and improve conditions for tomato workers, the CIW decided on a different tactic: It would take on the buyers, the public-facing fast-food chains that use tomatoes to garnish burgers and tacos. While working with the US Department of Justice to root out cases of outright slavery in the fields, the group formed alliances with college-student activists to launch boycotts of popular brands, cajoling them to pay an extra penny per pound for tomatoes, to be deposited into a fund that would ultimately be delivered to farmworkers as a bonus. By stirring up enough ruckus, they also pressured the fast-food companies to agree to only buy from growers who submit to a worker-led code of conduct mandating safe conditions and freedom from harassment.

A day before the rally Palm Beach, I stopped by the CIWs community center in Immokalee, a hardscrabble town of 24,000 in the heart of southern Florida farm country. The coalitions HQ is a modest baby-blue structure just across the road from where repurposed school buses pick up workers to transport them to tomato fields. The building buzzed with activity as CIW members prepared for the rally: painting signs, arranging T-shirts and other worker-justice swag, and rehearsing a planned street theater performance.

Amid the din in a shady corner of the back patio, I caught up with Venceremos Licolli. Before helping launch the group in 2019, she had been director of the Northwest Arkansas Workers Justice Center for several years. When she started at the center, the group was struggling to raise awareness about the problems plaguing meatpacking work; things like ever-faster-moving kill lines, which subject workers to high rates of repetitive-stress injuries; and a rising use of caustic chemicals for sterilizing chicken meat, which can lead to respiratory issues.

Magaly Licolli

Tom Philpott

Encouraged by allies in the NGO world like Oxfam, NAWJC and other poultry worker centers across the country began pressuring government agencies like the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the Department of Agriculture to ramp up regulation through letter-writing campaigns and reports. In 2016, the strategy succeeded in pushing the Obama administration to scrap a long-brewing plan to let poultry companies dramatically speed up their kill lines.

But then the Trump administration quickly reversed Obamas move. The setback revealed the workers complete lack of power in the political system. After the defeat, we felt lost, she said. The workers didnt trust any of the mechanismsOSHA, the USDA, the Department of Laborthat are supposed to help them.

Then she heard about how the Coalition of Immokalee Workers was making real progress in improving pay and conditions, even as workers in her industry seemed stuck. In 2018, she and several poultry workers traveled to Immokalee to see the Fair Food Program in action. Her group tagged along with CIW representatives who were conducting a field workshop to inform tomato pickers of their rights, and remind them to report any infractions of Fair Food Program rules by their employers. And this one farm workerright in front of his supervisorstarted telling the Coalition people, this supervisor is rude to us,' Licolli said. The worker felt protected enough to complain about his supervisor, right in front of him! Licolli and her poultry-worker comrades were stunned. That sort of thing would have never happened in the poultry industry, where workers live in fear of being fired or demoted for making their complaints known to bosses, Licolli recalled thinking. It was a powerful moment for us, like, wow, these workers have the right to speak up.'

After seeing that spectacle, and learning more about the code of conduct and the pay gains CIW had made, the Arkansas workers in attendance were like, Magaly, why dont we embrace this in the the poultry industry? Licolli recounted.

In 2019, Licolli left the NAWJC (which is now defunct), and, along with several of the workers who had been on the Immokalee trip, launched Venceremos, Spanish for We will win. From the start, the group planned to employ CIW-like tactics, taking the fight directly to the chicken-eating public rather than limiting themselves to quiet attempts to persuade federal regulatory agencies to act.

Soon after, the pandemic turned the slaughterhouse floor, already a place where injuries are routine, into a site of deadly risk. It laid bare the ruinous conditions inside meatpacking plants and revealed the unchecked power of the industrys executives, who successfully lobbied the Trump and Biden administrations against implementing emergency rules to protect workers from the virus. The result was a public-health catastrophe. In a 2021 report, the US House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis found at least 59,000 of the industrys workers tested positive for the virus during the first year of the pandemic, and at least 269 died. And meatpacking-plant outbreaks emerged as prime vectors for spreading the virus into rural America. Instead of addressing the clear indications that workers were contracting the coronavirus at alarming rates due to conditions in meatpacking facilities, the report concluded, meatpacking companies prioritized profits and production over worker safety, continuing to employ practices that led to crowded facilities in which the virus spread easily.

GIWs Gerardo Reyes speaking to protesters.

Vera Chang

One of the Tyson poultry workers who attended the CIW rally, who asked to be called Rosa, told me she fell sick at the height of the pandemic in 2020, with Covid-like symptoms including headaches and exhaustion. Before she could get a definitive diagnosis, her 80 year-old husband, who also worked at Tyson, fell ill and died in the hospital within three days, from impaired lung function. They both tested positive for Covid. Devastated by his death and still sick herself, Rosa remembers, It was the worst day of my life. Back at work at Tyson, she recently strained her back at her post ripping breasts from chicken carcasses whizzing by at the rate of 39 per minute. In response, she says, Tyson moved her to a less taxing but lower-paying position. After two decades of service in the trenches feeding Americas chicken habit, Tyson pays her an hourly wage of $15.85.

After hearing dozens of stories like Rosas, Licolli and Venceremos went into emergency mode, bluntly telling any journalist who would listenincluding meabout the fear and stress workers felt as they continued laboring shoulder to shoulder as colleagues fell ill and died. Licolli raised hell in a way that other worker centers in the poultry space dont: She organized protests at Arkansas plants; took to Facebook Live to stream videos of herself naming workers who had died of Covid, right outside of Tyson plant; and teamed up with the environmental group Food & Water Watch to launch a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission rebuking the company for launching ads claiming that its workers were safer than ever, even as the virus raged.

And Licolli observed how, in the tomato fields around Immokalee, tomato pickers weathered the pandemic with significant protections. After Covid cases spiked early in the pandemic and the state of Florida ignored pleas to send medical resources to the remote rural town, CIW mobilized the nonprofits Doctors Without Borders and Partners in Health to work with local public-health institutions to set up rapid testing centers in tomato country, at hours convenient for workers. By September 2020, the group had pushed growers bound by the Fair Food Program to implement mandatory Covid protocols that include free masks, social distancing in the field and on transportation buses, quarantine housing for workers who test positive, and provision and delivery of groceries and other necessities to quarantined workers.

These days, the Fair Food Program covers 90 percent of tomatoes produced in the Immokalee region and around 30,000 workers, according to an assessment by the Bridgespan Group, a consultancy for mission-driven organizations. Since the outset of the program, Bridgespan found, these pickers have experienced a 50 to 70 percent increase in their take-home pay, along with substantially improved and independently monitored working conditions in the fields.

As the worst days of the pandemic seem to be behind us, Licolli and her Venceremos peers have shifted out of emergency mode. Inspired by the CIWs strategy, they are thinking bigger, more systematically; they want to take on the issues that made poultry workers so vulnerable to Covids ravages in the first place.

Bright and early the morning after our patio chat, the CIW and Venceremos crews made the trek in buses from Immokalee toward Palm Beach. They traversed rural roads dissecting sugarcane fields along the southern edge of the Lake Okeechobeea region made famous by Edward R. Murrows landmark 1960 documentary expos of dire labor conditions on US farms, Harvest of Shame.

The buses arrived at Palm Beachs Bradley Park, which sits in the shadow of the Royal Poinciana South building, where a two-bedroom apartment rents for $14,000 per month (more than the average annual wage of an Immokalee farmworker). A band played some raucous son jaracho (traditional music from the Mexican state of Vera Cruz) to warm the crowd, as dog-walking Poinciana residents milled about at the parks edges looking confused by the commotion.

Then CIW organizers delivered a bit of street theater on a portable stage to dramatize their complaints. Lucas Benitez, a former farmworker who co-founded the CIW in 1993 and has since emerged as a celebrated figure in worker-justice circles, narrated in Spanish with an English translator at his side. Farm workers acted out a burlesque of life in the tomato patch under two fundamentally different labor regimes: one with pickers working under the protection of the Fair Food Program, the other with them toiling under the gaze of a cruel and uninhibited boss. One treated workers like human beings, and the other treated them like property.

Street theater.

Vera Chang

Gerardo Reyes, also a former farmworker and now a CIW senior staffer, donned a white wig with an alarming bald spot to portray Wendys Chairman Nelson Peltz in the drama. He towered over another player dressed up as a puppet version of rosy-cheeked, red-haired rag doll that serves as Wendys mascot. The message was clear: Peltz controls Wendysand Wendys declines to participate in a program that protects workers from abuse and pays them an extra penny per pound for tomatoes. Wendys says it wont join the program because since 2019, it has sourced all of its tomatoes from greenhouses, not from Floridas fields. CIW counters that there are labor abuses in greenhouses, too, so the fast-food giant should join.

Afterward, the parade wound through the gilded streets of Palm Beach, at one point stopping in front of Pelzs hedge fund Trians local offices while organizers delivered speeches and slogans to the cheering and chanting crowd. Across the street, amid the ruckus, patio brunchers at the Italian restaurant Trevini had no choice but to take note of the calls for justice and the denunciations of one of the islands highest-profile denizens.

As the march rounded the corner to stop at the local headquarters of JP Morgan Chase (a major Wendys shareholder), I caught up briefly with Greg Asbed, a CIW co-founder, and asked whether he thought Wendys would ultimately sign the Fair Food Program. He said it likely would; in addition to consumer boycotts heating up on multiple college campuses that house Wendys locations, some shareholders (not JP Morgan Chase) were also applying pressure.

Trevini restaurant patrons look on at the protest.

Vera Chang

Even though Trian controls the board and has shown no interest in cooperating in the program, as the groundswell continues, Peltz and his allies will have to ask themselves, Whats so bad about joining a successful social responsibility campaignwhats the downside? Asbed said. Meanwhile, there is a downside to dealing with a campaign about not doing it right. Given CIWs track record of getting Burger King and Chipotle onboardboth of which resisted bitterly before signingI believed him.

I checked in with Licolli after the march. She stressed that Venceremos remains in its infancy. Whereas the CIW has been organizing tomato workers since 1993, her group only launched in 2019. Building sufficient trust, confidence, and commitment among workers to confront the poultry industry with high-profile public campaigns will take time. The Venceremos contingent that traveled to Florida were very energized by what they saw, she told me. After watching tomato pickers and their allies march in one of the richest cities in the US and demand justice, they said, if they can do this, we can obviously do it, too.

See the article here:

Tomato Pickers Won Better Protections. Can Their Strategy Work for Poultry? Mother Jones - Mother Jones