the Fall 2016
Labor – Labor – Labor. We need labor to do just about anything and everything in our world of farming, packing and shipping. Where we get it, and how, are seemingly daily
challenges and an ever-common occurrence. Government regulations and audits add to the mix, and are designed to assure that employers are doing the right things for the workers. None of this is new to us, but it is a growing proposition nonetheless.
The editorial column attached is written by a friend, peer and colleague – Tom Nassif, President & CEO of Western Growers. Tom has been at the forefront of the labor debate
both in Washington and California for many years, and he is (in my opinion) a voice of sensibility and sound advice. His sentiments are spot-on with what is happening today.
We will continue to monitor any new developments, and address them accordingly. Stay posted, and enjoy the reading.
Responsible Labor
Standards By: Tom Nassif – President and CEO, Western Growers
In December 2014, the Los Angeles Times published
a series of articles exposing widespread labor abuses
on some Mexican farms that supply produce to the
United States. This type of “investigative journalism”
often ignores positive examples that would lessen
the dramatic impact of the negative ones, and that
may have been the case here. Nonetheless, the Times
series was alarming and, for the American companies
that purchase from these farms, it was reminiscent of
similar exposés of mistreatment at foreign factories
supplying American retailers everything from clothes
to toys. For activist groups, the stories provided new
leverage.
Not surprisingly, the large retailer and restaurant
buyers of fresh produce are seeking to inoculate
themselves from further criticism. We’ve seen this
before. Several years ago, the Coalition of Immokalee
Workers (CIW) emerged in Florida following critical
media coverage of wages paid to tomato harvesters in
that state. With its Fair Food Program, the CIW has
effectively used protests, boycotts and strikes to motivate buyers to adopt their social responsibility agenda.
Retailers like Subway, Whole Foods and Walmart
now impose a human rights-based code of conduct on
many Florida farms.
More recently in the West, the Equitable Food Initiative (EFI) has emerged as a developer and verifier of
labor standards for farmworkers. The organization is
now moving to entice, or pressure, key supermarket
and restaurant chains to recognize EFI certification as
a condition for their preferred suppliers. To date, nine
farms covering 3,000 workers in California, Washington, Mexico and Canada are EFI-certified, with 10
more farms pending certification. At least one major
retailer has so fully embraced EFI that it recently introduced Arturo Rodriguez, president of the United Farm
Workers union, to the company’s produce suppliers
with the message that the suppliers would need to
work with the UFW to become EFI-certified. (A UFW
vice president is chairman of the EFI executive board.)
No one would argue that producing safe food, ensur-
ing a safe work place and treating workers fairly, are
noble aspirations and should be standard practice for all
farmers. I am confident these principles already guide
the operations of our members wherever they farm.
Beyond the progressive and strict federal and state
labor rules governing the employer-employee relation-
ship in the United States, our members recognize that
they are bound by a higher moral law that requires
vigilant attention to worker safety and social justice.
And they act to ensure both are achieved.
Our members have faced a proliferation of third party
audits relative to food safety, and while we know these
are costly and sometimes questionable pursuits, our
growers have endured. So why not embrace another
third party “certifier” like EFI?
As I noted earlier, the EFI’s chairman is a UFW vice
president. This cannot be glossed over. The UFW represents a tiny fraction of the farmworkers in the West,
and their attempts to force thousands of farmworkers
into a union the workers didn’t vote for, and would
have likely decertified but for a union-allied state Agriculture Labor Relations Board, speaks to the reality
that workers are well-compensated, treated fairly and
resent being forced to give up 3 percent of their pay to
the union for nothing. The UFW is also in financial
distress, as evidenced by their repeated pleas to the
California Legislature to use taxpayers to bail out their
union health plan. Along comes the EFI, and a chance
for the UFW to employ a top-down strategy to infiltrate
our farms and our employees.
Don’t believe me? This is from The Bakersfield Californian’s coverage of the UFW’s recent convention:
“Under what’s called the Equitable Food Initiative, the
farm worker union is partnering with some of the biggest
names in the retail food industry to improve the lives of
the people who pick and pack produce consumed here
and abroad.” I added the emphasis to highlight the fact
that UFW President Arturo Rodriguez intends to go
global, and plans on leveraging the EFI to do so.
While none of the EFI-certified farms are currently
unionized, UFW National Vice President Erik Nichol-
son was quoted in the same article as saying, “I tru-
ly believe there are EFI farms that will go union.”
In light of all this activity, the boards of directors of
PMA and United Fresh have formed a Joint Com-
mittee on Responsible Labor Practices. This com-
mittee has been tasked with evaluating appropriate
worker treatment across the supply chain, “poten-
tially leading to an industrywide, global approach to
responsible labor practices.”
We recognize the significance of this committee
and support PMA and United Fresh in their effort to
develop higher standards for foreign producers, where
labor laws and practices are nowhere near as rigor-
ous or consistently enforced as in the United States.
However, we have some reservations about the process
and its potential outcome for domestic growers. The
Joint Committee initiative is co-chaired by executives
from supermarket and foodservice companies; Western
Growers and other grower-centric organizations were
excluded at the outset. I have spoken to Tom Stenzel
and Bryan Silbermann, the presidents of United Fresh
and PMA, respectively, and I am encouraged by their
commitment to take our concerns seriously and to work
with us to avoid unintended consequences. Still, it
seems likely that buyers will ultimately determine the
outcome.
All of this is to say we believe organizations representing domestic growers must lead this effort on the domestic front. To that end, the Western Growers Board
has directed our staff to promotedomestic standards for
responsible labor practices with a particular focus on
the Western states. Working with other organizations
we will base our standards on a foundation of existing
federal and state regulations, which already create the
most stringent worker protection system in the world.
Our intention is to promote a farmworker labor standard reflective of the best practices currently in place
by growers in California and other Western states. We
believe this approach will most efficiently facilitate
confidence in the domestic supply chain and provide
buyers (and their critics) with adequate assurances that
their U.S.-grown fresh produce is responsibly sourced.
