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"The fields have changed – now, we have better wages and better treatment for everyone. Before, there was nothing like that. Before, I would be working under the sun, working hard, and I would want to stop for water. The boss would stop me, and I would say, I need water. He would say, there’s the ditch over there, it’s got some water. There were no water bottles. We were exhausted, we needed water. There were no toilets. Before, if you spoke out, you would be fired. ‘Tomorrow, don’t come, there’s no work for you.’ But now that we are united, we have strength. We are taking steps forward, and we cannot go back. We have to go forward. We are building a road forward, and we will never go back.”
-Don José (Florida Farmworker)
On November 15, 2010, the CIW and the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange signed an agreement to extend the CIW’s Fair Food principles (already agreed to by 9 participating buyers at the time) — including a strictly enforced code of conduct, a collaborative complaint resolution system, a participatory health and safety program, and a worker-to-worker education process — to over 90% of the Florida tomato industry and tens of thousands of workers. On that day in Immokalee, Florida, the CIW’s groundbreaking Fair Food Program was officially born.
Now, 13 years after that watershed moment, the Fair Food Program has expanded beyond tomatoes in Florida to include over a dozen agricultural products in 10 states and 3 countries — and the Program is continuing to expand every day, to new states and to new crops and, in the past year, even to new countries. By designing a program that assigns responsibility for the conditions of low-wage workers toiling in remote farms around the world to global corporations at the top of supply chains, the FFP forged an entirely new way of guaranteeing basic rights for vulnerable workers: the Worker-driven Social Responsibility Model. This model is now inspiring new programs adapted from the FFP into industries like the dairy industry in Vermont, the fishing industry in the UK, and more!
Donate to the Fair Food Program! Be one of 300 donors needed to unlock $30,000 in a matching challenge - see below for details. [[link removed]]
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Workers who have experienced farm work before and after the Fair Food Program, like Don José, know — and feel — the difference the Program makes. It is urgent that the same transformation Don José has experienced is made on as many fields as possible in as many states as possible, so that tens of thousands of more workers — currently trapped in dangerous, low-paying, back-breaking work without a voice or power to protect their rights — can experience fairer wages and working conditions stability, dignity, and safety on the job. That is why we need you.
From the dusty crossroads of a tiny agricultural town in Florida to the rest of the world, the CIW’s work is sustained by a vast network of consumer allies whose support has enabled us to maintain the FFP and advise other worker organizations on how they can adapt the WSR model for their own industries. Your gift today not only helps protect farmworkers here in Immokalee and throughout the Fair Food Program, it also helps us continue the work of expanding this groundbreaking model of human rights protection across the globe. Together, we can guarantee freedom and dignity for workers with protections fit for a 21st century global economy.
Make a gift today to ensure that more workers who harvest the food we eat, sew the clothes we wear, or build the homes and offices we live and work in, can exercise their rights to be treated with dignity and respect!
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Fair Food Program donors Travis McConnell, Cheryl Queen, Brent Probinsky, Mary P. Pautz, Heal the Planet Foundation, and an anonymous donor have issued a challenge to Fair Food Nation: If 300 individuals make a gift this week (regardless of the gift size) they will give $30,000 to the Fair Food Program. Make a gift to unlock $30,000 to the program that prevents modern-day slavery, sexual assault, child labor, and physical abuses in the fields. Be a human rights defender today!
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Coalition of Immokalee Workers
110 S 2nd St
Immokalee, FL 34142
United States
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