Washington Post, “These farmworkers created America’s strongest workplace heat rules,” 2/17/24:

* “Leonel Pérez remembers when conditions on tomato farms were very different. He started picking tomatoes when he was 20. Summers were hot and humid. Workers sometimes fainted or ended up in the hospital with heatstroke.  But even when the heat reached dangerous levels, Pérez said he and his co-workers couldn’t always take basic steps to protect themselves. “You couldn’t just say, ‘I’m going to stop and drink water,’” Pérez, now 35, said. “You’d ask [the boss] for water and they’d say, ‘Don’t worry, it’s going to rain soon. Just wait.’”

* “There are no federal workplace heat safety rules , although the Labor Department is slowly working to create some… But at a time when companies are resisting government efforts to regulate heat safety, the FFP has convinced many businesses to voluntarily follow even stricter standards.”

* “So far, dozens of farms in 10 states have joined the program, protecting 20,000 workers. At least 30 more farms, from an additional 11 states, applied to join this year after the Agriculture Department began offering up to $2 million in subsidies to farms that follow safe labor standards and participate in worker-led monitoring programs like the FFP.”

In an extraordinary feature-length article, The Washington Post reported this past weekend on the latest advancement in farm labor conditions under the CIW’s Presidential Medal-winning Fair Food Program: the Program’s comprehensive and enforceable heat illness prevention standards, an innovative mix of health and safety regulations deemed in the Post’s report to be “the strongest set of workplace heat protections in the United States.” These requirements were fashioned in a remarkable collaboration among the CIW, the Fair Food Standards Council and FFP Participating Growers who worked together to create new, effective standards in response to the dangers presented by rising temperatures and prolonged heat waves.

The detailed article — which also contains many stunning portraits of the men and women behind the Fair Food Program, including workers and staff at Pacific Tomato Growers/Sunripe Certified Brands, the first major tomato grower to sign a Fair Food agreement in 2010 and an invaluable partner in the development and success of the Fair Food Program ever since — provides an up-close look at the FFP in action and vividly illustrates what has quickly become a critical model for adapting workplaces and saving workers’ lives in a world of rapidly accelerating climate change.

The piece weaves together interviews with workers, growers, auditors with the FFSC, field supervisors and farmworker staff with the CIW in a comprehensive analysis of the Program as a new paradigm for protecting the human rights of workers in global supply chains – one that is currently being adapted and implemented in industries across the world, ranging from garment factories in Asia and southern Africa to fishing boats of the northeast coast of Scotland.  

From protest to partnership, from a distant vision to the day-in-day-out reality of a more modern, more humane agricultural industry, this remarkable article traces the Fair Food Program’s decades-long history and is, quite simply, a must-read.

Here below is an excerpt from the text of The Washington Post feature on the Fair Food Program. We also encourage you to check out the piece on The Washington Post’s website , which includes many truly beautiful visuals of the program and of those who make it possible (unfortunately, due to copyright rules, we have had to replace the Post’s wonderful photos with an in-house selection of photographs from the annals of FFP history, which is a very good reason to go to the Post site for the original article!).

These farmworkers created America’s strongest workplace heat rules 

By Nicolás Rivero and Eva Marie Uzcategui, Feb. 17, 2024 at 6:30 a.m. 

IMMOKALEE, Fla. – The sweet, earthy scent of tomatoes hangs in the air as a crew of 44 workers speeds through rows of vines. They fill 32-pound buckets with fruit, then deliver them to co-workers waiting on the backs of flatbed trucks who dump the contents into crates to be sorted and packaged. 

During an eight-hour shift, each worker hauls an average of about three tons of tomatoes. They work at this pace all winter in this small farming community in southwest Florida — and all summer on a farm in Tennessee, where temperatures can reach the 90s. 

But unlike at many other farms, every worker takes a 10-minute break every two hours during the hottest part of the year. When they feel the effects of heat illness coming on, they  have the right to cool down in the shade. Sunripe Certified Brands, the company that owns the farm, must provide clean water, shaded rest areas and nearby bathrooms for all of its workers. 

These are the strongest set of workplace heat protections in the United States. They were not put in place by local, state or federal regulators, but by the workers who spent years organizing to push companies to adopt them. 

Created in 2011 by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, a nonprofit that represents farmworkers, the Fair Food Program (FFP) certifies farms that follow a strict set of workplace safety rules. In exchange, participating farms are first in line to sell their wares to 14 big produce buyers that include Walmart, Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods and McDonald’s. 

Coalition of Immokalee Workers
110 S 2nd St
Immokalee, FL 34142
United States

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