Gerardo Reyes Chávez, CIW, in Civil Eats: “[Farmworkers in the FFP] don’t feel pressure to keep working under conditions that are placing their lives and their health at risk. And that’s fundamentally different from what happens outside of the program.”

Civil Eats: “This model pioneered by FFP, known as Worker-Driven Social Responsibility, has been adopted by other industries long plagued by abuse. It inspired Bangladesh’s garment industry to form a similar partnership between brands and trade unions, protecting over 2 million factory workers with a legally binding accord.”

As the US gears up for another scorching summer harvest season, experts and advocates are sounding the alarm that more farmworkers deaths due to heat stress are inevitable without enforceable protections. Facing this acute crisis, the Florida legislature responded in the most inhumane way imaginable: by passing a bill that actively blocks local governments from establishing and enforcing protections for outdoor workers. 

For hundreds of thousands of outdoor workers, the lack of effective heat protections is literally a matter of life and death: As Gerardo Reyes told the online food journal “Civil Eats,” we cannot afford to wait for the Florida legislature to find its conscience.

That’s why the CIW is laser focused on expanding the life-saving provisions of the Fair Food Program — which include rigorously enforced heat stress protections that empower workers themselves to monitor those protections in the workplace — to as many farms as possible. And with the support of more consumers, producers, and buyers of good faith, we can provide those best-in-class protections to all farmworkers in this state.

Civil Eats’ Grey Moran wrote an excellent report this week documenting the Florida legislature’s actions, and how the Fair Food Program provides a novel way forward for farmworkers seeking to guarantee their basic human rights via an innovative partnership with buyers and growers. The piece also illustrates how the FFP serves as a blueprint for workers in other industries, including key Florida industries from construction to landscaping, to protect themselves from the myriad dangers at work. 

We’re excited to share that piece with you today, as well as a brief excerpt from a related Miami Herald piece if you go to our website, which rounds out how critical programs like the FFP become as climate change accelerates and the need for responsive, dynamic, and enforceable solutions become all-the-more urgent. 

Florida to Ban Farmworker Heat Protections. A Groundbreaking Partnership Offers a Solution.

By Grey Moran, March 20, 2024

In this week’s Field Report, the Fair Food Program offers the strongest, legally binding protocols to keep people safe when politicians fall short…

Earlier this month, Florida’s Senate passed a bill banning local jurisdictions from passing measures protecting workers from heat exposure, the latest of a series of draconian laws targeting immigrantsand workers in Florida. This bill, which awaits the approval of governor Ron DeSantis, prohibits governments from requiring that employers provide water, shade, and breaks to workers—relatively small measures that can mean the difference between life and death for workers laboring under Florida’s hot sun. This law precedes what is expected to be another record-breaking summer of extreme heat.

“It’s morally repulsive, and it will kill farmworkers,” said Erik Nicholson, a farmworker advocate and the former vice president of United Farm Workers. “I have accompanied the families of too many farmworkers who have needlessly died due to heat stress.”

But Nicholson also highlighted the promise of another avenue to bring strong heat standards to Florida farms: The Fair Food Program (FFP), a groundbreaking partnership between retailers, farmers, and farmworkers that has implemented the strongest, legally binding heat protocols in the nation on Florida’s farms, while bypassing the state’s Republican-controlled legislature.

Originating in Florida’s tomato industry, the program now operates across eleven states and four countries. With the support of a new U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) award, it is anticipated to expand this year to protect farmworkers in 25 states.

“We as workers can’t afford to wait for the Florida legislature to find its conscience,” said Gerardo Reyes Chavez, a former farmworker and organizer with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, in a statement. “That’s why we are focused on our partnership with many of the state’s largest growers and on expanding the Fair Food Program.”

The FFP was established in 2011 by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), a worker-based human rights organization with a long history of community-based farmworker organizing in Florida. The program is a unique partnership between farmers, farmworkers, and 14 major food retailers—including Subway, Whole Foods, McDonald’s, Walmart, and Taco Bell—that guarantees a set of legally binding farmworker protections for heat and other workplace conditions, which were drafted by workers. An independent, trilingual council operates a 24/7 worker complaint line and audits the participating farms.

“[Farmworkers in the FFP] don’t feel pressure to keep working under conditions that are placing their lives and their health at risk. And that’s fundamentally different from what happens outside of the program,” said Chavez.

Between April and November, Florida’s hottest months, the program’s heat protocol mandates shade on fields, water with electrolytes, and a rest break every two hours. The addition of electrolytes, explained Chavez, was based on “scientific research about the need to incorporate those so that workers can be protected long term in regards to kidney failure...”

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

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