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Vox: “A binding contract is crucial to worker-driven social responsibility, a sharp contrast to those toothless corporate social responsibility initiatives.”
Lucas Benitez, farmworker and co-founder of the CIW: “With [worker-driven social responsibility, we’re no longer letting the foxes guard the henhouse. We as workers are protecting our own rights.”
As Worker-driven Social Responsibility (WSR) programs come online across the world — from the farm fields of the US to the textile factories of Asia and the fishing fleets of the North Sea — the innovative model is winning increasing recognition as the new paradigm for protecting human rights in global supply chains. Born in the tomato fields of Immokalee, Florida, WSR programs now protect workers on five continents, and the model is expanding to new industries and new countries with each passing year.
The widely-read online journal Vox published a feature-length article this past week documenting the remarkable story of the WSR model’s emergence and growth since its inception with the launch of the Fair Food Program in 2010. Written for the outlet’s solutions-oriented vertical, Future Perfect, the piece contextualizes the urgent need for WSR in the 21st century against the backdrop of the ongoing human rights crisis in global supply chains and the 30-year long, documented failure of the top-down Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) model.
We’re excited to share a condensed version of the piece below, though you can — and truly should — read the piece in its entirety by clicking here [[link removed]] .
As the Vox story illustrates, WSR programs are quickly becoming a crucial means for workers around the globe to protect and expand their own essential human rights at work, often working hand in hand with unions to attack stubborn labor abuses from a new direction, with a new and additional source of power — the power of the billion-dollar brands’ volume purchasing, harnessed by workers themselves through the binding legal agreements that undergird the WSR model. We hope you enjoy the excerpt below, and that you visit the Vox website to read the rest of the piece there [[link removed]] .
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The little-known but successful model for protecting
human and labor rights
How a worker-driven initiative is filling in the gaps left behind by corporate social responsibility programs.
by Sam Delgado [[link removed]] Jul 5, 2024
Over the last century, people have started demanding more from the businesses where they shop. Whether it be a pair of jeans [[link removed]] or the food [[link removed]] on their plates [[link removed]] , consumers want to know that what they’re buying isn’t just good quality [[link removed]] but also ethically and sustainably made.
In the early 20th century, groups like the National Consumers League and the now-defunct League of Women Shoppers organized consumers to take advantage of their power [[link removed]] in an effort to improve labor protections and the rights of workers in the United States. Today, ethically minded consumers are also motivated [[link removed]] by climate change and animal rights, as the consequences of our overconsumption have become clearer…
In practice, corporate social responsibility can look like companies donating to charities every year, committing to net-zero emissions by a certain date, or focusing on labor practices. To prove they’re doing this work, companies will partner with nonprofits or hire third-party consultants to audit their supply chains, and then measure and report their progress in annual reports, press releases, and on their websites.
These practices are now nominally widespread in modern business. According to the EPA [[link removed]] , roughly 80 percent of all Fortune 500 and S&P 500 companies publish a report on their corporate social responsibility practices and progress.
But while corporate social responsibility sounds good on paper, the workers deep within these corporations’ supply chains — the ones that sew the clothes you wear and harvest the produce and ingredients for your food — say that they are not feeling the benefits of such programs.
Despite the profits they help companies rake in through their labor, many of these workers are still making pennies [[link removed]] while stuck working in unsafe environments [[link removed]] . In some cases, the conditions are so bad that they amount to exploitation that is clearly unethical and, in many cases, illegal, as many labor rights advocates [[link removed]] and corporate watchdogs [[link removed]] have argued. Some of what corporate responsibility programs claim they’re doing and have achieved, workers and advocates say, qualifies as greenwashing or “social washing” — using these strategies and initiatives to mislead the public [[link removed]] and appear as if they have robust, effective environmental or labor practices.
To fill the gap between a commitment and reality, collectives of workers and labor advocates worldwide are organizing to create a solution that will not just address labor abuses when they happen but encourage the prevention of exploitation altogether. They come from a variety of industries, and they’re leaving the promises of corporate social responsibility behind and creating something new — and more importantly, effective — in its place: worker-driven social responsibility.
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Coalition of Immokalee Workers
110 S 2nd St
Immokalee, FL 34142
United States
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