If the pandemic has taught us anything, it’s that the well-being of farmworkers at the base of Wendy’s supply chain cannot be divorced from the company’s own well-being. As thousands of farmworkers across the country test positive for COVID-19 — putting their lives, and our country’s food supply, in danger — how are retail food companies like Wendy’s stepping up to protect the health and safety of the essential workers their business depends on? MARK YOUR CALENDARS: Join the Fair Food Nation on May 27 at 5 p.m. ET for a virtual “Essential Labor, Expendable Lives: A People’s Forum” condemning Wendy’s rejection of the Fair Food Program! Over two months ago, the COVID-19 public health crisis began taking root in communities across the U.S. In the short time since then, the coronavirus has shaken our country to the core, leaving millions of people without jobs and claiming the lives of nearly 100,000 people — and counting. The devastation has been especially brutal in marginalized communities like Immokalee, where grinding poverty and overcrowded, substandard conditions existed long before the pandemic hit, thanks to generations of neglect by elected officials and industry leaders alike. Here in Immokalee, farmworker leaders of the CIW have been working tirelessly to mobilize the community to protect itself against the coronavirus, while at the same time advocating with public health agencies for urgently-needed healthcare resources, all against a backdrop of continued indifference from state and local officials. Despite successfully securing an initial round of community-wide testing from the state, and establishing a promising partnership to address Immokalee’s COVID and non-COVID-related health care needs with two of the most highly-regarded health organizations in the world, Doctors Without Borders and Partners in Health, there remains much to be done. Workers are beginning to travel north up the East Coast with the summer harvest season, accompanied by the uncertainty of what will happen if they become sick while risking their lives to put food on our tables. And as the summer season begins, headlines are already beginning to surface with reports of hundreds of farmworkers testing positive for COVID-19, from Washington’s Yakima Valley to upstate New York. Across the country, the COVID-19 crisis has exposed the many long-standing inequities within our food system. Despite the essential nature of their labor, workers from produce fields to meatpacking plants across the country are falling victim to the deadly virus due, in large part, to the overcrowded, sub-standard living and working conditions that have been their lot for generations. But the virus has not only pulled back the veil that, in normal times, obscures food workers’ lives from consumers’ view – it has also served to underscore an essential reality of our food system: The health of the multi-billion dollar brands at the top of the food industry is inextricably tied to the health of the millions of low-wage workers at the bottom.  When meatpackers in Sioux City, Iowa, are too sick to work because the unsafe, inhumane working conditions there — conditions they have been fighting to improve for decades — are the perfect medium for the spread of the coronavirus, the Smithfield plant is obliged to close its doors, grocery stores struggle to put meat on their shelves, and consumers across the country feel the pinch. Perhaps a chain is not the best metaphor to describe the food system, as the image implies a series of self-enclosed, independent links. Rather, the process that seamlessly stretches from fields and factories in Florida and California to grocery stores and restaurants across this country is more like a single body; when the arm is infected, the head feels the fever. CIW’s Gerardo Reyes Chavez beautifully captured this analysis while speaking to NPR on Wednesday about the urgent need to ensure farmworkers are protected when risking their lives at work: “That’s one thing that many people don’t realize: Our well-being is tied together. If we don’t have food, then there is no way in which anything else can function.” Indeed, this inextricable connection underlies the very premise of the Fair Food Program: The solution to farmworker poverty and abuse lies in leveraging the immense wealth and market power of the brands at the top of the food industry to demand compliance with fundamental human rights in the fields at the bottom of their supply chains. Wendy’s is no exception… and nor are greenhouses The CIW has been calling on Wendy’s for nearly a decade to join the leading human rights program in the country for ensuring that farmworkers have access to safe, healthy and respectful working conditions. And for nearly a decade Wendy’s has refused. But if the pandemic has taught us anything, it’s that the well-being of farmworkers at the base of Wendy’s supply chain cannot be divorced from the company’s own well-being... Read the full post on the CIW's website! Coalition of Immokalee Workers (239) 657 8311 | [email protected] | www.ciw-online.org Connect with us ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ Coalition of Immokalee Workers | 110 S 2nd St, Immokalee, FL 34142 Unsubscribe [email protected] About Constant Contact Sent by [email protected] in collaboration with Try email marketing for free today!