Far-reaching power of Fair Food Program model to eliminate sexual harassment and assault lifted up by Time’ Up Entertainment: The CIW “used consumer power to push those farms that have no incentive to take action, and in doing so changed the worker power dynamic. We have to think of something for this industry that changes the power structure.”
Since the national rise of the #MeToo movement, workers from across a wide spectrum of workplaces in the U.S. – from the movie sets of Hollywood and the halls of our nation’s hospitals to the back kitchens of restaurants and the country’s agricultural fields – declared that the time had come to bring an end to sexual violence in the workplace. Two years since #MeToo became a national phenomenon, this powerful public movement has entered a new phase: With the ubiquitous nature of sexual harassment now plainly exposed, how does the movement take the next step toward lasting, transformational solutions?
For farmworkers across the Eastern Seaboard, the solution is crystal clear: The unparalleled power of the Fair Food Program is that next step. With its wall-to-wall education on the right to work free from sexual violence, paired with a swift and effective complaint resolution mechanism and clear auditing protocols – and backed by market consequences when violations do occur – the Fair Food Program has yanked up the stubborn roots of sexual harassment and assault in the fields. PBS Frontline called the FFP “unique” in the country as a preventative program to address sexual violence. The Harvard Business Review, the New York Times, the CNN Freedom Project, The Nation, Civil Eats, the United Nations SHIFT Project, and the Equal Economic Opportunity Commission declared the Fair Food Program one of the country’s (if not the world’s) most successful models to address sexual harassment in the workplace.
In the words of Alejandrina Carrera, a farmworker on a Fair Food Program farm today who told CNN of her experience as the victim of sexual violence in the fields twenty years ago at the age of 14, “You can work freely. You’re not going to be harassed. You’re not going to be insulted. There’s more respect now.”
The transformative impact of the model established by the Fair Food Program has not gone unnoticed. In the fashion industry, the Model Alliance partnered with the CIW to design and launch the RESPECT Program, built to protect models from sexual harassment and health and safety hazards (LINK). In Hollywood, actors like Alyssa Milano and Amy Schumer have not only lifted up the model and its impact, but jumped in to lend their support to the Fair Food movement, calling on major fast food hold out Wendy’s to join the FFP. In an op/ed in The Wrap this past spring, Alyssa Milano declared:
The Immokalee workers’ laser focus on power is a lesson for us all, as we stand up and declare Time’s Up on sexual harassment and assault. Sexual violence is a crime of power. Redress the underlying imbalance of power and we can end it…
…We all need to take a page from the Immokalee workers’ book across all work environments, including and starting with the entertainment industry. We can eradicate sexual harassment and violence for the next generation. All we have to do is make it bad for business.
Now, that hopeful message is spreading. Last month, the leaders of Time’s Up Entertainment, the entertainment arm of the Time’s Up organization that emerged from the #MeToo movement in Hollywood to address sexual harassment and assault, addressed a room full of film editors and post-production professionals to talk about the future of the Time’s Up movement in Hollywood. Having identified major obstacles to entertainment workers’ ability to safely and accessibly report abuse – and then to see an effective investigation and appropriate consequences follow – Nithya Raman, former executive director of Time’s Up Entertainment, and Mara Nasatir, the organization’s director of initiatives, pushed the crowd to “think of something for this industry that changes the power structure.”...
