An image from Venceremos, an Arkansas-based human rights organization, in their campaign to improve conditions for essential workers in the meat-packing industry. And shareholders are looking for answers… Venceremos founder Magaly Licolli: “Tyson must adopt worker-driven solutions—with a complaint process that is legally enforceable—to guarantee workers’ rights and dignity…” As COVID-19 has laid bare, the millions of men and women that grow, harvest, and pack our food are essential to sustaining the nation. Yet, they have, for generations, been subjected to sub-standard housing and deplorable working conditions. As the CIW warned early in the pandemic, and the facts now painfully show, these conditions have meant that these workers have suffered tremendously, and disproportionately, from the pandemic. At least 86,908 meatpacking workers, food processing workers, and farmworkers have tested positive for COVID-19. Even more distressing, a recent study showed that food and agricultural workers have suffered the highest COVID-19 death rates of workers in any occupation. The full extent of the devastation is, sadly, still unknown. Wendy’s – which for years has refused to join the Fair Food Program and its widely acclaimed, uniquely successful worker-driven model of social responsibility – has long been aware of the human rights risks in its food supply chain. In fact, in recent years, Wendy’s claims it has “expanded” its supplier code of conduct to respond to human rights “risk factors” from “the nature of agricultural work.” These words ring hollow, however, in light of the many widely-publicized COVID-19 worker safety issues in Wendy’s food supply chain. Wendy's beef supply was disrupted due to the spread of COVID-19 among its suppliers’ workers. Workers at Wendy’s supplier Cargill suffered the largest COVID-19 outbreak linked to a single facility in North America: 1,560 cases. Lack of protections at Tyson, another Wendy’s supplier, resulted in at least 12,275 workers contracting COVID-19 and the death of 39 workers. A wrongful death lawsuit alleges that Tyson managers laid bets on how many workers would get infected. Mastronardi Produce, a reported Wendy’s supplier, with a history of worker safety violations, owns Green Empire Farms, where more than half of the workforce tested positive for COVID-19. And while Wendy’s has said it did not purchase from Green Empire Farms directly, Wendy’s also fails to be transparent about which farms actually do comprise its produce suppliers. As if to add insult to injury, Wendy’s honored Cargill and Tyson in its 2019 “Squarely Sustainable” supplier of the year award, just months before their plants were the site of major COVID-19 outbreaks... Read the full post! 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] Customer Contact Data Notice Sent by [email protected] powered by Try email marketing for free today!