Get ready, Fair Food Nation! Major Wendy’s Boycott mobilization on April 2 will bring the fight for farmworkers’ fundamental human rights to Palm Beach, hometown of Wendy’s Board Chair Nelson Peltz and the company’s largest shareholder Trian Partners…

Make sure to RSVP for the Alliance for Fair Food's network-wide Zoom call on February 10 at 7 p.m. ET to learn more about how you can support the action!

Two long years ago, an advance team of farmworkers from Immokalee and their allies was stationed in New York City, tirelessly crisscrossing the City for meetings with students, people of faith, community organizations, other allies, mobilizing turnout for the highly anticipated “Follow the Money March,” a 3-day march through the financial district with stops planned at the offices of several of Wendy’s top shareholders. What happened next is now history — the march was cancelled following the discovery of a cluster of some of the first documented cases of COVID-19 in the U.S., a cluster that quickly became an unprecedented pandemic. The Follow the Money March was on track to join a long list of unforgettable actions in the two-decade long history of the Campaign for Fair Food, but the virus had other plans.

In the two years since cancelling that ill-fated march, farmworkers in Immokalee have continued to organize, ramping up pressure in the Wendy’s Boycott primarily through virtual actions while keeping the focus on the investors — following the money — behind the hamburger giant, with some notable successes. But today, the CIW and the Alliance for Fair Food have exciting new plans to share!

Get your calendars ready: On April 2, farmworkers and their allies across the Sunshine State will be converging for a major march in Palm Beach, home to Wendy’s Board Chair and hedge fund billionaire Nelson Peltz, and the secondary headquarters of the fast-food chain’s largest institutional shareholder, Trian Partners.

For more than six years now, farmworkers and consumers have demanded that Mr. Peltz use his influence as Wendy’s top decision-maker and CEO of Trian Partners to help protect farmworkers against forced labor and a host of other human rights abuses prevalent in agriculture by ushering Wendy’s into the award-winning Fair Food Program. Instead, Mr. Peltz and Wendy’s have unconscionably failed to take action, pointing instead to the company’s traditional Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) efforts as somehow a satisfactory alternative to the Fair Food Program’s best-in-class, worker-driven monitoring and enforcement mechanisms. All the while, human rights experts have continued to document the ineffectiveness of voluntary codes of conduct and social auditing programs like the ones used by Wendy’s, denouncing the failed auditing schemes as “little more than a sham,” in the words of one widely-respected labor expert. A landmark, 10-year study also concluded that the traditional CSR model has “failed its goal of providing effective protection against labor abuse,” and “should not be relied upon for the protection of human rights.”

As headline after headline exposes horrific cases of modern-day slavery involving thousands of farmworkers, both abroad and right here in the United States, we must hold those who have the ultimate power to bring Wendy’s into the Fair Food Program, and have repeatedly refused to do so, to account.

That’s why this spring, we’re taking the fight to end forced labor in the fields to the glitzy island enclave of Palm Beach, Florida, where Trian Partners recently purchased a building for $23 million to expand their office space and where Mr. Peltz owns a beachfront mansion worth over $123 million. Make your plans to join us on April 2!

If you’re ready to mobilize your community to join the CIW’s 2022 major spring action or want to learn more about how you can support from afar if you’re not in Florida, RSVP here for the Alliance for Fair Food’s network-wide call on Thursday, February 10 at 7 p.m. ET. During the call, CIW leaders and AFF organizers will share more details on the mobilization efforts, as well as discuss the march’s COVID protocols to ensure the health and safety of all who participate.

Stay tuned in the coming weeks for more!