NEW VIDEO! VT dairy workers launch official Milk with Dignity video… “We are organizing ourselves to shift power, and to ensure that farmers and farmworkers have a voice in the industry…” A battle for fundamental human rights is brewing in Vermont’s dairy industry, and at the heart of it all lies this pivotal question: Who should speak for farmworkers when it comes to defining the conditions in which they work and live? In one corner: Migrant Justice, a farmworker organization that has been hard at work for years in the dairy worker community of Vermont, building a broad base of members and drafting a sophisticated platform for change — a plan they call “Milk with Dignity” — that envisions a more modern dairy industry founded on an equal partnership among farmworkers, farmers, and the corporations that buy Vermont’s dairy products. In the other corner: Ben & Jerry’s, a wildly successful corporation with a highly valuable brand based in large part on an image of progressive politics and a genuine commitment to social responsibility.  Yet despite its sterling reputation, Ben & Jerry’s has chosen so far to reject Migrant Justice’s call for worker-driven social responsibility, standing instead by its own plan, dubbed “Caring Dairy,” a corporate social responsibility scheme that dairy workers say relies on self-monitoring by farmers, lacks any real enforcement mechanisms, and denies workers a real voice in the design and implementation of a system to protect their own human rights. Last week, as the battle began to heat up, Migrant Justice released the campaign’s official video, a powerful one-two documentary punch... Check out new video and an article from The Nation about Vermont dairy workers' Milk with Dignity Campaign over at the CIW website!

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