… A formal model of worker-driven collaboration with consumers could do incalculable good if adopted more widely. The Fair Food Program, launched in 2011 in the tomato fields of Florida by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, targets degrading work conditions, including brutal sexual abuse. (Some studies have found that 80 percent of female farmworkers have faced harassment, including rape and other assault.) It enlists the consumers of big agriculture — namely, the fast-food restaurants and supermarket chains that spend hundreds of millions of dollars on Florida tomatoes every year, such as Taco Bell, Whole Foods and Walmart — as enforcers against such abuses. The buyers pledge to pull their business from farms that violate a worker-authored code of conduct, and the workers themselves are the monitors. An independent body conducts investigations and unannounced audits of participating farms, with 80 percent of complaints resolved in less than a month. The consequences of violations are swift and strict: Harassers are fired and temporarily banned from reemployment at participating farms, while growers that fall consistently short face probation or suspension from the program.
The results are stunning...
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