Defend The Farm Workers

“We want these changes to exist not only for Florida farmworkers, but for all farmworkers…” Fair Food Program Education team hits the road, leads the way as the FFP begins its expansion north out of Florida! This week, the Fair Food Program passed a truly extraordinary milestone, and it was marked, quite literally, with a road sign that read, “Welcome to Georgia!” The photo at the top of this post, taken in the early hours of the morning in a field near Bainbridge, Georgia, depicts the CIW education team conducting one of the Fair Food Program’s trademark worker-to-worker education sessions.  These trainings are the very heart of the Program, designed to equip workers with a thorough understanding of their rights under the Fair Food Code of Conduct — the right to work free of sexual harassment and slavery, the right to report abuses or problems on the farm without fear of retaliation, the right to shade, drinking water, and clean bathrooms in the fields, to name just a few.  Armed with this knowledge, workers themselves become the frontline defenders of their own rights, an army of thousands of monitors keeping a close watch over compliance with the Program’s code of conduct and signaling possible violations through reports to the Program’s 24-hr complaint line.  On this foundation of informed worker participation, the Fair Food Program has been able to transform the Florida tomato industry into what one policy expert in the New York Times called “the best working environment in American agriculture.”