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Philadelphia-area students and SFA members at Aramark Headquarters to kick off a series of weekly pickets,
February 2010. |
February 9, 2010 - Read on as SFA goes to-to-toe with Aramark and debunks many of the statements made by the company in response to student organizing around the Dine with Dignity campaign.
Dine with Dignity/Aramark campaign background
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Aramark: “Please know that Aramark shares your concern for the well-being of Florida tomato farm workers. Our company has been working with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) for some time.” Or, “We are currently working directly with CIW to address the needs of the farm workers.”
Response:
These statements are patently false, and there is no way Aramark can say that it is “working directly with the CIW” in any sense of the term. Corporations such as Compass, Whole Foods, and McDonald's — who have signed binding, working agreements with the CIW — are working with the CIW and taking concrete steps to improve the situation in Florida's fields, including working together with the CIW toward establishing an independent, third party monitoring body. Two or three preliminary discussions between Aramark and the CIW that have gone nowhere do not constitute such an ongoing, committed, working relationship. There currently exists no commitment, even in principle, on the part of Aramark to work together with the CIW and farmworkers.
Our campaign is not going away because Aramark claims to be working with the CIW; SFA members and farmworker allies are very clear on this, and we've previously and successfully dealt with disingenuity on the part of corporations. For Aramark executives and representatives to parrot such false statements to students on dozens of campuses across the country time and again shows not only an utter lack of creativity, but an under-appreciation of and lack of respect for our intelligence and dignity, as students and as farmworkers. Frankly, we're not impressed. Our patience is being tried and we call on Aramark to stop the games and do the right thing now.
As of today, students are preparing to organize to demand their administrations replace Aramark with a more responsible alternative such as Bon Appetit or Compass, in an echo of the 25 successful contract-cutting campaigns led by SFA during the "Boot the Bell" campaign. Bon Appetit and Compass — through their agreements with the CIW and their commitment to partner with farmworkers to improve the conditions in the fields — have set the bar for social responsibility in the food service provider industry's tomato supply chains, and we will not accept anything less from Aramark (or from Sodexo). Aramark has no excuse to not do what its industry partners/competitors have already done.
As for the claim that Aramark “has been working with the CIW for some time,” the first of seven recent highly-publicized modern-day slavery cases to emerge from Florida's fields was successfully prosecuted in 1997; additionally, Aramark was contacted by SFA and put on notice about the situation of Florida farmworkers (due to Aramark's relationship with Taco Bell on many college campuses) as early as 2002, during the highly-publicized CIW Boycott of Taco Bell. For Aramark to claim with a straight face, then – given all of this, and given all of the time that has passed – that a handful of tentative conversations that have not led anywhere constitute “working directly with the CIW” is, again, an insult to the intelligence of farmworkers and their supporters.
It's good to see that Aramark has finally — after several years of ignoring the dire human rights crisis in Florida's fields — come around to recognizing the need for change, if only in rhetoric. But it's not enough to simply recognize the problem, and it's definitely not acceptable to deflect calls for social responsibility with half-baked public relations maneuvers. Aramark needs to do the honest, hard work of sitting at the table and hammering out a workable solution with the CIW, as seven major food corporations have done to date. Until that happens, students, faculty, and other concerned members of the campus communities (and school districts, local governments, and other venues) serviced by Aramark will continue to pay close attention to and take action on this issue.
Aramark: “Aramark has independently agreed to pay the 'penny per pound' premium and is working with both the CIW and our distribution partners to identify effective methods for these funds to be distributed directly to the Farm Workers. We have begun to track and accumulate this premium and anticipate a near-term distribution solution for this premium.”
Response:
Of course, no one wants this to be true more than the workers who desperately need economic relief from thirty years of stagnant wages. It would be very simple for Aramark to make this happen if it signed an agreement with the CIW: Aramark would only then need to direct its tomato purchases toward East Coast — one of the largest tomato growers in Florida (and/or one of the other two growers who have agreed to participate in the agreements) — and the penny-per-pound would commence to be passed through to the workers in a transparent, verifiable fashion. The “effective method” and “distribution solution” for the penny-per-pound to reach the workers is already in place, it's part of the working model that growers like East Coast and corporations like Compass are today helping to build and expand with the CIW.
Aramark has not “independently agreed” to do anything; the need for change in Aramark's tomato supply chain was brought to the company's attention by farmworkers and their allies, and farmworkers must be a part of making these changes. A "go-it-alone" approach is inadequate because Aramark, like scores of other corporations, surely has “independently” had "supplier codes of conduct" in place for years, if not decades; none of these have done anything to stop the litany of abuses — up to and including forced labor — that continue to emerge from the fields where this country's food is planted, grown, and harvested. (It should be noted that growers in the Florida tomato industry have a recent history of proposing their own "fox-guarding-the-henhouse" alternatives to the principles of the Campaign for Fair Food; it would behoove Aramark — a corporation that invests millions in its brand image, one increasingly tied to notions of social responsibility and sustainability — not to hitch its corporate responsibility wagon to such nefarious efforts. Aramark needs to look no further than the fact that two growers tainted by the most recent slavery prosecution were certified by a grower-controlled "code of conduct" dubbed SAFE.)
But why enter into a discussion about codes of conduct if we're talking about the “penny-per-pound?” It's simple – immediate economic relief is only one part of what the workers are demanding. As a matter of fact, Aramark doesn't adequately address a code of conduct or worker participation anywhere in their boilerplate statement, and those are key components of any resolution to this issue.
As it stands now, Aramark can claim to be paying the penny-per-pound premium, but without an agreement with the CIW, there's no verification or accountability to back that up. Apparently, Aramark will oversee its own payments under its penny per pound plan, and Aramark will verify its own compliance with the changes it is proposing. That's just not credible. Transparency, verification, and participation by those who are most directly affected are essential elements of the agreements the CIW has reached with other industry leaders, and they are essential elements in any defensible definition of social responsibility.
 The demand for economic relief goes hand-in-hand with the demand for an enforceable code of conduct and the demand that workers are respected as full partners in the design and implementation of these changes. Taken together, those are the three main and inseparable demands of the Campaign for Fair Food; Aramark has thus far only claimed to address one of those, and wants us to take their word for even that. The degree to which Aramark is serious about working together with the CIW to put into place these three principles is the degree to which Aramark is serious about reaching a mutually acceptable, and mutually beneficial, resolution.
(To further elaborate, the working agreements that the CIW holds with major food corporations stipulate the following main concepts: That those corporations pay at least one penny more per pound for the tomatoes that they purchase, to directly increase farmworker wages; that these corporations work together with the CIW to develop and implement an enforceable, human-rights based code of conduct (including zero tolerance for modern-day slavery) in their supply chains to reverse decades of inhumane treatment of workers in the agricultural industry; and the guarantee that workers themselves are involved in the development, verification and monitoring of all aspects of these agreements. This participation – a permanent voice for farmworkers in helping shape the conditions under which they work – is the linchpin of said agreements and is at the core of how and why the CIW is seeking to reform the agricultural industry. As supporters of the CIW, we share this perspective: Workers themselves who are most directly and intimately affected by the abuses of the industry must be at the forefront of transforming and eliminating those abuses alongside their partners in the corporate food industry and, increasingly, in the agricultural industry itself.)
In sum, what the workers are seeking is a more sustainable and more stable Florida tomato industry through a “win-win-win” scenario: The corporate purchasers of tomatoes protect and enhance their brands by practicing true social responsibility and sustainability (in increasing demand from their own consumers), the growers benefit by getting a huge amount of guaranteed business (there are now seven corporations that are bound — through their agreements with the CIW — to preferentially buy tomatoes from growers willing to implement those agreements), and workers benefit from increased wages and more humane working conditions. In other words, the CIW agreements create a market-based incentive, for the fist time ever, for growers to do the right thing; the enforceable code of conduct carries real market consequences for growers who abuse their workers. But this only works if Aramark and other corporations come on board and sign agreements to work together with the CIW.
Aramark: “...it is widely known that the money accumulated over these past few years [through the fair food agreements' penny-per-pound stipulation] has largely been held in escrow and that the farm workers have not received these funds.”
Response:
Would that it were acceptable for farmworkers and their allies to make blanket, unsubstantiated claims and legitimize them with the clause “it is widely known.” But we can't – and don't – roll like that.
 To understand what Aramark is referring to, however, we can turn here, in particular the following selection:
Progress hit a snag in November 2007 when the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange (FTGE), a powerful industry lobby group, announced that its members would not pass the penny-per-pound bonus onto their harvesters as required by the Fair Food agreements. Without participating growers, the CIW and its buyer-partners agreed to temporarily place the accruing funds into an escrow account until willing growers stepped forward. Meanwhile, the CIW pressed ahead with the campaign in anticipation of the day when the growers’ unified resistance crumbled.
After extensive behind-the-scenes negotiations, three Florida tomato growers were onboard by September 2009, including East Coast Growers, the third-largest producer in the state. Presently the CIW is not only expanding the Campaign for Fair Food into the supermarket and foodservice industries but also implementing the worker-designed code of conduct and verification mechanisms called for by the campaign at these participating farms. U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders heralded the breakthrough as “the beginning of the end of the harvest of shame that has existed for far too long in Florida’s tomato fields.”
And the reason why those growers came around? The purchasing power that the CIW has been able to harness since 2001 through the Campaign for Fair Food and the agreements it has struck with seven leading food corporations.
In other words, Aramark will only be helping pass the penny through to the workers in a more sustainable and transparent fashion if it signs an agreement with the CIW. It's peculiar that Aramark singles out the complications that existed in getting the extra penny to the workers, as if to poke a hole in what the CIW is asking for, when it was precisely the participation of major tomato purchasers, like Aramark’s competitor Compass, that broke the FTGE's logjam and allowed the penny to once again pass through to the workers about whom Aramark claims to be so concerned. As of December 2009, workers at East Coast were receiving the extra penny-per-pound payments, which are also being independently verified.
Aramark: “...we have also independently decided to direct (through our distribution partners) all tomato purchases toward our preferred growers whose practices meet applicable wage and workplace laws and regulations, and who may have the ability to ensure distribution of funds directly to the Farm Workers...” (emphasis added)
 Response:
As we've alluded to above, there is no such thing as a “preferred grower” besides the ones that are participating in the CIW agreements, and Aramark is in no place to determine, on its own, who such “preferred growers” are. (We've also addressed the “ability to ensure distribution of funds” issue.) The reason why it's not up to Aramark to determine “preferred growers” is because, for far too long, the “no questions asked” tomato purchasing policy of leading food corporations like Aramark has resulted in the abysmal conditions that exist today. All of Aramark's (and Wal-Mart's, and Publix's, et al) “independent” efforts to date have done nothing to ameliorate the human rights crisis in Florida's fields.
Unfortunately, in the tomato industry, “workplace laws and regulations” doesn't mean a whole lot. Many of the hardships and abuses that workers face, such as long, grueling hours of stoop labor, sub-poverty wages, lack of the right to organize, lack of a voice in the industry, no right to overtime pay, no right to health benefits, etc. -- are perfectly legal. Other abuses are violations of the law, but the law is hardly ever enforced.
The CIW's campaign and agreements with major tomato purchasers have put into place, on the other hand, the first real, concrete market consequences for violations of workers' rights, consequences that are slowly influencing the growers to implement reforms and modernize the agricultural industry. To cite an example, the Department of Labor for the entire area of southwest Florida (where tens of thousands work in the agricultural industry alone) is lucky to have one or two agents and an answering machine with an English-language recording at its disposal. So for Aramark to pin its vision of social responsibility – and the elimination of forced labor from its supplier's operations – on “wage and workplace laws and regulations” is woefully inadequate. Those laws and regulations did nothing to stop seven cases of slavery since 1997; in contrast, the agreements the CIW has forged with major tomato purchasers stipulate zero tolerance for modern-day slavery, and this zero-tolerance policy has already had an impact on the growers tainted by the latest slavery prosecution to emerge from Florida.
The question for Aramark today, then, is: From which growers implicated in the drumbeat of slavery cases over the past decade has Aramark refused to buy tomatoes?
Since March 2009, the Student/Farmworker Alliance -- in partnership with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers -- has led the national "Dine With Dignity" campaign calling on major food service provider corporations —including Aramark and Sodexo — to work with the CIW to improve the wages and working conditions of farmworkers in their tomato supply chains.
In September 2009, Compass Group -- the world's largest food service provider -- reached an agreement with the CIW and a major Florida tomato grower to implement a penny-per-pound pay increase for tomato harvesters and a stringent code of conduct for its tomato purchases from Florida. This breakthrough signaled, in the words of US Senator Bernie Sanders, "the beginning of the end of the harvest of shame that has existed for far too long in Florida's tomato fields." In subsequent statements, Compass has pointed to the leadership role of the Student/Farmworker Alliance in bringing this issue to the company's attention.
As students -- whose tuition and meal plan dollars fatten the profits of corporations like Aramark and Sodexo -- we have the right and responsibility to know where the food served on our campuses comes from, under what conditions it was produced, and to demand accountability from our schools and the corporations they contract with. As part of "Dine With Dignity," SFA members and other CIW allies on campuses and in communities across the country have held marches and rallies, organized educational events, written editorials, collected petitions, passed student government resolutions, and held meetings with their Dining directors and local Aramark/Sodexo representatives to express their concerns and their demand that Aramark and Sodexo address the human rights crisis in Florida's fields.
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Background: Dine with Dignity/Aramark campaign