Human Rights from Field to Fork: Improving Labor Conditions for Food-sector Workers by Organizing across Boundaries

Abstract

In the United States, more than twenty million people work in the food system, joining millions more around the world whose labor and livelihoods are in the food sector. The food system has become increasingly globalized, with much of what we consume here in the United States produced overseas. International trade policies, consolidated corporate control, and increased industrialization of food production have converged to build a food system that relies heavily on exploited labor forces—from tea plantations in India, to banana plantations and packing operations in Guatemala, to cocoa farms in Ghana. Meanwhile, the segments of the food sector that remain in the United States, whether on large-scale farms, or in processing plants, restaurants, and grocery stores located in communities throughout this country, rely heavily on a vast, low-wage labor force. This article researches and analyzes how the historical roots and current practices in the food sector reflect a widespread disregard for workers’ human rights, and how discriminatory power relations between employer and employee are directly connected to the intersection of race, ethnicity, gender, class, and immigration status in all stages of the food chain. The paper proposes specific ideas for ending unjust labor practices in food-sector industries; for encouraging workers to organize in collaboration throughout the food chain and across racial and ethnic lines; and for creating new business models that will better serve the interests and protect the rights of workers, consumers, business owners, and other stakeholders.