|
|
FCWA's 2011 Year-End Wrap-Up!
The Food Chain Workers Alliance is bringing together workers and their organizations from all along the food chain to build the power necessary for food system workers to improve wages and working and living conditions for themselves and their families, as well as to join with others in advancing towards a more sustainable food system that provides healthy and affordable food for all. We had a great year in 2011 – in case you missed it, check out this great Labor Notes article, "Workers Challenge Big Food," featuring the Alliance and some of our member groups! Read on to the left and below to learn more about our work in our four program areas in 2011!
We’re looking forward to an even more exciting and powerful 2012! Please consider a year-end donation to the Alliance to help us launch our first coordinated organizing campaign among workers in different segments of the food supply chain and to support our release of the first-ever comprehensive report on the state of food workers in the U.S. You can send us a check Food Chain Workers Alliance to 634 S. Spring St. #614, Los Angeles, CA 90014, or donate with a credit card or PayPal through ROC United's account.
 And now you can support the Alliance by buying a union-made FCWA T-shirts! Only $25 (includes shipping and handling), or $20 for low-income/students. Just email us at info @ foodchainworkers.org with your order, payment method, address, and phone number. We have women’s and men’s style and in S, M, L, and XL.
Thank you to the many individual donors and funders who supported us in 2011!
Foundations/Funding Program: Abelard-East, Ben & Jerry's, Ford, Jessie Smith Noyes, Norman, Presbyterian Hunger Program, Sociological Initiatives Foundation, and Surdna.
And thank you to our interns in 2011: Tara Agrawal, Sophia Cheng, Katherine Cielinski, Carrie Freshour, Marty Kirchner, Olivia Levins-Holden, Anthony Lo, Meaghan Mroz-Barrett, and Jimmy Xi! And thank you to the DataCenter interns who worked with us this year: Dan Lichtenstein-Boris, Ben Palmquist, and Marianela Acuña-Arreaza!
And last, but not least - our board of directors is made up of member organizations, that then assign an individual to represent them. Due to some staff changes, this year we have said good-bye to board representatives Trina Tocco, Carlos Rich, Richard Mandelbaum, and Virgilio Aran. Thank you all so much for your dedication and excellent work to advance the Alliance in the past two years!
|
|
|
|
Campaigns
Our board of directors, composed of all of our members, has decided that the Alliance will coordinate an organizing campaign among 3-4 of our member groups in different segments of the food supply chain, all focused on the same corporate buyer. We’re excited to publicly launch this campaign in the spring of 2012, so stay tuned!
In February of this year, the Alliance helped to launch May Day United, a network of worker centers, community organizations, and labor unions formed to increase national participation and power on May Day 2011 to win good jobs, legalization, and equality for every worker. In just a few short months, May Day United created resources to support grassroots organizations and unions to mobilize a high level of worker participation in May 1st actions, including a map and list of 53 actions in 28 U.S. states and in Reynoso, Mexico, know-your-rights materials in English and Spanish, a mobilization video and flyers in both languages, and a press kit, all available on the website.
|
|
Education and Communications
With the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, we developed an educational curriculum about food workers and food justice. The curriculum has been broadened so it can be used by other denominations, schools, and other organizations. It is available for download on our website. With the leadership of volunteer Marty Kirchman, we have begun work on a short video about workers throughout the food system that will become part of the curriculum.
Alliance member groups, volunteers, and the Executive Director have given workshops and presentations at 11 conferences and events this year. You can watch the Alliance director’s TEDxFruitvale talk online, as well as our workshop on Building Worker Power for a Just and Sustainable Food System at the Community Food Security Coalition conference on November 6.
We are also a member of a coalition of leading food and farming organizations working with national bestselling author Anna Lappé to create a new video series and online platform to dispel five persistent food myths: that industrial agriculture is the only way to provide abundant, safe, cheap, environmentally-sound food that people want to eat.
And we are proud members of the US Food Sovereignty Alliance, a US-based alliance of food justice, anti-hunger, labor, environmental, faith-based, and food producer groups that upholds the right to food as a basic human right and works to connect our local and national struggles to the international movement for food sovereignty. |
|
Policy and Standards
We have been hard at work on research for our report on the state of food workers in the U.S., to be published and released at a special summit in early May 2012. The foundation of the report is 600 surveys of food workers that our member organizations collected over the past six months. Almost 30 workers were trained as surveyors. One of the workers trained in March, Deathrice Jimerson, then became the volunteer coordinator of the survey project for his organization Warehouse Workers for Justice.
Our policy work has focused on winning passage of government food procurement policies with fair labor standards requirements. We are working with WE ACT for Environmental Justice in New York City towards a fair trade food procurement policy for the NYC school district – that means that the schools would give preference to local vendors of healthy and nutritious food produced under good working conditions with living wages for the food workers. Please contact us if you’re interested in joining our coalition!
And we have begun exploring the possibility of similar campaigns in other municipalities, school districts, and universities around the country with member groups the Farmworkers Support Committee (CATA), the Center for New Community, the International Labor Rights Forum, and the UNITE HERE Food Service Division, along with allies at the Fair World Project of the Organic Consumers Association, the Presbyterian Hunger Program, and the United Farm Workers. Please contact us if you are interested in this work! The FCWA Executive Director is also a member of a working group of the Los Angeles Food Policy Council, called Building a Market for Good Food, that is developing model standards and suggested measures for implementation that institutions such as school districts, hospitals, and universities can adopt as fair food procurement policies.
We have continued our membership in the Domestic Fair Trade Association and its committee that is developing criteria to evaluate fair trade and social justice certification programs and standards. The DFTA plans to begin evaluations next year.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
