The Brown Student Labor Alliance, with members of Fuerza Laboral, visited another Wendy’s in Providence Saturday, to deliver a letter and picket the restaurant to demand “Wendy’s to commit to signing onto the Fair Food Program, a program that ensures that farmworkers are provided a living wage and good working conditions.”
The activists entered the restaurant on Eddy Street and presented a letter to the manager. After the manager accepted the letter the activists moved peacefully out of the restaurant and to the sidewalk, where they marched and chanted. This was part of a series of similar actions covered in part here and here. In accepting the letter, the manager of the Wendy’s kept the disruption of business within the restaurant to a minimum.
According to the Fair Food Program website,
The Coalition of Immokalee Workers’ (CIW) Fair Food Program is a unique partnership among farmers, farmworkers, and retail food companies that ensures humane wages and working conditions for the workers who pick fruits and vegetables on participating farms. It harnesses the power of consumer demand to give farmworkers a voice in the decisions that affect their lives, and to eliminate the longstanding abuses that have plagued agriculture for generations.
The Program has been called ‘the best workplace-monitoring program’ in the US in the New York Times, and ‘one of the great human rights success stories of our day’ in the Washington Post, and has won widespread recognition for its unique effectiveness from a broad spectrum of human rights observers, from the United Nations to the White House.
According to the activists, of “the five largest fast food corporations in the country — McDonald’s, Subway, Burger King, Taco Bell, and Wendy’s — Wendy’s is the only one to not yet sign onto the Fair Food Program.”
In a release announcing the action, the Brown Student Labor Alliance said, “With 14 food retailers now part of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers’ Fair Food Program, we are seeing incredible changes — from a zero-tolerance policy for sexual harassment and modern-day slavery, to access to shade, water, and bathrooms, to a real voice on the job — made real not only in Florida, but across state-lines. Just a few months ago, the CIW traveled up and down the eastern seaboard of the United States — Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland and New Jersey — carrying out worker-to-worker education sessions about these new rights for the first time ever with thousands of workers beyond Florida. With these changes, there is now a deep urgency for reinforcement and expansion of the Program, which will only be possible through more retailers joining — yet, corporations like Wendy’s and Publix continue to utterly deny their responsibility to farmworkers.”
A Wendy’s restaurant in Providence was the site of a protest Saturday evening as members of Brown Student Labor Alliance and Fuerza Laboral protested the chain’s refusal to sign onto the Coalition of Immokalee Workers‘ Fair Food Program (FFP). After holding signs and marching outside the location, the thirteen Brown University students entered the restaurant until the manager on duty ordered them to leave.
Most of the restaurant patrons seemed okay with the surprise protest, some even joining in with the chants, but one family became extremely agitated. A man told me that if I turned the camera towards his kids he would assault me. The same man approached the protesters, took a sign from one of them and ripped it in half before tossing it on the floor. He was very angry.
The protest was part of the Student/Farmworker Alliance‘s protest, “Schooling Wendy’s National Week of Action” intended to pressure Wendy’s into joining the FFP, described as a “ground-breaking model for worker-led social responsibility based on a unique collaboration among farmworkers, Florida tomato growers and 14 participating buyers.” It is “the first comprehensive, verifiable and sustainable approach to ensuring better wages and working conditions in America’s agricultural fields,” say organizers.
According to their website, of “the five largest fast food corporations in the country — McDonald’s, Subway, Burger King, Taco Bell, and Wendy’s — Wendy’s is the only one to not yet sign onto the Fair Food Program.”
The program works by having companies pay one extra penny per pound of produce purchased. That extra penny goes into a fund that allows for six benefits to farmworkers, according to FFP’s Code of Conduct:
1. A pay increase supported by a “penny per pound” premium paid by Participating Buyers;
2. Zero tolerance for forced labor, sexual assault, and other abusive conduct;
3. Worker-to-worker education sessions carried out by the CIW on the farms and on company time to ensure workers are aware of their new rights and responsibilities;
4. A worker-triggered complaint resolution mechanism comprising of a timely investigation, corrective action plans, and if necessary, suspension of a farm’s Participating Grower status, and thereby its ability to sell to Participating Buyers;
5. Health and Safety Committees on every farm to give workers a structured voice in the shape of their work environment; and
6. Ongoing auditing of farms to insure compliance with each element of the FFP.
Organizers are asking people to boycott Wendy’s until the corporation signs on to the FFP.
