Farmworkers to Table

Greg Asbed and the Coalition of Immokalee Workers are changing the lives of Florida’s tomato pickers. They’re hoping to bring their Worker-Driven Social Responsibility model to other industries.

hirty-two pounds. That’s how much a full bucket of tomatoes weighs when farmworkers pick them from fields in southern Florida. Thirty-two pounds, a little more than a cinder block. Pickers are paid per bucket, on average 40 cents. To earn roughly T$50, a worker must pick about two tons of tomatoes—a day. Greg Asbed has been trying to change this small sector of the agriculture industry over the past 25 years with the Coali - tion of Immokalee Workers, a human rights organization he co-founded that unites tomato pickers in southern Florida. In 2003, a Justice Department official told a New Yorker reporter that Florida’s tomato industry was “ground zero for modern slavery.” Workers live overstuffed in trailers. Women are sexu- ally harassed. That 40-cent rate per bucket? Industry standard since 1978. Since 2005, though, CIW has catalyzed profound changes in Florida’s tomato fields. It secured workers a rate increase. It cre- ated a system to report abuse without fear of retaliation. It's bringing people who sexually assault women to justice and reforming a culture that permitted the assaults in the first place. All this has happened because of CIW’s Fair Food Program, Bret McCabe which was developed by and for the workers in the fields. “We photography Brian Tietz have a theory of change,” Asbed, SAIS ’90 (MA), told me about

42 | johns hopkins magazine images © John D. an d Catherine T . M a cA rthur Foun d ation—use d with permission

Volume 70 No. 3 Fall 2018 | 43 the program, “and it works.” It works because worker out there, along with a tiny chisel,” he says. CIW negotiates deals with the large corporate “Every time they see a violation of this blueprint, buyers who set the prices from tomato farms. they’re chipping it off. And through all these little Since 2005, the Fair Food Program has negoti- efforts—all these workers, all these little chisels— ated binding legal agreements with 14 fast-food we’re creating a beautiful sculpture out of this and retail supermarket chains, from Burger industry that doesn’t exist anywhere else.” King, McDonald’s, and Taco Bell to Trader Joe’s, Walmart, and Whole Foods. ver the years, Asbed—who co- One holdout has been Wendy’s. If Wendy’s founded CIW in 1993 along with wouldn’t come to the table, then CIW would his wife, Laura Germino, SAIS ’91 come to Wendy’s. In March, workers traveled to (MA), and farmworker and orga- New York to protest in front of the burger chain’s nizer Lucas Benitez—has devel- corporate parent, the multibillion dollar asset Ooped a thought exercise he likes to use when “Through all management firm Trian Partners. For five days talking to a group of people about farm work. starting on a Sunday, more than 80 tomato pick- Imagine driving through a rural part of the state these little ers fasted in front of the midtown firm’s building. and coming across a farm stand selling fruits efforts—all For this Freedom Fast, people from local and and vegetables. You stop to get some. Now, what these workers, regional peace organizations, faith-based com- if while you were paying you saw, behind the all these little munities, grassroots organizations, and labor stand, a farmer beating a worker or intimidating chisels—we’re unions joined the fasters in bracing 40-degree a woman, or a worker standing in 90-degree heat creating a temperatures. They were also joined by college with no water or shade. Would you still buy that beautiful students who arrived by bus from campuses in tomato? This scenario involves “a consumer buy- sculpture out Florida, Indiana, North Carolina, Ohio, and Mas- ing something, but now how that thing is being of this industry sachusetts. As part of a protest march that produced is right in front of my eyes,” Asbed that doesn’t marked the end of the fast, nearly 2,000 people says. “And I can’t turn away from that. Now I’m blocked traffic as they crossed Second Avenue. hearing a scream while I’m buying. Does that exist anywhere Asbed was somewhere among this throng. change my mind?” else.” Chatting with him you get the feeling he prefers Asbed didn’t hear the scream until he was Greg Asbed organizing workers over public relations. Since studying at SAIS. And to understand Asbed— being named a 2017 MacArthur Fellow last fall what motivates him, what sustains him in the for the human rights work CIW is pioneering, patient, incremental progress of human rights he’s had to adjust to being a bit more visible. And work—is to recognize that the scream is per- he’s using those opportunities to amplify CIW’s sonal to him. Norig G. Asbed, Engr ’61 (MSE), efforts—not just public actions, such as the Free- A&S ’73 (MS), Asbed’s father, was an Armenian dom Fast and its march, but the slow, 20-years- immigrant to the United States. His father’s in-the-making consciousness-changing effort to mother survived the Armenian genocide; after create a model that gives the most marginalized most of her family was killed, she was sold to and underserved workers in America some another Armenian family fleeing Turkey. Norig, power to change their employment conditions. who was born in what is now Syria, excelled in They call this model Worker-Driven Social school, eventually becoming a student of nuclear Responsibility, and it’s being explored by dairy physicist Niels Bohr in Denmark. Norig’s gradu- workers in Vermont and textile workers in Ban- ate studies brought him to America, where he gladesh. Its transformative power resides in how met Greg’s mother, Ruth-Alice Davis, a pediatri- it activates all workers to know their rights and cian who was the chief of what was then the what to do when those rights are violated. Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Asbed likes to think of the exploitative agricul- Health’s maternal and child health clinic while ture system as a big, ugly, disfigured piece of rock, Norig was in grad school. She would eventually and the Fair Food Program as a blueprint for work in public health for the state of Maryland Michelangelo’s David. “What we did was make a and in the Philippines. Asbed’s mother died in million copies of that blueprint and gave it to every 1993, his father in 2015.

44 | johns hopkins magazine His family history’s combination of persever- they were there. And we were like, ‘Damn, we have ance and service inspired him to get involved in an opportunity here.’“ human rights work after he graduated from That opportunity was to unleash a process Brown University in 1985. He met Germino there, Asbed calls “conscientization”—developing a crit- and they both wanted to pursue activist work ical consciousness. What makes farmworkers (they would marry in 1993). The Peace Corps took poor? Why do they face so much abuse? What are Germino to West Africa while Asbed worked for the root causes of that abuse and what can be done democracy in Haiti. When they returned to the to address them? CIW’s founding motto is “Con- States, they figured they’d get graduate degrees sciousness plus commitment equals change,” and continue working in the developing world. Asbed says. “‘Consciousness’ comes first for a rea- While Asbed was at SAIS, Germino worked son, the idea of understanding critically the situa- with an organization providing legal aid to farm- tion you’re in, why it is what it is, and what direc- workers in southern Pennsylvania. She had a tion to go to address the root of that problem. case involving Haitians and brought in Asbed, From that comes the commitment to change it.” who had learned to speak Creole in Haiti, to Asbed in conversation is thoughtful, often translate. “That was the first time that I learned pausing to compose his next sentence. He firsthand about the conditions of farmworkers,” becomes more enthusiastic and animated when he says. “That was the first time I heard the talking about this process because he sees it as scream at the farm stand. And it was shocking.” the foundation of what makes CIW and the He and Germino moved to southern Florida Fair Food Program powerful: the community of in 1991, and initially worked with Florida Rural people involved in both analyzing problems and Legal Services to get to know farmworkers in the brainstorming solutions. He’s often referred to as community. Germino co-created CIW’s Anti- one of, if not the, chief architect of the program, Slavery Campaign in the mid-’90s, an effort that but he always redirects the discussion back to has investigated and assisted in the prosecution the role of the collective. This deflection isn’t of farm slavery operations, earning national the superficial, there’s-no-I-in-team thinking of and international awards, including a 2015 Presi- business leadership; it’s a fundamental insistence dential Award for Extraordinary Efforts to Com- on creating an organization and system where bat Trafficking in Persons. Immokalee, which everybody rises together. rhymes with “broccoli,” has been a major hub of The budding CIW started holding meetings, “We used to tomato farming in the country for decades. It inviting any workers who wanted to learn about own our slaves,” appears in Edward R. Murrow’s sobering 1960 why they were poor and what to do about it. “We television documentary, Harvest of Shame, which tried to do what workers have always done in says an unseen reported on the inhumane working conditions of order to exercise power,” Asbed says. “If we with- farmer in farm laborers. Workers then were mostly white hold our labor, we can cause a disruption that Harvest of and African-American. “We used to own our brings our employers to the table. That’s the fun- Shame. “Now we slaves,” says an unseen farmer in Shame. “Now we damental idea.” just rent ’em.” just rent ’em.” They went on strike. They fasted. They occu- Today, the majority of tomato pickers come pied the town square where labor crew leaders from Latin America and the Caribbean. In fact, load workers into buses to take them to farms. when Asbed started meeting with pickers in They marched. And nothing changed. “What we the early 1990s, a wave of Haitians was just found out was that there’s a certain level of poverty arriving following the 1991 military coup that is so deep that your ability to withhold your that ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. labor has a strict time limit because of things like Among them were organizers Asbed knew. “We rent and food,” Asbed says. “If you don’t have a literally ran into each other on the streets of safety net, you’re living day by day already, so when Immokalee,” Asbed says. “People I worked you stop having money come in, you can only go with very closely, people who had the same about five days. And the farmers know that.” uniquely powerful organizing and consciousness- CIW’s history in the 1990s was a string of building training that I got in Haiti. And suddenly large-scale actions that drew modest local press

Volume 70 No. 3 Fall 2018 | 45 coverage but rarely any lasting results. “We had sons/Safeway, Ahold (Giant, Stop & Shop), Pub- to take a step back and realize, OK, we’ve been lix, and H-E-B—accounted for more than 50 per- fighting in Immokalee this whole time,” Asbed cent of all groceries bought in the country, with says. “But the tomatoes that get picked in the Walmart alone accounting for 26 percent. fields don’t stay in Immokalee. The food system Together with fast-food chains—Taco Bell buys doesn’t stop at the growers because the food is more than 10 million pounds of tomatoes a consumed. We’re connected to a bigger world. year—they possess gigantic purchasing power. That’s when we came out and said, ‘Taco Bell They buy fruits and vegetables through corpo- makes farmworkers poor.’” rate supply chains that buy from growers. When only a handful of billion dollar corpo- erardo Reyes Chavez started work- rations purchase a product in such vast quanti- ing in the fields when he was 11, ties, they can effectively set prices, and every- first in Mexico, then in Florida, body below them—trucking companies that where he joined CIW in 2000. He’s deliver produce, farms that hire the crew leaders now one of its worker-leaders, and who hire the workers—has to push down labor Gin March spoke numerous times to the protesters costs to maintain a profit. While some costs have “Once we and fasters gathered outside Wendy’s corporate increased over the past 30 years, tomato pickers’ connected the headquarters during the Freedom Fast. rates have remained fundamentally unchanged very bottom of “The idea of the Fair Food Program started since 1978. the supply chain through the Taco Bell boycott,” he said during a Corporations, like consumers, don’t think to the very top, sidewalk interview in March. This boycott, about the people picking their tomatoes, but and created launched in 2001, was a test to see if CIW farm - they care about their brands. “Once we con- a voice of workers could get consumers to help them make nected the very bottom of the supply chain to the corporations change how they do business. Taco very top, and created a voice of consumers telling consumers telling Bell has more than 6,000 locations around the corporations ‘we don’t want you to do business corporations country and is owned by Yum Brands, the world’s this way,’ corporations responded,” Asbed says. ‘we don’t largest fast-food company. Many Taco Bells are “It just took us a while to get there.” want you to do located near high school and college campuses, For Taco Bell, Yum agreed to pay one extra business making every student a potential ally. penny per pound of tomatoes. That additional this way,’ “We stopped in 17 different cities in 15 days money would be passed on to the workers as a corporations on the Taco Bell boycott after several attempts at bonus. Yum also agreed to adhere to a code of responded.” communication failed,” Chavez says. “At the end conduct, written by the farmworkers, that would of the boycott there were around 300 universities be monitored and enforced by CIW. It’s a simple Greg Asbed and some high schools in solidarity with the and direct document that put market pressure workers of Immokalee. Pretty much every major on growers who wanted to sell their tomatoes to denomination got on board and endorsed the Taco Bell: Abide by CIW’s code of conduct and boycott.” When Yum Brands finally agreed to agree to CIW monitoring, or Taco Bell won’t buy meet the boycott’s demands and talk with CIW, your tomatoes. the resulting binding legal agreement laid the In 2007, Yum Brands expanded the agree- groundwork for a new way of negotiating worker- ment to all its restaurant chains, which include employer relations. KFC, Pizza Hut, and WingStreet. Since then, CIW During the 1980s and 1990s, the American has reached agreements with 13 other large retail supermarket industry underwent radical change. food and food service buyers: Ahold, Aramark, Local and regional chains were bought up by Bon Appétit Management Company, Burger larger ones. Warehouse clubs and discount King, Chipotle Mexican Grill, Compass Group, stores also entered the grocery business. the Fresh Market, McDonald’s, Sodexo, Subway, Walmart opened its first combined retail and Trader Joe’s, Walmart, and Whole Foods Market. grocery superstore in 1988; it was the largest food Through their supply chains, tomato farms in retailer in the country a decade later. In 2017, the Georgia, Maryland, North and South Carolina, top six food retailers—Walmart, Kroger, Albert- New Jersey, and Virginia are part of the program.

46 | johns hopkins magazine Greg Asbed, SAIS ’90 (MA), middle, walks near a field outside of Immokalee with his fellow co-founders of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, Lucas Benitez and Laura Germino, SAIS ’91 (MA).

Some strawberry and green pepper farms have y 2011, 90 percent of tomato pro- joined the program, too. duction in Florida, which accounts The agreement inverts the dynamics between for the majority of tomatoes in the worker and grower. Chavez told me that farm- country between November and workers used to be scared to speak up about May, was operating under the Fair abuse. There were never consequences for abus- BFood Program. CIW created the Fair Food Stan- ers, who would either deny it, physically intimi- dards Council as a stand-alone organization to date workers, or simply not hire them again. monitor and enforce the program. That meant “You would have to ask yourself this basic ques- that over the course of the season, the council’s tion, ‘Do I complain, knowing that I am not investigators, five at the time, would interview 50 going to be able to put food on the table for my percent of the more than 30,000 workers to audit family?’” Chavez says. “That was a question that how the farms were doing. And when the council every worker would have to go through. With the officially opened, a 24-hour hotline went live for Fair Food Program, that’s flipped. Now the workers to report abuse. tomato industry has to ask themselves the ques- The council received its first call inside of two tion: Do I, as a grower, choose to defend and pro- weeks. Well, the worker meant to call the coun- tect this crew leader, supervisor, or whoever is cil’s hotline, but he accidentally called a number committing abuse on my farm knowing that if I for the growers instead and reported a violation. do, I’m going to lose the business of the 14 cor - The grower was informed of the call, found the porations in the program?” caller, and fired him in front of everybody. The

Volume 70 No. 3 Fall 2018 | 47 fired worker eventually reached the council’s hot- The code of conduct’s stance on sexual line. “We went out that same afternoon, talked to harassment is a notable example. Women make all the witnesses, interviewed the crew leader and up about 10 percent of tomato pickers, and “the the grower,” says Judge Laura Safer Espinoza, the standard set by workers is zero tolerance for executive director of the council. She served 20 sexual harassment with physical contact,” years as a New York State Acting Supreme Court Espinoza says. “So it’s not like the penal law justice in New York and Bronx counties, retiring where it has to be sexual assault, the touching of with her husband to south Florida. She contacted an intimate body part, or even attempted rape. CIW saying she might be able to volunteer a few It’s any kind of unwanted physical contact. The hours a week with the organization; Asbed, Ger- workers felt that was necessary because women mino, and other CIW members convinced her were being groped with complete impunity since that her legal career prepared her to run the pro- supervisors had that kind of power. Now any gram’s oversight process. “Within a couple of supervisor who sexually harasses a worker with Workers days, that grower was out there apologizing in physical contact is banned from working at a front of the entire workforce to that worker, invit- Fair Food farm for two years. A second offense is demanded the ing him back with back wages for the days he was a lifetime ban.” right to shade fired, and assuring everybody that nothing like Fair Food Program monitoring enables CIW and water while that would ever happen again,” she said. “The rea- to track how the program is working. As of April in the fields, son that nothing like that ever happened again is 2018, the program had resulted in the tomato cor- basic amenities the serious market consequences for non-compli- porate buyers paying $26 million back to workers that aren’t ance. And when you see workers’ faces as their through the penny-per-pound mandate. Since its required by boss stands out there and apologizes and they 24-hour hotline went live in November 2011, the federal labor realize that a worker organization actually council has received 1,800 complaints, 53 percent laws. The achieved the power to free them from retaliation, of which have been resolved within two weeks, growers abided. that’s dramatic evidence of a tremendous culture 79 percent within a month. There have been nine shift in the workplace.” cases of sexual harassment since the council was Implementing the Fair Food Program required created; all the offenders were terminated. drastic changes in how the growers operated. What makes the Worker-Driven Social Workers wanted to be paid as direct hires, mean- Responsibility model so effective is its universal- ing each worker received a check for their work ity and equity, says Cathy Albisa, a human rights instead of the grower cutting a single check to a activist, lawyer, and executive director of the crew leader, who then doled out money as he saw National Economic and Social Rights Initiative fit. Workers demanded the right to shade and in New York. The Initiative houses and advises water while in the fields, basic amenities that the Worker-Driven Social Responsibility Net- aren’t required by federal labor laws. The growers work, which was created in 2015 to promote the abided. “I get up every day and I’m astounded by model in other supply chains around the country this model,” Espinoza says. “The market conse- and world. The Fair Food Program, for instance, quence, what Greg calls the power of the purchas- “works for every worker in the sector,” Albisa ing order, is profound. Beginning in the mid- says. “It’s not only available if you’re a member 1990s, almost every year some crew leader would of CIW, you’re automatically entitled to these get prosecuted for modern day slavery and some- rights if the program covers your workplace. And times go to jail, but the growers’ operation was it centers those who are most vulnerable, those never affected. Since we started, there’s been only who have the greatest needs.” one case, which would have been prevented had How workers identify who is most vulnerable the grower not hired a supervisor flagged by [the and what their needs are—the critical conscious- council] as ineligible to work on participating ness Asbed talked about—is the crucial part of farms. So the goal is not just to find the abusers the model. “Workers themselves identifying what and root them out but rather to make sure abuses they need to live a dignified life and have decent don't happen to workers at all, and the program work is one of the most important step,” Albisa is doing an excellent job of prevention.” says. “There’s a process of identifying and ana-

48 | johns hopkins magazine lyzing the problem with as much clarity as pos- tives of Trian Partners refused to meet with CIW sible. And every sector is going to be different.” representatives during the Freedom Fast. CIW For dairy workers in Vermont, an important continued its #BoycottWendy’s campaign after issue was sleep. Cows get milked twice, some- the fast. In June, CIW members showed up at times three times, a day, which meant that work- Wendy’s annual shareholders meeting in Ohio to ers were on split shifts, “where you punch in, ask the company to join the Fair Food Program. work for four hours, punch out, sleep for three And CIW members returned to midtown Man- to four hours, wake up and punch back in,” says hattan in July to ask Wendy’s one more time. Will Lambek, an organizer and activist with Ver- It took five years to bring Taco Bell to the table, mont-based Migrant Justice, an organization and that was before CIW had evidence of how the that sought guidance from CIW. “And you’re Fair Food Program was working. But talking doing this around the clock. That makes what is about the program working involves doing some- an inherently dangerous industry that much thing consumers don’t do: thinking about the more dangerous if workers are getting little to no lives of the people who make the things we con- sleep.” When Migrant Justice created its Milk sume. CIW’s creation and work overlap with the with Dignity campaign in 2014, one of its worker food reform movement that grew out of health demands was the right to a single eight-hour and safety concerns about industrial farming. stretch of sleep per every 24-hour period. And while advocating local, organic, sustainable, Milk with Dignity signed its first agreement pesticide-free food is nice, promoting farm-to- with Ben & Jerry’s in October 2017, and the pro - table eating does not address the labor conditions gram is now operating at 72 farms in Vermont in which food is grown and harvested. Writing in and New York and covering 250 workers, who The Nation in 2008, Fast Food Nation author Eric began seeing changes in their workplaces this Schlosser asked: “Does it matter whether an heir- year. Farmers started providing face masks, eye loom tomato is local and organic if it was har- protection, and gloves. Workers started seeing a vested with slave labor?” A better idea might be to raise in their rates. think about eating from farmworker to table. Over the summer, Asbed and some other CIW And in today’s political climate, that can be Talking about members visited a few farms to see how the Milk tough for some people. The U.S. Department of the program with Dignity program was faring. Workers Labor’s National Agricultural Workers Survey esti- working involves showed them around, describing the improve- mates there are 2.5 million farmworkers in Amer- doing something ments they’ve seen to both their housing and ica, 68 percent of whom were born in Mexico, and consumers don’t working conditions. Even one of the dairy farm- 80 percent of whom identify as Hispanic. And do: thinking ers saw the benefit of the process; he told Asbed people from Latin America have been demonized about the lives of that when workers feel like they’re being by an administration that is aggressively targeting the people who respected, they treat the cows with respect, and immigrants, migrant workers included. “We have the cows make better milk. always framed our work as fundamental human make the things Seeing a completely different set of farm work- rights,” Asbed says. “And one of the things about we consume. ers use ideas developed by tomato pickers to bring agriculture is that it has never cared whether changes to their own industry left Asbed practically you’re an immigrant, what color you are, nation- giddy. “It’s one thing to have the opportunity to see ality, anything. It’s historically been an equal your theory of change work beyond your wildest opportunity exploiter. It’s always taken advantage dreams,” he says of the Fair Food Program. “Espe- of people who are vulnerable. cially in this day, to know that in this tiny corner of “So, yes, it is a very difficult time right now. this world you’re making things better in ways you But for the most vulnerable populations in this can see and measure? That’s beautiful. But seeing country, it’s been darker than it is today without that replicated somewhere else? Seeing the theory any kind of light at the end of the tunnel. So in stretch to a whole other environment and work? our minds, it’s always been a 90-degree uphill When we left that dairy farm, I was high.” climb. We don’t focus on the [political] climate. Wendy’s has yet to see the benefit of improv- We focus on the next handhold.” ing working conditions in the fields. Representa- Bret McCabe is the magazine’s senior writer.

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