Battles that were fought and won over the past 150 years for the protection of basic labor rights are now being fought again around the world, thanks to one of the most basic contradictions of modern globalization. "Free Market" theory suggests that the most efficient and optimal economic outcomes are achieved when each of the core production inputs -- land, capital and labor -- is allowed to seek the opportunities where it will earn the highest return. This logic explains why grain is shipped around the world to wherever the price is highest, and why investors are now free to send their money wherever it will generate the best interest rate.
20 years of globalization have freed up "land" and "capital," which now flow freely around the world with ever fewer tariff restrictions. Globalization has also concentrated land and capital in fewer hands. However, over the same period, most countries have actually increased restrictions on the movement of labor, especially from south to north. Workers are not allowed to pick up and move to where the wages are highest, but companies routinely "race to the bottom" and relocate to where wage rates are lowest.
This explains why the benefits of globalization have accrued disproportionately to the owners of land and capital -- the richest 20% of the world's population -- at the expense of labor, the only economic resource available to the vast majority of the world's population. Until this basic inconsistency in the application of economic theory is fixed, it will be very hard to argue that our current globalization is a fair process.
This is why the response of workers in the food system is so important, and deserving of support. In the United States and Canada, farm workers have unionized and led impressive boycott and pressure campaigns to expose their exploitation at the hands of unscrupulous companies. Procesing and retail workers have also blown the whistle on unsanitary and dangerous food preparation techniques, while denouncing the union-busting strategies of meat-packing companies, fast-food chains and discount supermarkets. You can read more about how to support their efforts below.
Farm Workers: In the 1960s and 70s, the heroic organizing efforts of Cesar Chavez, founder of the United Farm Workers union, helped to give faces and names to the largely immigrant population that toiled in the fields to grow and harvest the food we take for granted. Yet despite the advances made in exposing the plight and exploitation of the people who make "cheap" food possible, tremendous abuses remain today -- from the scourge of low wages without benefits, to the darker secrets of indentured servitude and even modern slavery.
However, thanks to the efforts of organizations like those listed at right, consumers are being challenged to look beyond the pickles and tacos in their lunches to consider the conditions under which their food is produced, and to name the companies whose profit margins depend on exploitation of their work force. The Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) has drawn national attention to the abuse of tomato pickers in Florida through their Taco Bell Boycott Campaign, which successfully connects the dots between the inhuman wages of the workers and the profits of Yum! Brands, owner of the Taco Bell chain.
By taking their boycott to college campuses and the younger market segment that is key to fast food profits, the Immokalee Workers have made a convincing case for why it is incumbent on end-user food service companies to require that their vendors observe labor laws back through the supply chain to the fields where their product is grown.
The challenge for farmworker advocates is to continue their efforts on three fronts: with the public institutions responsible for the enforcement of labor laws and basic human protections; with the companies that profit from cheap labor and who must improve the pay and working conditions of their workers; and with the consuming public, which must be pushed to ask more questions about where their food comes from, and how much exploitation is required to maintain the current system. The groups at right are good places to start for more ideas on how to advance each of these three necessary agendas.
Food Processing and Retail Workers: While climate and soil quality continue to determine where food can be grown, the availability of subsidized oil, liberalized trade and cheap labor reduce the limits on where it can be processed or sold. As a result, the globalization process has dramatically influenced the food system, with negative results for those who work in the processing industry and in the supermarkets from which an increasing proportion of the world's population get their food.
In the face of low wages and increasingly hazardous working conditions, meat packers and poultry workers are organizing to challenge the companies that exploit them, though their efforts are sometimes complicated by reluctance on the part of immigrant workers whose legal status is not protected. Nonetheless, they are having success in their campaigns to expose the dangers they face in the workplace, as well as the implications for food safety when companies place a premium on maximizing output while cutting corners on sanitary measures.
Meanwhile, retail workers are faced with a frightening consequence of consolidation and concentration in the food system. US union organizing in supermarkets has been reasonably successful over the years. However, with the emergence of WalMart as the largest food retailer in the world, it appears that the giant company's labor policies could become the industry standard: WalMart is renowned for its low wages and uncompromising efforts to prevent the unionization of its workforce.
It is therefore important to support the efforts of workers at WalMart and similar "hypermarkets" to defend their right to collective bargaining and freedom of association. But as the global food companies become increasingly concentrated and vertically integrated, the labor rights movement must respond with more effective coordination among the different industry sectors along the supply chain. As the quote above suggests, vertically-integrated union movements are a necessary response to the disproportionate labor market muscle of the global processor-retail cartel. The organizations listed at right offer more detailed insight into the struggle of processing and retail workers to challnge the hegemony of these companies.
