The Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) is a worker-based human rights organization focusing on social responsibility in corporate supply chains, human trafficking, sexual violence at work and occupational health and safety.
Starting in 1993 from a foundation of farmworker community organizing in Immokalee, Florida, the CIW is best known today for its Fair Food Program (FFP), launched in 2011. The FFP harnesses the purchasing power of over a dozen retail food brands, from Taco Bell to Walmart, to compel compliance with a human rights-based code of conduct on participating farms. The Program was born in the Florida tomato industry and has spread to ten US states and Chile, including expansion into the cut flower industry and multiple additional crops, and incipient expansion efforts in South Africa and Mexico through the support of the US Department of Labor. A new channel for co-ops and smaller independent grocery stores to support the Program is expanding through the FFP Sponsor Program.
The FFP also gave rise to the Worker-driven social responsibility model (WSR), which has been successfully replicated in the apparel industry in Bangladesh through the Bangladesh Accord (now the International Accord), in Lesotho through the Lesotho Agreements, and in the dairy industry in the state of Vermont through the Milk with Dignity Program. The CIW provides technical assistance to organizations that are interested in adopting the WSR model through an umbrella organization, the WSR-Network.
Along with its campaigning and human rights enforcement efforts, CIW was a pioneer in the early days of the US anti-trafficking movement, uncovering several forced labor operations and collaborating with federal authorities in successful prosecutions in the 1990s.Bowe, John. "Nobodies: Does Slavery Exist in America?" The New Yorker, April 21, 2003.Estabrook, Barry. "Politics of the Plate: The Price of Tomatoes." Gourmet, March 2009. Since then, the CIW has continued its anti-slavery efforts, collaborating with law enforcement in more than a dozen domestic and transnational slavery prosecutions, helping to free thousands of workers from slavery operations in the Southeastern US, and training state and federal law enforcement officers in what has come to be known as the "victim-centered" approach to fighting human trafficking.
Early actions in Florida agriculture
The CIW, initially called the Southwest Florida Farmworker Project, was formed in 1993 in Immokalee (Im-AH-ka-lee), Florida, a center of the state's billion-dollar fresh tomato industry. The group's organizing philosophy is based on principles of popular education and leadership development, as epitomized in CIW's motto "Consciousness + Commitment = Change".
Between 1995 and 2000, the CIW organized several major actions to protest declining real wages for tomato harvesters, as well as frequent violence from supervisors towards field workers. This period included community-wide work stoppages in 1995, 1997 and 1999; a 30-day hunger strike undertaken by six members in December, 1997– January,1998; and a 230-mile march from Ft. Myers to Orlando in 2000. By 1998, these protests "won industry-wide raises of 13-25% (an aggregate of several million dollars annually for the community in increased wages). Those raises brought the tomato picking piece rate back to pre-1980 levels (the piece rate had fallen below those levels over the course of the intervening two decades), but wages remained below poverty levels and continuing improvement was slow in coming."CIW website, "About Us."
In 2000, a change in strategy gradually emerged, from one that looked exclusively at the farm level, with a focus on abusive farm bosses and farm owners unwilling to consider workers' concerns, to an analysis that places much of the responsibility for degraded farm labor conditions at the feet of the multibillion-dollar retail food corporations. According to this analysis, retail food giants leverage their unprecedented volume purchasing power to drive prices down at the farm gate, where falling prices are translated into downward pressure on farmworkers' wages and working conditions by farms looking to maintain shrinking margins. The organization's focus then moved from growers to retail companies, to be pursued through the launch of a nation-wide campaign.
Campaign for Fair Food
Winning a partnership with buyers In 2001, the CIW declared a national boycott of Taco Bell, marking the launch of the Campaign for Fair Food. The Campaign's key slogan—"Taco Bell makes farmworkers poor"—captured the essence of the CIW's thinking: when major buyers such as Taco Bell leverage their volume purchasing power to demand discounts from their suppliers, they create strong downward pressure on wages and working conditions in these suppliers' operations.
A 2004 study by Oxfam America confirmed this trend: "Squeezed by the buyers of their produce, growers pass on the costs and risks imposed on them to those on the lowest rung of the supply chain: the farmworkers they employ."
During the Taco Bell Boycott, the CIW worked closely with religious and community groups and a student network, the Student/Farmworker Alliance, to pressure Taco Bell from different angles. The idea was that collaboration was built on a shared self-interest for desired change. For Immokalee farmworkers, that change was higher wages and improved working conditions. For their allies, the change was ethical consumption. From this foundation, a national consumer-network enlisting students, faith organizations, food and environmental justice advocates, and socially responsible investors formed to hold retail food industry brands accountable for human rights abuses in their produce supply chains.
On March 8, 2005, Yum! Brands, Inc., parent company of Taco Bell, agreed to all of the CIW's demands, including: The first-ever direct, ongoing payment by a fast-food industry leader to farmworkers in its supply chain to address sub-standard farm labor wages (nearly doubling the percentage of the final retail price that goes to the workers who pick the produce); The first-ever enforceable Code of Conduct for agricultural suppliers in the fast-food industry (which includes the CIW as part of the investigative body for monitoring worker complaints); Market incentives for agricultural suppliers willing to respect their workers' human rights, even when those rights are not guaranteed by law; 100% transparency for Taco Bell's tomato purchases in Florida.
After the Taco Bell Boycott, the Campaign for Fair Food shifted its focus to the rest of the fast-food industry. In response to the campaign, McDonald's helped create an industry-controlled code of conduct known as SAFE (Socially Accountable Farm Employers) that the CIW and its allies deemed insufficient. On April 9, 2007, an agreement between McDonald's and the CIW was announced at the Carter Center in Atlanta, Georgia.Groom, Nichola. "McDonald's agrees to pay more for Florida tomatoes." Reuters, April 9, 2007. The agreement, which met the standards previously set by the Taco Bell accord, also included a commitment by McDonald's to work with the CIW to develop an industry-wide third-party mechanism to monitor conditions and investigate abuses in the fields.
In May 2008, at the U.S. Capitol, the CIW announced an agreement with Burger King. The world's second-largest burger chain had originally strongly opposed the campaign, even going so far as to hire a private investigative firm to provide information on the Student/Farmworker Alliance. As part of the announcement, Burger King's chief executive, John W. Chidsey, apologized for prior negative remarks directed towards the CIW and went on to praise the group's efforts. Subway, the largest fast-food buyer of Florida tomatoes, signed an agreement with the CIW six months later in December 2008.Miguel, Tracy X. "Subway agrees to pay another penny per pound for Southwest Florida tomatoes." Naples Daily News, December 2, 2008. With this agreement, four of the world's largest fast-food companies were now supporting the campaign. The CIW and Chipotle Mexican Grill reached a Fair Food Agreement on October 4, 2012, after a six-year campaign by the CIW.Sellers, Sean. "Chipotle Challenge: Time to Back Up Food With Integrity." Grist.org, December 11, 2009.
In September 2008, the CIW broke ground in the supermarket industry by signing an agreement with Whole Foods Market. Karen Christensen, a Whole Foods executive explained, "We commend the CIW for their advocacy on behalf of these workers. After carefully evaluating the situation in Florida, we felt that an agreement of this nature was in line with our core values and was in the best interest of the workers." The Whole Foods agreement marked the first time a retailer agreed to support the CIW initiative without extended public protests.
Throughout 2009 and 2010, the Student/Farmworker Alliance's "Dine with Dignity" campaign targeted the food service industry since many of these companies operate on college campuses. During this period, the CIW reached agreements with Bon Appétit Management Company, Compass Group, Aramark, and Sodexo.
In February 2012, the CIW and Trader Joe's "signed an agreement that formalizes the ways in which Trader Joe's will work with the CIW and Florida tomato growers to support the CIW's Fair Food Program." This was the first Fair Food agreement the CIW signed with a major food retailer in the aftermath of the 2010 breakthrough settlement with the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange.
In January 2014, Walmart, the largest grocery retailer in the U.S., announced it was joining the Fair Food Program. In its agreement with the CIW, Walmart committed to help expand the Fair Food Program outside of Florida and into crops other than tomatoes. Alexandra Guáqueta, chair of the UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights, attended the signing ceremony and conveyed a statement on behalf of the Working Group. The statement praises the Fair Food Program for its "smart mix" of monitoring and enforcement tools, including "market incentives for growers and retailers, monitoring policies and, crucially, a robust and accessible mechanism to resolve complaints and provide remedy," adding, "Workers have no fear of retaliation if they identify problems." The statement concludes, "We are eager to see whether the Fair Food Program is able to leverage further change within participating businesses, and serve as a model elsewhere in the world."
In 2015, the CIW signed Fair Food Agreements with The Fresh Market and Ahold (parent company of Giant and Stop & Shop).
The Campaign for Fair Food is currently focused on Wendy's, in addition to several supermarket chains who remain uncommitted to the Fair Food Program, including Publix and Kroger. In March 2023, a group of around 100 farm workers launched a protest march across Florida to pressure both Publix and Kroger to join the Fair Food Program, and to highlight their deplorable working conditions, including forced labor.
The CIW innovative campaigning strategy has not gone unchallenged. For instance, in November 2017, the Center for Union Facts filed a complaint with the Internal Revenue Service asserting the CIW "does not serve the public at large but instead a group of workers seeking concessions from their employers." The union watchdog requested that "the IRS examine CIW's Forms 990 for 2013, 2014, and 2015, and, if appropriate, revoke its tax-exempt status." The complaint was investigated by the Trump Administration Department of Labor and ultimately dismissed.
Winning a Partnership with Growers