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Coming to a grocery store near you: Human rights for farmworkers

9/18/2015

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​by Rabbi Toba Spitzer and Rabbi Barbara Penzner

Reprinted from the Jewish Journal 

Who would believe that one tomato can change so many lives?
 

Earlier this month, Ahold USA, parent company of Stop & Shop, has become the first major grocery chain to enter into the Fair Food Program of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), a groundbreaking human rights campaign started by the migrant tomato pickers of Florida. They have agreed to strict human rights provisions — devised and demanded by the farmworkers themselves — to protect tomato-pickers from exploitation in the fields, including sexual harassment, violence, and wage theft. Ahold will also pay the workers an extra penny a pound for the tomatoes they pick, raising their wages above sub-poverty levels and tangibly improving their standard of living.
 

We’re excited to see our hometown grocery store making such a critical commitment to the human rights of the workers who pick their tomatoes. Stop & Shop was founded in Boston in 1914 by a Jewish family, the ancestors of state Treasurer Deb Goldberg. In the late 1980s, the chain was acquired in a leveraged buyout and in 1995, purchased by multinational Ahold. Before the buyout, Av and Carol Goldberg ran Stop & Shop like a family business. The agreement with CIW harkens back to their enduring legacy of caring for their workers, their suppliers and their customers.
 

We met with the CIW at their headquarters in Florida. T’ruah, The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights, sponsored a trip for rabbis to learn firsthand from the CIW about their advocacy and why the Fair Food Program was different — and more successful — than traditional corporate social responsibility efforts, which have failed to meaningfully protect farmworkers from abuse or sustainably change working conditions. From these men and women, immigrants from Central America and Haiti who do the work of harvesting our food, we learned that slavery in America is not a thing of the distant past. Until very recently, there were documented cases of migrant farmworkers held against their will, beaten and sexually assaulted, and denied wages in the Florida tomato fields. But thanks to the CIW and the Fair Food Campaign it has been waging for two decades, that is changing.
 

Because of Ahold’s historic agreement, joining Walmart, Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, and a majority of fast food chains, we can be assured that when we shop at Stop & Shop the Florida tomatoes for sale have been grown on farms that comply with basic standards of worker safety and fairness, that the
 men and women who pick our tomatoes will receive a penny more per pound of tomatoes picked each day (which can almost double their pay over the course of a season), and that CIW’s award-winning Fair Food Program will grow stronger. 

In Boston area communities, church- and synagogue-goers stepped up to encourage the supermarkets where we shop every day to live up to their professed corporate values and commit to farmworker rights. Driven by the tenets of their faiths, these local activists organized delegations and protests aimed both at Ahold and at Trader Joe’s (who joined in 2012) to demand their participation in the Fair Food Program. These grassroots efforts have bolstered the power of the CIW. In the Jewish cycle of reading the Torah, the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, we are currently engaged with the book of Deuteronomy. It is here that we have some of the first documented labor laws: a mandate to farmers to not oppress the poorest workers; to pay a day laborer his wage on the day that he earns it; to provide sustainable working conditions for workers in the fields. In the U.S. today, migrant farm workers are denied some of the basic labor rights guaranteed to others, like a minimum wage or the right to organize. Yet the CIW has found a way, by building coalitions with consumers, with students and people of faith, to gain the protections that so many of us take for granted.
 

Having a major corporation like Ahold listen and respond to them means fair treatment is a practice we can all be proud to support.
 

Rabbi Toba Spitzer is spiritual leader of Congregation Dorshei Tzedek, West Newton, Vice President of the Massachusetts Board of Rabbis, and a member of the board of T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights.

Rabbi Barbara Penzner is the spiritual leader of Temple Hillel B’nai Torah, West Roxbury, former President of the Massachusetts Board of Rabbis, and co-chair of the New England Jewish Labor Committee. 

This piece is the second in a JLC New England blog series From Passion to Action.

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Why the Fight for $15? Why the JLC? Why me?

9/3/2015

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By Martin Abramowitz
Reprinted from JewishBoston.com, August 21, 2015

September 7, Labor Day, is the launch of the New England Jewish Labor Committee (JLC)’s campaign to mobilize support within the Jewish community for the Fight for 15, as part of the RaiseUp Massachusetts coalition. As a member of the Boston Jewish community, and as an activist with JLC New England, I support this call for a living wage for the working people of our state and across the nation, and ask for the support of others in the Jewish community.

So what brings a 75-year-old middle-class retiree from a professional career in the Jewish community to the JLC as a volunteer activist and modest financial supporter?

In part, I'm acknowledging my 1940's roots in working-class Jewish Brooklyn, where I was the child of a labor “intermarriage": Rose sewed labels on men's ties, which made her a member of the "Amalgamated" Clothing Workers Union of America, while Isidore cut patterns for women's dresses, as a charter member of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union. That Isidore, at age 18, had been on site at—and lived to testify about—the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, further underscored my feeling of responsibility for the well-being of working people. I've always felt that I owe my very existence to the fact that my father survived this terrible industrial tragedy only by random luck. Working on the Fight for 15 campaign is therefore a way of honoring my parents’ memory.

The Fight for 15 is a movement to raise the wages of low wage workers and improve their working conditions, whether in food services, healthcare, car washes, airports, or in other low wage jobs. People who have full-time jobs in these sectors are unable to pay for the basics like food, rent or transportation. Shamefully, many have to apply for some form of public assistance, despite working full-time. Raising wages directly addresses income inequality, helping low wage workers attain self-sufficiency, and in the process turning recipients of public assistance into taxpayers. As part of the Fight for 15, JLC New England will be mobilizing Jewish voices to campaign for several proposed pieces of state legislation to address low wages, the most important of which is Bill S.1024, an act to establish a living wage for employees of big box retail stores and fast food chains in the Commonwealth.

Why work on this campaign—seemingly not a “Jewish issue”—through JLC? Because I am so grateful that the JLC gives me the chance to put my name behind a Jewish commitment to fairness for workers which is rooted in Jewish tradition of social justice and the values with which I was raised, and which signals to the larger community that Boston’s Jews–and America's–have not forgotten where we came from.

Yet another reason is because of the kind of organization JLC is—both effective and “haimish”. I spent the largest chunk of my work life as a planning and allocations executive at CJP, Boston's Jewish Federation. This work focusing on strategic planning, priority-setting, and the funding of local agencies and organizations was an important opportunity to have a positive impact in my community. In the course of my work with CJP, I had occasion to observe and work with a LOT of front-line Jewish organizations. JLC struck me as unique: its tightly focused mission on issues I cared deeply about—fair wages, paid sick leave, parental leave, predictable work schedules, its scrappy and non-bureaucratic culture, and the credibility it had built in the "corridors of power," and its hands-on grass-roots approach was attractive to me.

It was hard for me to believe that all that activism and energy and impact on the labor scene in Boston could be coming from an organization anchored by one professional staffer and a relatively small group of core volunteers. Given the JLC’s visibility in the State House, I was surprised that many of my colleagues, friends, and family who cared about these issues didn’t know that JLC existed and what it was doing in the community on behalf of working people. I knew that I had found a place to put my volunteer energies when I retired.

So, on Labor Day 2015, I hope that you will take the opportunity to reflect on your own family’s Jewish American story and how that has shaped your life today. The stands we take on issues of fairness in our community shape the values of our children—as Jews and as Americans. Let us be a strong, audible, Jewish voice for a fair shake for all the working people of our community.

Our legislators need to hear from us. To add your name in support of the Fight for $15, click here.

Martin Abramowitz is the former VP for Planning with the CJP, Greater Boston’s Jewish Federation. Currently, he serves as a volunteer consultant to JLC New England Board and as the CEO of Jewish Major Leaguers, Inc.

This piece is the first in a JLC New England blog series From Passion to Action.

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