March, 2009 - From our college and university dining halls to the sweltering fields of Florida, multinational food service provider corporations such as Sodexo — which holds lucrative contracts with our schools to deliver and serve the food we eat every day — must take responsibility for the dismal conditions in which its tomatoes are harvested. While such multinational corporations may seem like formidable obstacles to a student campaign for human rights in corporate supply chains and greater student participation in university contracting decisions, the Student/Farmworker Alliance is no stranger to taking on corporate giants as an integral partner in the Coalition of Immokalee Workers' Campaign for Fair Food — and winning.

As tuition-paying students, as members of the campus community, as the captive consumers of the food service industry and an increasingly corporatized system of higher education, and as young people responsible for constructing a more just society — we deserve a voice in campus food procurement and food service decisions and policies. We demand real change and real responsibility from the food service industry and from our universities. Today, students across the country are asking: What is the food service provider industry waiting for? Another slavery sentencing in the federal courts? 30 more years of stagnant wages for tomato pickers? But we are prepared to do more than just ask; we stand poised to take action.

During the four-year Taco Bell Boycott, SFA members on over 300 campuses across the country organized tirelessly around the "Boot the Bell" campaign, amassing a formidable 25 hard-fought victories that formed a centerpiece of the broad-based student, religious, and human rights support for the CIW, coalescing around the principled leadership of Immokalee's workers to bring about the monumental CIW-Taco Bell agreement in 2005.

With that victory, a powerful message had been sent to Taco Bell and the rest of the fast-food industry: it was time to address the sub-poverty wages and dismal working conditions created by their high-volume, low cost produce purchasing practices. And young people - their target market - would not be taking "no" for an answer.

These bulk purchasing practices — exacerbated by the rise of of mega-chains such as Wal-Mart and the increasing reliance by institutions such as universities on subcontracting (intended to stamp out unionization and cut down on wages of campus and other workers), leading to the growth of corporations such as Sodexo — drive growers to hold down costs. According to Oxfam America in its 2004 study Like Machines in the Fields, “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."

The working conditions resulting from these purchasing practices and their intense downward pressure can be described as open-air sweatshops in the fields. Farmworkers who pick tomatoes for the corporate food industry are among the country's worse paid, least protected workers. They earn about 45 cents for every 32-lb. bucket of tomatoes they pick – a rate that has not changed significantly in 30 years. At that rate, a worker must harvest over 2.5 TONS of tomatoes to earn the equivalent of Florida minimum wage for a 10-hour workday. In the most extreme cases, this everyday sweatshop climate of little pay and little rights tips over into actual modern-day slavery. There have been seven federal prosecutions by the Department of Justice for forced labor in the Florida agricultural industry in the past eleven years, involving well over one thousand farmworkers. In these cases, captive workers are held against their will by their employers through the threat and/or use of violence – including beatings, shootings, and pistol-whippings.

A national farmworker-led campaign of students, people of faith, consumers, sustainable food advocates, and human rights organizers, however, is slowly but surely transforming this "harvest of shame" and putting into place a sustainable model of change. Following the CIW-Taco Bell agreement, the Campaign for Fair Food – designed to enlist the massive purchasing power of the largest tomato buyers in the world in order to eliminate the everyday root sweatshop conditions that allow cases of slavery to flourish – surged forward and continued to gain unprecedented concessions from and accords with some of the world's leading food retailers. These victories would have been impossible if not for the tireless work and dedication of thousands of young people across this country organizing through the SFA.

Today, Taco Bell (2005; expanded to its parent company Yum Brands in 2007), McDonald’s (2007), Burger King (2008), Whole Foods Market (2008) and Subway (2008) have all reached agreements with the CIW to guarantee at least a penny more per pound to workers harvesting tomatoes for these companies, an enforceable, human rights-based code of conduct (including zero tolerance for forced labor) governing their tomato suppliers, a collaborative effort to develop a third party mechanism for monitoring conditions in the fields, and farmworker participation in the development and implementation of these reforms.

Now, in 2009, standing on the threshold of a more modern, more humane agricultural industry, the CIW, SFA and our allies call on the food service and supermarket industries to take similar steps.

As students we organize in the Campaign for Fair Food from a position of alliance and partnership with farmworkers. Both farmworkers and young consumers are objectified by the corporate food industry: farmworkers are seen as tractors that harvest raw materials cheaply while youth are seen as mouths that obediently consume branded products. Now more than ever, the connection between farmworker exploitation and the exploitation of young people is clear.

Just as food service providers exploit farmworkers to leverage their buying power to demand cheap tomatoes, so, too, do they exploit students through their monopolies on campus dining, charging their young clientele exorbitant prices to eat meals while providing them little to no input over what ends up on their plates, where it comes from, or under what conditions it was produced. (Campus workers employed by Sodexo are also often paid poverty wages, earn little or no benefits, and are intimidated and fired for trying to organize unions to protect their rights. The food service providers must ensure human rights at every level of their supply chains.)

The unwavering alliance between youth and farmworkers represented by SFA, steadfast even in the face of a corporate espionage scandal, now sets its sights on the multi-billion dollar food service industry.

Food service providers pool their tremendous purchasing power (oftentimes through Group Purchasing Organizations, or GPO's) to demand the cheapest produce possible from their suppliers. But this also means that corporations like Sodexo could leverage that enormous power to demand more fair wages and working conditions for the farmworkers in their supply chains. Doing so would not require reinventing the wheel, given the working models already in place, and students will not be satisfied with hollow justifications and excuses that these changes are "impossible" to implement.

One thing is for certain: If the food service providers are purchasing tomatoes during the winter months -- and they do, in mass quantities -- it is nearly impossible that they're not buying from Florida growers. In fact, outside of signing an agreement with the CIW and doing the hard, honest work of reform and partnership with workers, there is no way these corporations can guarantee that their tomatoes are not produced in sweatshop conditions at best and slavery conditions at worst.

The time has come for Sodexo to come to the table and implement true social responsibility by working with the CIW. Until then, our campaign will proceed and escalate. We will not be turned back. We will not give up the gains we have already won, and we will continue forward until all of Florida's farmworkers can enjoy a fair wage and students share in the decision of who can do business with our university, and how.

Today, therefore, we call on Sodexo to follow the rising tide of social responsibility in the corporate food industry and enter into meaningful agreements with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers to guarantee more dignified wages and working conditions for farmworkers in their tomato supply chains. Until that day, students across the country will be educating, organizing, and mobilizing on our campuses and in our communities.