Tonight, Monday, Sept. 28, the University of Texas chapter of the Student/Farmworker Alliance (SFA) will host a screening of the documentary Food Chains, a close look at the deplorable conditions farmworkers in America face – which range from low wages to outright slavery.
The film shows that if individual workers, who are often undocumented immigrants, are powerless to demand better conditions, the farmers who are their direct employers are at the mercy of their buyers, who are relentlessly focused on the bottom line.
Since 1993, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) has been combating those conditions by getting consumers to convince buyers that the most desirable product isn’t always the cheapest. They focus their efforts on the Florida tomato industry, which was infamous at the time the CIW formed for its especially harsh practices. The CIW created what they call the Fair Food Program, where participating buyers agree to purchase tomatoes only from farms that follow certain guidelines as well as allow third-party monitoring to make sure those guidelines are enforced, and has, mostly through a series of targeted boycotts, gotten several large companies to sign on. Over the years, the CIW, working with the SFA, has convinced four out of the five major fast food companies – Taco Bell, McDonald’s, Burger King, and Subway – to become part of the program. Wendy’s is the remaining holdout.
Nely Rodriguez of the CIW traveled to Austin last year to kick off national efforts to convince Wendy’s to become part of the Fair Food Program by boycotting the restaurant and asking campuses to cancel their contracts. Before the CIW calls for a boycott of a company, they ask their supporters to send in requests. Wendy’s has claimed that because it only buys from growers that are part of the Fair Food Program, actually joining the program itself is unnecessary. UT SFA member Carlos Salamanca says that’s not enough – if a participating grower violates the program, Wendy’s, unlike buyers who are part of the program, will have made no promises to discontinue using that buyer. Additionally, Wendy’s does not allow third-party monitoring to verify its claim that it only buys from Fair Food growers. The UT SFA is screening Food Chains tonight as part of the national SFA’s week of action. Viewers of the film are also invited to make posters to bring to another UT SFA event, which takes place Wednesday, Sept. 30, at noon. Students will hold a bakesale outside the Wendy’s in the student union, in order to “raise money for Wendy, who, at the moment, refuses to participate in the Fair Food Program because she can’t afford to pay her farmworkers a premium of a penny more per pound of tomatoes she buys from farms in Florida,” according to the event’s organizers. At 12:30pm, they will attempt to deliver a letter to the Wendy’s manager, although Salamanca believes that Wendy’s has instructed managers to refuse to receive any correspondence from the SFA. When classes get out at 12:50pm, the group will then march to the other Wendy’s, which is located in the Jester dormitory.
Salamanca says that Wendy’s has clearly made an effort over the past few years to modernize its image. “Now it’s time to modernize the way they treat their workers.”
This article appears in September 25 • 2015.