This committee works towards policies, certification programs, and standards that ensure protections for workers, their families, and their community and for our environment. Currently this committee is supervising a research project that will publish a report on the state of food workers in the U.S. and provide policy recommendations for elected and administrative government officials.

An exceptional Advisory Committee is providing its insight and knowledge to support our research project. The members are:

• Annette Bernhardt, National Employment Law Project
• Hector Cordero-Guzman, currently with the Ford Foundation & soon returning to the School of Public Affairs of the City University of New York
• Professor James DeFilippis, Rutgers University
• Eric Holt-Giménez, Food First!
• Professor Nik Theodor, University of Chicago-Illinois
• Professor Chris Tilly, University of California, Los Angeles
• Saba Waheed, DataCenter
• Yvonne Yen Liu, Applied Research Center

A myriad of programs exist to certify food as fair trade or worker-friendly.  These program can often be confusing for consumers. This committee also evaluates these programs and collaborates in this area with other organizations and programs that include workers in their decision-making process. As part of this work, the Alliance is a member of the Domestic Fair Trade Association, which is establishing social justice criteria to evaluate certification programs, fair trade standards, and company claims.

The Alliance also adopted a Statement on Social Certification to guide the our work in this area and to serve as an educational tool to the public, allies, and others.  We have developed criteria that we believe should form the basis for any legitimate market-based claim of fair or just working conditions, as part of a certification, Corporate Code of Conduct, or other private claim.  Our criteria are based on consensus reached in our certification committee and broader discussions amongst all Alliance members.  It borrows heavily from members’ existing documents, including the International Labor Rights Forum’s Roadmap for Ethical Product Certification and Standard Setting Initiatives and the Domestic Fair Trade Association Principles. Click here to read the entire statement.

The Alliance is also working to promote the programs the our member groups are leading and the agreements that they have won from companies and to link up these “high-road” programs, such as the Agricultural Justice Project and the Restaurant Industry Roundtable. Click here for more on Alliance members’ agreements with companies and certification and standards programs.

Policy Support:

The Food Chain Workers Alliance supports a Fair Farm Bill and supports Food and Water Watch‘s campaign. Click here to read more.

The FCWA supports the Children’s Act for Responsible Employment, H.R. 2234, provides a legislative remedy to close the loopholes that allow farmworker children to work for wages under the age of 14 and provides added protections for young farmworkers. The proposed child labor law reforms would not affect children working on farms owned or operated by their families. We’ve also signed on to support the Children in the Fields Campaign with its goal of ending the unequal treatment of farmworker youth under U.S. child labor law. Click here to read more about the situation of farmworker children in the U.S.

In September 2010 the Alliance co-sponsored ROC United‘s Congressional Briefing on Paid Sick Days & Health, which is part of their campaign for paid sick days. Click here for more details.