Today, on Black Friday, we want to acknowledge and support the retail and warehouse workers who are working long hours today and every day, and who are organizing for respect, healthy conditions and racial justice.

We are inspired by the workers who are taking on corporate giants like Amazon and Walmart, and who have courageously organized walk outs over their working conditions at Amazon warehouses, and Walmart stores, or are fighting racial discrimination at Walmart’s biggest warehouse.

TAKE ACTION 

• Watch Dear Walmart, a new documentary that tells the intimate and behind-the-headlines stories of Walmart workers who have joined United for Respect.

• Follow Warehouse Workers for Justice, who are organizing with warehouse workers in Joliet, IL. WWJ will have actions to announce soon in their campaign to get Walmart to hire back Black warehouse workers at it’s largest North American Warehouse.

On Day 9 of Food Workers Rising, we invite you to join Florida farmworkers calling on their lawmakers to pass common sense heat stress protections for outdoor workers. 

When farmworkers cannot stop to drink water, they risk severe, even debilitating, dehydration. When they cannot rest or find shade, they may experience heat stress, heat stroke, and even death, and excessive heat exposure can lead to chronic dehydration and long-term kidney failure. Rising temperatures are projected to cause an increase in heat-related workplace injuries and illness. Simple solutions like access to water, shade, and breaks throughout the workday can be life-saving measures for outdoor workers.​

No one should have to risk their health – and even their life – working to feed our communities.

Join Farmworker Association of Florida and farmworkers across the state in calling on lawmakers to pass common sense heat stress protections for workers whose health is at risk from working in high heat environments. 

Show your support today by signing this petition. 

On Day 8 of #FoodWorkersRising we are asking FCWA supporters to take action to defend the rights of people of color and immigrants who ride Greyhound buses. 

Several FCWA members have joined a nation-wide campaign to demand that @GreyhoundBus end their cooperation with Immigration agents who board buses to racially profile and target people of color. 

Every day in cities from coast to coast, ICE, the Department of Homeland Security and Customs and Border Patrol agents freely board buses with Greyhound’s permission and attempt to identify and detain migrants. While Greyhound is not required to allow these agents onto its buses, the company has done so voluntarily. Greyhound’s actions leave their rider vulnerable to being racially targeted, criminalized and abused by immigration enforcement when they should feel safe. 

Migrant Justice is a central principle of FCWA’s organizing and advocacy work. In fact, it is food workers who have been disproportionately targeted by the recent, abusive wave of immigration enforcement. The Greyhound campaign is one way in which FCWA members are fighting back.

TAKE ACTION 

TWEET Greyhound today, one of the busiest bus travel days of the year! 

@GreyhoundBus – End Cooperation with Immigration Enforcement now. 

@GreyhoundBus – NO Border Patrol; NO I.C.E.

​

Sign ACLU Petition 

BUSES ARE NO PLACE FOR BORDER PATROL

TRAVELING BY @GreyhoundBus 

Know your Passenger Rights 

On Day 7 of Food Workers Rising we are asking you to stand in solidarity with UNITE HERE members and airline catering workers who will be protesting at over 15 airports across the U.S.today.

While American Airlines pulls in billions in profits, airline catering workers who provide food and beverages served aboard American flights face poverty wages and unaffordable health insurance. Catering workers shouldn’t have to choose between paying their bills or getting medical treatment.

TAKE ACTION

Tell American Airlines One Job Should Be Enough!

1. Share this graphic on Twitter 
2. Sign and share a petition at www.onejob.org/thx  
3. Join an action in one of 15 cities today! Find action info here

Sample messages:

We stand in solidarity with the airline catering workers in 15 cities protesting at airports today calling on @AmericanAir to fix the labor dispute ASAP! Because #1job should be enough––and airline food workers won’t quit until it is.

Airline catering workers shouldn’t have to choose between paying their bills or getting medical treatment. Tell @AmericanAir: One Job Should Be Enough! Sign here: www.onejob.org/thx  | #1job | #1u ​​

Today Food Chain Workers Alliance is launching our FOOD WORKERS ORGANIZING. Developed by FCWA members, the platform is a tool to guide our collective organizing over the next decade! 

Show your support for the  #FoodWorkersOrganzing platform this week through social media and across your networks and join in the fight for worker power! Our social media kit has graphics to share like the one below.

Sample tweet:

I support #FoodWorkersOrganizing for Migrant Justice! Share & Support or new #FoodWorkersOrganizing platform with a retweet. 

www.foodworkersorganize.org

On Day 5 of Food Worker Rising, we are lifting up the voices of migrant workers gathered tonight at a solidarity dinner in Leamington Ontario, Canada. At this powerful community gathering workers are sharing their hopes and demands for change in Canada’s guestworker programs

The Seasonal Agricultural Workers program is a guest worker program that has brought thousands of Caribbean and Mexican migrant farm workers to toil in fields across Canada and put food on our tables.

Migrant workers under this program are tied to their employer, have no access to residency status and must return home after their contract.

Over the past fifty-three years countless workers have described the conditions under the Seasonal Agricultural Workers program as inhumane and unjust. From being sent home for standing up for their rights at work to being denied equal access to our healthcare system, migrant workers face differential treatment than residents of Canada.

TAKE ACTION

1. Sign a petition calling on Canada’s new immigration minister to listen to the voices of migrant workers and ensure workers have residency status and fair and safe working conditions now.
2. Share @j4mw’s posts with photos of workers dreams for status, safe working conditions, the right to organize and more, calling on @marcomendicino to take immediate action.

Sample tweets:

@marcomendicino Listen to the voices of the migrant farmworkers who grow the food we eat. All migrant workers need residency status and fair and safe working conditions now.

@marcomendicino it’s time for fairness and justice for migrant workers #statusnow 

@marcomendicino good things grow in sweatshops all across Ontario! It’s time to end sweatshop labour and provide dignity for the hands that feeds us #statusnow 

On Day 4 of Food Worker Rising, we’re asking you to support Honduran melon workers and their fight for an independent union. 

With the support from FCWA member International Labor Rights Forum, Honduran melon workers have been organizing to exposing the truth about dangerous working conditions on melon plantations despite ongoing death threats. These plantations are owned by Fyffes who, in response, are threatening to take jobs away and refuses to recognize their independent worker union. 

TAKE ACTION

You can stand in solidarity with these Honduran workers by sharing the message below on your social media:

@International Labor Rights Forum has been supporting Honduran melon workers in exposing the truth about dangerous working conditions on melon plantations while their employer @FyffesNA threatens to take jobs away and refuses to recognize their worker union. @FyffesNA needs to stay in Honduras and recognize the workers’ independent union! 

#FyffesFails #FoodWorkersRising

On Day 3 of Food Workers Rising we are asking you to support Street Vendors who are too often criminalized in our cities. Join the fight to #LifttheCaps for Street Vendors

On November 8th, a NYC churro vendor named Elsa was detained, handcuffed, verbally abused, and ticketed by several police officers.The police also confiscated her cart and materials. The same week a second churro vendor was treated in the same manner at another Brooklyn station. Only days later a video surfaced of several police officers brutalizing a young Black man at a Harlem station for selling candy.

These incidents are not isolated. Vendors across NYC are criminalized for vending without a permit, while at the same time denied an avenue to receive one. NYC-based FCWA member, the Street Vendor Project has been leading a campaign to #LifttheCaps on street vendor permits and legalize the work of thousands of immigrant food vendors across NYC and have even taken that fight to the state level.

TAKE ACTION

1. The Street Vendor Project has set up a fund to support the street vendors who have been affected by this escalation in policing. You can donate to that fund here.
2. Join the fight to #LifttheCaps for Street Vendors: Talk to your local elected official and express your support for street vendors and the importance of legalizing their work and lifting the caps on permits.

On Day Two of Food Workers Rising, we are asking you to support dairy workers in Vermont and write an email to Hannaford CEO.

Dairy workers are making critical improvements to labor and housing conditions through an innovative program called Milk with Dignity. FCWA member Migrant Justice created the Milk with Dignity Program in support of dairy workers having a voice at work, despite systemic low wages and dangerous working conditions in their industry.

Two years after the successful launch of the program in the supply chain of ice cream maker Ben & Jerry’s, dairy workers are seeking to expand Milk with Dignity by calling on Hannaford supermarkets to protect the rights and well-being of the workers behind the company’s store-brand milk.

Hannaford is one of the largest supermarket chains in the Northeast and an important buyer of dairy products in the region. Please join us in calling on Hannaford to sign on to the Milk with Dignity Program! 

TAKE ACTION

Sign on to an email to Hannaford CEO here: 

After you send an email, take a solidarity photo and share on social media:

Make your support for Milk with Dignity public!  On a piece of paper, write a quick message using the format “I support Milk with Dignity because…” then take a picture of yourself holding the paper.  

Post on your social accounts, tagging Hannaford (facebook and twitter @Hannaford, instagram: @Hannafordmkts) and captioning the photo urging Hannaford to join the #MilkWithDignity program

Please help share this action on social media and stay tuned for Day 3 of Food Workers Rising! 

On Day One of Food Workers Rising, we are asking you to support 350 striking food workers in Princeville Quebec!

Meatpacking workers at Olymel have been on strike since October 29. The Quebec-based company is the largest hog producer in Canada. Workers at the Princeville Olymel plant took a $5.40 paycut in 2005 to help the company keep it’s plant doors open. But workers have not seen a fair share of Olymel’s record profits since then and are calling for a fair raise. 

TAKE ACTION

Meat processing is one of the most difficult and dangerous jobs in the food industry. Can you support the 350 Olymel striking workers by making a call to Olymel CEO today? 

Call Olymel’s head office at: 1 800 361-7990 EXT 3123

Or send a message to the company here: 

Sample message:

“I am calling to support the striking Olymel workers in Princeville. They work hard to make Olymel profitable and deserve a fair wage.”

The 350 striking workers are members of the Federation of Commerce (FC-CSN), one of our newest FCWA members. Federation of Commerce represents 28,000 workers including those employed at grocery stores, warehouses, meatpacking and food processing across the province of Quebec.

Help us get the word on social media to support striking Olymel workers and stay tuned for Day 2 of Food Workers Rising!

Come celebrate food workers and grassroots leaders who are building a better food system for all!

Please join us March 7 for the 2019 DC Food Justice Awards and Fundraiser, cohosted by Food Chain Workers Alliance and HEAL Food Alliance to celebrate food workers grassroots leaders making a better food system for all.

This year’s awardees are: Restaurant Opportunities Center of Washington DC (ROC-DC), Teamsters Union Local 63 and Teamsters Joint Council 42, DC Greens and Friends of the Earth. This is a great opportunity to strengthen connections between workers and food justice advocates in DC. Space is limited, so reserve your spot by purchasing a ticket today!

We’re also happy to announce DC Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton as the keynote speaker! A longtime civil rights and feminist leader, Congresswoman Norton has supported unions, fought for equal pay and DC statehood, and defended workers like those most affected by the recent government shutdown during her 15 terms as a representative.

The suggested donation is $50, with other pricing options based on what works for you. All proceeds will support the FCWA and HEAL in continuing to uplift food worker organizing and food justice campaigns across the US.

We deeply appreciate the support our sponsors Food & Water Watch, Teamsters International Brother Hood of Teamsters, United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, The Praxis Project and Slow Food USA!

And a special shout out to our host committee from our member organizations:
National Latino Farmers and Ranchers Trade Association
Solidarity Center
Jobs With Justice
International Labor Rights Forum
Open Markets Institute
The Praxis Project
United Food and Commercial Workers International Union
Rural Coalition
Union of Concerned Scientists

*Please be advised that the Dacha Beer Garden Loft is located on the second floor with no elevator access. Please reach out to elizabeth@foodchainworkers.org before registering if you think this may pose a problem for you.

Unstable hours and unpredictable scheduling practices create tremendous
hardships for working people and their families. Join us for a discussion about
common work hours challenges and policy solutions.

Featuring LA retail workers and experts: Anna Gassman-Pines (Duke University), Julie Vogtman (National Women’s Law Center), Councilwoman Lorena Gonzalez (Seattle, WA), Janna Shadduck Hernandez (UCLA), Saba Waheed (UCLA) and Cecily Harwitt (One Pennsylvania, Philadephia).

Fair Workweek LA is a coalition that includes: National Council of Jewish Women (NCJW)-LA, St. John’s Well Child, Koreatown Immigrant Workers Alliance (KIWA), ACLU of Southern California, Clinica Romero, Los Angeles Federation of Labor, California Work & Family Coalition, Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)-LA, League of Women Voters LA, Organization United for Respect (OUR), The Wall Las Memorias Project, UCLA Labor Center, and more.

Know Your Rights, Chicago Workshop

We are excited to announce our upcoming Liberation Day is on Saturday, February 16th! In an LWC workplace justice campaign, workers train and organize underground. When they are ready to go public with their campaign, we launch a Liberation Day where we all rally together, delivering the workers’ demands for justice in a show of community strength.

Laundromat workers across the city are taking the power back. It began at TYS Laundromat in Harlem. Now, laundromat workers in Brooklyn are taking a stand. For many years, these immigrant women workers have faced wage theft and abuse at the hands of their employer. Join us as we take to the streets in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn to launch the next laundromat campaign for better wages and safe conditions.

On Saturday, February 16th at 1pm, we will march together and show our support as the workers deliver their demands to their employer:

-Respect the labor law! Pay minimum wage and overtime to all employees,
-Structural changes and safe conditions! Provide adequate equipment, training, repairs, and ventilation,
-Treat employees with dignity and respect! Apologize for the years of mistreatment. No more physical abuse,
-Basic benefits! Holiday pay and paid sick days.

Responsible Job Creation Act (HB 690) Legal Workshop with the Raise the Floor Legal Clinic

As part of the People’s Assembly on Climate Justice, there will be a discussion on migrant justice, and climate justice and how they intersect.

Class discussion and solidarity event with the struggles of migrant farm workers in Canada

The Global Day to stop the repression against unionists was initiated in 2014 as a joint project by a number of labour organisations in the Asia Pacific region.

The 16th of November is the anniversary of the Hacienda Luisita massacre in The Philippines in 2004.

This Global Day gives us an opportunity to stand together internationally for our rights as a class.
Our demands are:
• Stop the killings of workers and unionists
• Free our comrades in jail
• Organising is not a crime
• Stop sexual violence against women workers
• Support unions as they save workers’ lives
• Un-organised workers are used as cheap labour, a living wage for all

We call on all workers and labour organisations to organise actions and events on this day in support of workers rights, call for the of repression against our brothers and sisters, free our comrades in jail, and to stand together united around the world as a class.

This page is for the Melbourne event of this Global Day of Action. Feel free to use any or all the information here to create your own page event for your locality.

Come to a free community lunch and screening of Min Sook Lee’s prolific film Migrant Dreams

This fight against #AmazonHQ2 is just beginning. Join us if you can on Wednesday at 11:30am in #LIC. Feel free to share widely.

Students from UNIFOR Local 707’s Food Workers and the Environment will be organizing solidarity support for migrant workers in Canada

Eli Calvo is a free man, reunited with his family and community. After weeks of imprisonment — withstanding hunger and cold, sleeping on a cot in the overfilled prison’s cafeteria — Eli is now back in Vermont, thanks to the support of hundreds of fellow farmworkers and allies who demanded his release. Sí se puede!

Yet Eli is not alone. He is one of 40 Migrant Justice members detained by ICE and Border Patrol in recent years. An average of one farmworker a week is arrested by deportation agents in Vermont. The persecution of immigrants must end!

For years, we have been in the streets and on the airwaves, fighting back against deportation and the criminalization of immigrants. Mass campaigns have won the release of many detained community members, but sadly, they are the exception to the rule: the vast majority of immigrants swept up by ICE are deported, separated from their communities and families. It is time to escalate our resistance.

Tomorrow, Wednesday, we will be taking an important step to bring this struggle to the next level. Join us at 12pm at the Migrant Justice office (S. Winooski Ave. and King St., Burlington, VT) to march on the federal courthouse and say #YaBastaICE.

Can’t make it to the march?  Follow the action on a livestream from Migrant Justice’s facebook account, starting around 12:45pm.

As part of the UNIFOR local 1285 class on Food, Workers and the Environment, students will provide messages of solidarity with food chain workers

Gabriel Allahdua, organizer and former migrant farm worker from St. Lucia, Chris Ramsaroop, activist and labour organizer and filmmaker Min Sook Lee discuss the issues and struggles facing migrant workers in the fields, farms and greenhouses of Southern Ontario. 7 pm. Free.

Solidarity dinner with migrant farm workers

Central Florida Veg Fest 2018
Saturday, October 27, 2018 • 10:00 a.m.-6:00 p.m.
Orlando Festival Park
2911 E. Robinson Street
Orlando, FL 32803

You have been invited to join us on October 25th.

The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Hilal Elver, will discuss her new report on agricultural workers and the right to food. She will be joined by agricultural workers from the New York region as well as guests from La Via Compesina in Brazil. We hope to see you there.

Hosted by the Food Chain Workers Alliance and Why Hunger

Ticket price: $100 for regular ticket

Join Food Chain Workers Alliance and Restaurant Opportunities Center LA

for a special farm-to-table dinner prepared by Chef and Activist Erin O’Brien.

Oct 21, 2018 

5:00-7:30pm

Moonwater Farm, Compton, CA 

Host Committee*

Jenya Cassidy, CA Work and Family Coalition

Clare Fox, Los Angeles Food Policy Council

John Grant, United Food Commercial Workers Local 770

Rusty Hicks, LA County Federation of Labor

Heather Joy Kamensky, Building Resilience Network

Josh Kamensky, Ocean & Mountain Communications
Richard McCarthy, Slow Food USA
Victor Narro, UCLA Labor Center

Celene Perez, Warehouse Worker Resource Center

Jan Tokumaru, California Labor Federation

*Organization listed for identification purposes only

abor rights and food justice activists, and farmworkers from Mexico, Morocco, Tunisia and the United States will explore the centrality of agriculture workers to building more fair global food supply chains—and a comprehensive food justice movement. This daylong conference will highlight farmworkers’ experience and their worker rights activism as a foundation to envision and implement more dynamic, interconnected strategies to improve the way our food moves from field to dinner table.

Time: 9 a.m.–5 p.m. Reception follows.

Place: UCLA Downtown Labor Center, 675 S. Park View St.., Los Angeles CA 90057-3306

RSVP: information@solidaritycenter.org

Laundry Workers Center is pleased to invite you to our 2018 Community Gala Fundraiser to celebrate together a year of resilience and worker justice. This year, our theme “500 Years of Resistance” honors our member-workers, many of whom are part of indigenous communities, and pays respect to the long legacy of resistance to colonialism and genocide in the Americas.

Friday, October 5th, 2018
6:00pm – 9:00pm
619 Lexington Ave, New York, NY 10022
(East 54 St and Lexington Av. Subways: N, R, W to Lexington Av – 59th St; E, M to Lexington Av-53rd St; 6 to 51 St)

Help us sustain our growing organization and ongoing campaigns by buying a ticket or becoming a Monthly Sustainer.* You can buy tickets via our Action Network Fundraiser, donating via our website donation page, or by mailing a check.**

Member – $10 (registered member of LWC)
Friend – $50
Advocate – $100
Ally – $200
Champion – $500
Visionary – $1000 (or package of 10 tickets)
Supernova – $2000

Join together with LWC members, and fellow organizers, activists, allies, and friends to celebrate our recent victories and our ongoing laundry workers campaign that we launched in June 2018! For questions or concerns, please reach out to <laundryworkerscenter@gmail.com>.

*Please consider becoming a Monthly Sustainer (https://laundryworkerscenter.org/support/). It’s the best way to give, and to know each month you are directly supporting NYC’s worker-led justice movement. By becoming a LWC monthly sustainer with $10/month or more, you will enable us to keep the fight going in the years to come.

** Checks should be paid to the order of our fiscal sponsor (Brandworkers International), with a note in the memo that it is a donation to the Laundry Workers Center. It should be mailed to the Laundry Workers Center (80 Broad St #613a New York NY 10004)

Catering by LWC member and communtiy leader Pablo Rutillio and his restaurant, La Essencia. 5085 Broadway Ave, Inwood, Manhattan 10034.

On September 8th, Warehouse Workers for Justice will return to the site of our 2012 Walmart strike in the heart of the warehouse district to demand justice for workers and the surrounding communities. Our strike was a way for workers to fight back against Walmart’s use of temp labor and poor working conditions and to demand dignity and permanent jobs. WWJ has continued to organize in the spirit of this strike but as the years have gone by the surrounding communities concerns have grown around the rapidly growing warehouse district.

Tens of thousands of trucks travel the area daily, while hundreds of trains also enter the area, emitting diesel particulates, potentially creating health risk for residents and workers. Meanwhile, many of the surrounding municipalities like Elwood have taken on debt to fund warehouse related projects while infrastructure needs grow as a result of higher usage of public roads and other amenities. WWJ leadership committee made the decision to anchor and organize this year’s People’s Climate Movement event in Elwood to highlight the needs of workers, the climate and the community. The quality of workers’ lives doesn’t end when they punch out, but is affected by community quality, including the quality of our environment. Join WWJ and our allies on September 8th in Elwood as we demand justice for climate, jobs and the surrounding community.

People’s Climate Movement Chicagoland Action

Saturday, September 8th, 12:30pm

https://www.facebook.com/events/488535081565256/