(español abajo) The Food Chain Workers Alliance stands with unions, community organizations, faith leaders, and small businesses in Minnesota who have called for a general economic strike on Friday, January 23 in protest of ICE’s presence in their state and the agency’s continued brutal assaults on community members including children, US citizens, and refugees. 

A general strike is a widespread work stoppage across multiple industries to pause all economic activity. It’s a kind of “people’s veto” by which we, the workers, harness our collective power in the face of injustice. General strikes are a staple of protest politics and labor organizing that are frequently employed in other countries such as France and India

The general strike in Minnesota is more of a mass mobilization than a true strike, as no unions have officially voted to go on strike. However, major unions have endorsed the call for Minnesotans to refuse work, school, and shopping. 

What the Trump administration is doing, along with the violent occupation by ICE in cities like Minneapolis, is a frontal attack on workers and our human rights. People are kidnapped at work, in Home Depot parking lots, on construction sites, on farms, on their way to and from work. 

We have a long way to go to build the organized worker power we need for collective liberation and to reclaim our sovereignty from the 1%. That’s why more of these actions are on the horizon. The UAW has called for a general strike in 2028, when they’ll be entering negotiations for three major contracts. They’re calling for the rest of the labor movement to join them in going beyond these specific contract fights, working together to “bring the billionaire class to heel” and demand massive, transformational change. 

This will require strong organization and widespread participation across the country, and we need to start preparing now. That means we need to start bringing labor and community together, and push our unions to make bold demands. 

Let’s start today by standing with Minnesota. 

¡ICE FUERA DE MINNESOTA!

¡ICE FUERA DE NUESTRAS COMUNIDADES!

La Alianza de Trabajadores de la Cadena Alimentaria se solidariza con los sindicatos, organizaciones comunitarias, líderes religiosos y pequeños negocios de Minnesota que han convocado a una huelga económica general el viernes 23 de enero, en protesta por la presencia de ICE en su estado y por los continuos y brutales ataques de la agencia contra miembros de la comunidad, incluyendo niñas y niños, ciudadanos estadounidenses y personas refugiadas.

Una huelga general es una suspensión amplia del trabajo en múltiples industrias para pausar toda la actividad económica. Es una especie de “veto del pueblo”, mediante el cual quienes trabajamos ejercemos nuestro poder colectivo frente a la injusticia. Las huelgas generales son una herramienta histórica de la protesta política y la organización laboral, y se utilizan con frecuencia en otros países como Francia e India.

La huelga general en Minnesota es más una movilización masiva que una huelga formal, ya que ningún sindicato ha votado oficialmente ir a la huelga. Sin embargo, sindicatos importantes han respaldado el llamado a que la gente de Minnesota se abstenga de trabajar, asistir a la escuela y consumir.

Lo que está haciendo la administración Trump, junto con la violenta ocupación de ICE en ciudades como Minneapolis, es un ataque frontal contra las y los trabajadores y nuestros derechos humanos. Las personas son secuestradas en sus lugares de trabajo, en estacionamientos de Home Depot, en sitios de construcción, en granjas, y en su camino hacia y desde el trabajo.

Nos queda un largo camino por recorrer para construir el poder organizado de la clase trabajadora que necesitamos para la liberación colectiva y para recuperar nuestra soberanía del 1%. Por eso, más acciones como esta se vislumbran en el horizonte. El sindicato UAW ha convocado a una huelga general en 2028, cuando entrarán en negociaciones de tres contratos importantes. Están llamando al resto del movimiento laboral a sumarse y a ir más allá de estas luchas contractuales específicas, trabajando juntas y juntos para “poner en su lugar a la clase multimillonaria” y exigir cambios masivos y transformadores.

Esto requerirá una organización fuerte y una participación amplia en todo el país, y necesitamos empezar a prepararnos desde ahora. Eso significa comenzar a unir al movimiento laboral con las comunidades y presionar a nuestros sindicatos para que planteen demandas audaces.

Empecemos hoy solidarizándonos con Minnesota.

Another year gone by and NSLU is still fighting for their first contract! 

New Seasons Labor Union is an independent union of workers at Portland grocery chain New Seasons Markets. They won their first union vote in 2022 and now represent ~850 workers across ten locations. In 2025, they affiliated with UE Local 1010.

They have been bargaining for their first contract for 3+ years, and have remained militant in the face of bad faith stalling tactics from the company, authorizing work stoppages, one-day strikes, a nine-day ULP strike, and an ongoing customer boycott. 

Now, as they get closer and closer to a contract, the company still refuses to meet workers’ needs on wages and health care.

On November 15, 83% of voting NSLU members authorize a strike. They’ve given the company until December 4 to offer an acceptable proposal. Otherwise, workers will strike starting December 17. 

For Day 3 of #InternationalFoodWorkersWeek, stand with NSLU and tell New Seasons Markets: NO CONTRACT, NO CUSTOMERS by signing the pledge: nslu.org/community-sign-up.

If workers go on strike, they will need community support: NSLU.org/donate.

October 2025: FCWA members in Portland for our annual Worker Leaders Retreat take to the streets to rally in solidarity with NSLU and local comrades Burgerville Workers Union and Fried Egg Workers Union, all fighting for contracts.

“There are virtually no limits on what federal agents can do to achieve President Donald Trump’s goal of mass deportations.” — ProPublica

Right now, ICE is bursting at the seams with billions of dollars in new funding, thousands of new hires, and more than 1,100 new working agreements with local police departments. Not to mention permission from SCOTUS to racially profile.

As of November 17, there are 65,140 people in ICE custody — up from 39,240 in January. That’s an increase of 66% this year, according to The Guardian‘s analysis of ICE data. In the same time frame, the agency has made roughly 290,000 arrests and about the same amount of deportations. 72% of people arrested had no criminal conviction. 90% were Latino. 170 were U.S. citizens, while others had pending asylum cases, green cards, or work visas.

Over the last nine months, we’ve seen countless videos of people  dragged into unmarked cars by masked “agents” who offer no identification and no warrants. Because our local governments are unwilling and/or unable to rein in this activity, immigrant communities have come together to defend themselves. Everywhere that ICE is active, rapid response networks have cropped up to:

• patrol neighborhoods,
• report ICE activity,
• track down detainees,
• and provide cash and legal support to victims and family members left behind.

FCWA members are doing this work in their local communities, and they need your support. For Day Two of International Food Workers Week, consider giving to these rapid response networks: 

Syracuse Immigrant & Refugee Defense Network
A project of the Workers’ Center of Central New York.
Holding rallies, alerting the community about ICE activity, raising funds and more.

LUCE Immigrant Justice Network of Massachusetts
A coalition of immigrant-led, community groups including Pioneer Valley Workers’ Center.
Defense Hotline to report ICE activity, get help, and connect with trained volunteers.

Migrant Justice Immigrant Rights Campaign
Through public campaigns, MJ has won the release and prevented the deportation of many members of our community: Danilo, Eliazar, Victor, Miguel, Enrique, Zully, Yesenia, Esau, Jose Luis, Alejandro, Eli, Beto, Ismael, Wuendy, Max, José, Arbey, Nacho, Heidi, and more.

FCWA Immigration Rapid Response Fund
Making small grants to FCWA members for their work defending immigrant communities, and to individuals for legal fees, bail costs, commissary funds, emergency housing, and travel costs.

#InternationalFoodWorkersWeek
#IFWW
#FoodWorkersOrganize

We established #InternationalFoodWorkersWeek to honor food workers during the week of Thanksgiving, when most Americans are focused on grocery shopping, cooking, and eating.

At the grocery store, we think carefully about which products are the best value or quality. But we rarely consider how that turkey actually got into the freezer case in front of us. How many people’s labor went into hatching, raising, slaughtering, processing, packing, storing, transporting, and stocking that turkey?

22+ million people working in the U.S. food system earn a median annual income of just $28,000. They experience high rates of wage theft, injuries, food insecurity, and a lack of healthcare. Many are immigrants. And in 2025, whether they have legal status or not, immigrants are being snatched from their communities in brazen, racist, sometimes unconstitutional attacks.

But ICE isn’t grabbing farmworkers, street vendors, and restaurant workers so that those jobs can go to (white) Americans. Trump and his cronies want Black and brown immigrants to do this hard labor. They just want to control them and exclude them from the society their work supports.

That’s one reason we’re seeing so much new legislation around the H-2A program. H-2A provides temporary visas for foreign nationals seeking seasonal agricultural jobs on U.S. farms.

“Hosting H-2A workers costs a lot of money,” said FCWA member Alfredo “Lelo” Juarez Zeferino in 2024, “but companies would rather do that than pay local workers a better wage, because of the control they have over them.” 

Under H-2A, workers mostly live on the farms where they work, in employer-provided housing that can be crowded, dirty, and non-functional. They are isolated from the local community and tied to an employer who can send them home at a moment’s notice.  These workers have little incentive to speak up about conditions — and conditions are getting worse. The Trump administration just lowered the national prevailing wage for H-2A workers and for the first time in history, employers are allowed to deduct rent from workers’ wages. 

H-2A impacts local farmworkers too. In Washington State, FCWA members Familias Unidas por la Justicia and Community to Community Development have watched local workers lose jobs year after year as H-2A expands in their state.

For all these reasons and more, FCWA and our members in the agricultural sector have vehemently opposed proposals to expand H-2A. In fact, we’ve been opposing the Farm Workforce Modernization Act for years, and it has failed twice before.

For Day One of International Food Workers Week, we’re asking that you OPPOSE any legislation that aims to expand the H-2A program, mandate use of E-Verify, or offer “paths to citizenship” that require YEARS of hard labor before gaining status. C2C and FUJ are specifically calling on all labor advocates to oppose the following bills:

Farm Workforce Modernization Act (HR 3227)
Sponsor: Zoe Lofgren (D-CA)
Co-Sponsors: Dan Newhouse (R-WA), Michael K. Simpson (R-ID), Jim Costa (D-CA), David G. Valadao (R-CA), Adam Gray (D-CA), Salud O. Carbajal (D-CA), Maria Elvira Salazar (R-FL), Josh Harder (D-CA), Eugene Simon Vindman (D-VA)

Dignidad (Dignity) Act (HR 4393)
Sponsor: Maria Elvira Salazar (R-FL)
Co-Sponsors: Veronica Escobar (D-TX), Michael Lawler (R-NY), Adriano Espaillat (D-NY), David G. Valadao (R-CA), Hillary J. Scholten (D-MI), Dan Newhouse (R-WA), Susie Lee (D-NV), Mike Kelly (R-PA), Adam Gray (D-CA), Brian K. Fitzpatrick (R-PA), Salud O. Carbajal (D-CA), Gabe Evans (R-CO), Mike Levin (D-CA), Marlin A. Stutzman (R-IN), Nikki Budzinski (D-IL), Don Bacon (R-NE), Laura Gillen (D-NY), Young Kim (R-CA), Jake Auchincloss (D-MA), Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL), Lori Trahan (D-MA), James R. Baird (R-IN), Thomas R. Suozzi (D-NY)

Bracero Program 2.0 Act (HR 4367)
Sponsor: Monica De La Cruz (R-TX)
Co-Sponsors: Randy K. Weber (R-TX), Roger Williams (R-TX)

Moving H-2A to the Department of Agriculture Act (HR 1891)
Sponsor: W. Gregory Steube (R-FL)

August, 2024: Community to Community Development action at Enfield Farms in Whatcom County, WA. FCWA members in town for our annual summit rallied with C2C to demand that Enfield return to hiring local farmworkers, and stop replacing them with H-2A workers who are highly exploited. Photos by Sattva Photo and Edgar Franks. 

Last week, 54 workers and organizers from across FCWA membership traveled to Portland for our annual Worker Leaders Retreat!

Every year, FCWA members get together in-person for relationship-building, peer sharing, and strategizing for the year ahead. This year, we were thrilled to be welcomed to Portland by local co-hosts Burgerville Workers Union (BVWU) and New Seasons Labor Union (NSLU). BVWU and NSLU are independent, worker-led unions at the forefront of food worker organizing in their city. Alongside their comrades at the Fried Egg Workers Union (FEWU), they came to the summit to share their organizing stories and provide grounding in the local labor movement.

All three groups are part of Portland’s Coalition of Independent Unions (CIU), and all three are currently in negotiations for a fair contract with their employer. New Seasons Labor Union has just surpassed three years of bargaining for their first contract, and Burgerville Workers Union has surpassed two years of negotiations for their second. Meanwhile, the newer Fried Egg Workers Union (who just won their union vote last year) has already faced two unjust firings of union members as they work toward their first contract.

On Sunday, FCWA members joined a local action for all three unions, marching across the Hawthorne Bridge and rallying outside New Seasons Markets’ new corporate offices. At the rally, worker leaders spoke from all three unions spoke about contract demands and their commitment to reaching a good deal: “We are fighting for the things most important to our members: wages, COLA, PTO, a fair attendance policy, and so much more,” said NSLU member Jimbo. “Our focus has been on that bargaining platform: a better working life for our members. But I’m grateful and proud to say that my union is not just a business union, not just in it for the contract. We are a fighting union and a militant union. We have taken steps to support other unions and other causes, because our fights are connected.”

The disciplined and militant actions of these local groups was an inspiration to fellow FCWA members. After peer-to-peer workshops, group visioning sessions, and our annual membership meeting, we left Portland feeling inspired by each other’s work and ready to fight that much harder for worker justice!

Welcome & Art Making

Action in support of BVWU, NSLU, and FEWU as negotiations for fair contracts drag on. Workers are demanding fair wages, safe conditions, and protections for immigrant workers. 

Workshops: Building Power through Policy, Worker Cooperatives, and Unionization; Immigration Rights & Community Defense; Urban & Rural Worker Power; Worker-Led Organizing for Heat Protections; and more. 

Thank you to everyone who made the 2025 summit possible: every worker and organizer who traveled to participate, our co-hosts Burgerville Workers Union and New Seasons Labor Union, the FCWA Board of Directors and Growth & Learning Committee; Dr. Bronner’s for always sending the best products for our members, and of course, every FCWA member group represented:

Alianza Agrícola
Brandworkers
Burgerville Workers Union
California Institute for Rural Studies
Community to Community Development
Fair Work Center
Familias Unidas por la Justicia
Farmworker Association of Florida
Laundry Workers Center
Mississippi Workers’ Center for Human Rights
New Seasons Labor Union
ROC-DC
Rural Community Workers Alliance
Trabajadores Unidos por la Justicia
UFCW Local 770
United for Respect
Venceremos
Workers Empowerment Community Network of LA
Warehouse Workers for Justice
Workers’ Center of Central New York
Worker Justice Center of New York