Following a Department of Homeland Security ICE probe, officials at Tom Cat Bakery in Long Island City fired dozens of immigrant workers. The workers had spent years building the city’s oldest artisanal bakery into a successful business that supplies fresh bread throughout the city.

Over the past seven months, organized immigrant workers have defied both this vicious attack by ICE and Tom Cat Bakery’s tacit cooperation with these tactics. This resistance serves as an example to us all – immigrant workers and allies in the Trump era can fight back against a brutally racist system intending to rip apart families and communities. Despite numerous attempts to push Tom Cat Bakery to do the right thing, paying a just severance to dedicated workers impacted by ICE and adopting common sense policies protecting immigrant workers still on the job, the acclaimed artisanal bakery still refuses to hear workers’ demands for justice.

On October 12, 2017, the FCWA led a delegation of supporters to deliver a letter to Mr. Nobuhiro Iijima, president of Yamazaki Baking Co., which is the parent company of Tom Cat Bakery. Yamazaki is based in Japan, and we delivered the letter its Los Angeles headquarters, asking Mr. Iijima to intervene on behalf of the Tom Cat workers. Yamazaki also owns the brand Vie de France. The delegation included folks from DREAM Team LA, UNITE HERE Local 11, and Warehouse Worker Resource Center.

Tom Cat Bakery workers demand:

1. A fair severance package that recognizes their years of hard work building Tom Cat into a successful business.

2. The adoption by Tom Cat of simple, widely-accepted best practices to protect workers against any future immigration clampdowns.

You can help these workers win justice today!

Brandworkers, the FCWA member group supporting the Tom Cat Bakery workers, has built a platform called Solid to help individuals and organizations build campaigns, connecting actions online and offline. Today you can:

• Sign a petition.

• Donate to the Tom Cat worker relief fund, and

• Download a Community Solidarity Kit, with all the tools you need to coordinate your group’s Tom Cat customer actions!

Wherever you are, now is your chance to get involved! You can help workers win justice today!

B&J’s is first company to join “Milk with Dignity” supply chain program

From our member group Migrant Justice: 

After years of negotiations and public campaigning, Migrant Justice and Ben & Jerry’s have reached an historic supply chain agreement to advance worker’s rights by implementing the Milk with Dignity Program in the company’s northeast dairy supply chain.  The legally-binding contract is the first of its kind in the dairy industry.

Developed by Vermont dairy workers, Milk with Dignity is modeled after the internationally-renowned Fair Food Program that has transformed the Florida tomato industry.  The program provides dairy brands such as Ben & Jerry’s with the ability to make transformational changes in their supply chains, improving labor and housing conditions through a verifiable and worker-led model.

By joining the program, Ben & Jerry’s will pay participating farms a premium and require that farms uphold a farmworker-authored code of conduct to ensure fair and dignified work and housing conditions.  The premium provides workers with a bonus on each paycheck and serves to offset farmer’s costs of compliance with the Milk with Dignity Code of Conduct.  The farmworker-authored code sets new industry standards for wages, scheduling, health and safety, housing, and other workplace conditions. The program will be monitored and enforced by a newly created independent third party called the Milk with Dignity Standards Council (MDSC).

Good Food Purchasing Passes Chicago City Council!

New measure will ensure transparency in food systems and generate millions in revenue for local farmers, food-based businesses and communities.

A New Day in the City of Broad Shoulders

Today, the City of Chicago became the first city outside of California to adopt the Good Food Purchasing Policy. The work to pass the ground-breaking resolution was lead by the Chicago Food Policy Action Council and a broad multi-sector coalition that included over 40 local and national organizations. Food Chain Workers Alliance worked closely with CFPAC on the ground and nationally. The policy will transform the way agencies purchase food and will work by promoting health and well-being to Chicagoans while creating a sustainable, socially responsible food system that has the potential of returning millions of dollars to local, food-based businesses and entrepreneurs.

Once implemented, the measure will impact a significant portion of nearly $200 million in spending toward local food businesses and farmers. The policy will prioritize nutrition, affordability, local economies, sustainable production practices, sound environmental practices, fair prices for producers, safe and fair working conditions for employees and food workers, and humane treatment of animals.

Nationwide — Today President Trump announced the end of the DACA program, which for over five years allowed over 800,000 immigrant youth to work and attend school.

Trump made this decision despite repeatedly telling immigrant youth not to worry.  This is another action by this administration that must not be left to stand without widespread repudiation and resistance in every sector and every corner of our country. The Food Chain Workers Alliance stands squarely with young immigrants and against any form of hate regardless of where it emanates.

For the food sector in particular, which has a high concentration of immigrants and youth, the rejection of any solutions that are based on the recognition of the full dignity of every human being is a huge blow to the function of an already stressed food system. Young immigrants are among the 21.5 million people who plant, pick, transport, pack, process, cook and serve the food we eat every day.  Rejecting them is to be blind to how we are fed.  Young immigrants are the backbone of the food system.

We call on food businesses, labor unions, health professionals, and anyone who eats to stand with immigrant workers.

Although we are heartbroken and enraged, it is crucial in this moment to revive the tremendous organizing power and energy that won DACA in the first place. Now, more than ever, we must all stand up and fight alongside immigrant youth and their elders that came to this country for a better life.

The Food Chain Workers Alliance stands firmly with the majority.

The majority deplore the racist, anti-Semitic rallies and bloodshed in Charlottesville this weekend. Right-wing white nationalists and neo-nazi terrorists took to the streets in support of a racist, bigoted, and authoritarian ideology that predicates itself on the oppression of women, people of color, the LGBTQ community, religious minorities, and indigenous peoples.

The moment is urgent. We have a duty to speak out and act boldly against that ideology and its consequences. The violence that threatened Charlottesville is threatening us all and is especially threatening working people of all colors and creeds.

We must make our struggle universal. The only way to fight back against their torches, weapons, and the violence of these white supremacists is with unity and strength of all workers of all races and genders. We need to be clear to everyone that food workers are on the side of equity, inclusion, and justice, not bigotry and terror. We, at theFood Chain Workers Alliance, condemn in the strongest possible terms these deplorable, shameful, and racist events in Charlottesville, Virginia this weekend. We commit to taking action and pouring out onto the streets in unity.