What do Food Chain Workers have to do with our food systems?
We would not have the food system that we have in this country, and in this world, were it not for food chain workers (farmworkers, warehouse workers, meatpackers, seafood processors, line cooks, restaurant servers, etc.) many of whom are people of color, immigrants and migrant laborers who go largely underappreciated, underpaid and in some cases, severely mistreated.
We invite you to listen to a couple of the stories from the series “Voices from the Food Chain” – a project of the Food Chain Workers Alliance and Real Food Media. How do these stories impact you? What surprises you? What questions do they raise? Consider sharing these stories and your reactions with others and note their reactions.
At Food Solutions New England, we are committed to working for food systems that are characterized by dignity for everyone, including workers and those who come from other places to grow and process the food we eat.
We invite you to get curious about the workers you otherwise may not notice or think about who help get the food you eat to you. Who are they? Where do they come from? Do you know anything about their working conditions? How are they treated? Do they have benefits? How visible or organized are they in your town or city? With these questions in mind, how does this affect your understanding of how our food system works?
I appreciate today’s thought exercise. Honestly, I feel like I am in purposeful denial about where my food comes from and who works to get it to my table. There are so many painful realities about our food system that I work to avoid thinking about. In my life this includes not only the low wage workers many working without protections, but also issues of food waste and animal treatment.
I am emotional this morning thinking about all of this. Two images that came to me while watching some of the videos:
1. Picking my African American friend up from work in Alabama in 1993. He was working at a large nursery and green house owned by a prominent white family. He didn’t come out so I went in to get him. What I saw was white men riding around in golf carts ordering their Black employees around without respect. As a white person seeing that my internal response was “I would never let anyone treat me like that.” Then I felt the reality of my friend and the other black men having to stifle those feelings just to be able to work.
2. Visiting a family member in Bentonville, Arkansas for the first time, she told me about the Mashallese. A group of people whose country the US ruined with weapon testing and gave restitution by bringing them to the US to work — in the case of Arkansas — in the lowest wage and likely most devastating jobs at Tyson’s chicken. Wow. The things I have no idea are happening in our country.
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Erin – what I think of ALL of this is what you said at the end: The things I have no idea are happening in our country.
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Erin, reading your post I’m reminded of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s words – “Everything we see is a shadow cast by that which we do not see.” And once we have seen, it is hard to not see. Unless we pretend. How can we hold one another in this seeing so we can make different choices for our collective humanity going forward?
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Today’s challenge makes me think of the many food chain workers right here on campus–especially students in Dining Services–and how they deserve to be treated with more dignity. I suspect most of us have worked in the food chain at one point or another, and know how demoralizing and infuriating it is to be treated like you’re invisible. And speaking of invisibility: does anyone know what outside “vendors” are controlling our campus food chain/labor now? Years ago, Dining Services used to “allow” their non-Native English speakers to take ESL classes. It was a really great step toward community building and interaction: we used to know their NAMES, and say hello and ask about their families. My understanding is that at some point the U put the kibosh on that program; today, I know NONE of the Dining and Housekeeping workers aside from one who has been in Huddleston Hall for a long time (and whom many of us remain friendly with). The outsourcing of these services to scurrilous outside vendors is par for the course in the neoliberal university, and it’s keeping us all in the dark about injustices and insustainability right under our noses. How can we pressure admin to do better? How can WE do better?
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Your memory reminded me of my college days back in the really early 2000s. I was always thankful towards the food workers and even the cashiers, especially late nights since they were open until 2AM on weekends. Some were even around my same age. Many were from migrants. Given the surrounding area of the campus, I know they had to do some traveling to get there to work.
I continue to be grateful for food line workers today, they work hard to keep the place neat and handle the rush, they are degraded by customers at times, but also by the many establishments who depend on them. They need respect and they need raises.
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Great questions, Siobhan. Who has the answers? I would love to hear what you discover. And what you and others at your U can do in solidarity with workers.
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This is so important. I used to know names of all the U housekeepers who cared for my area and I would speak to them every day and knew about their families and we shared at the holidays. I became friendly with a woman who worked in our café but she left for a better job somewhere else after her department added more and more duties to her position. Apparently, many Dining staff are not hired in the same status as other U employees who have academic benefits so have no opportunity to take ESL classes. I know some housekeeping staff who are fully benefitted who used their academic benefits to earn undergraduate degrees.
Now it seems a lot of housekeeping is contracted out and I only see them when there is a problem. Facilities and other services are also contracted out more and more. Conditions in those outfits are largely unknown though one contract employee told me that she would arrive on campus from her home some 40 miles north of here at 5:00 AM and leave at 1:00 to meet her kids at the school bus and then come back at 4:00 PM to direct her second shift. She would continue to work until 11:00 PM. The conditions for many staff in Dining and elsewhere are egregious and I believe an important step would be for organized faculty to actively support the unionization of all staff. So far there appears little inclination for this.
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Ooh, Barbara, I AM SO HERE FOR THIS. Some of us in the TT and lecturer unions have been trying to organize monthly get-togethers at Bella’s (first Thursday every month, about 5:30) partly to figure this kind of stuff out. I’d be willing to commit to May 2, inviting folks who want to talk about building a broader labor coalition. You probably know that there have been numerous attempts to unionize staff (sometimes supported by AAUP), and that the U has seriously busted them. But there are ways we could keep organizing and pressuring the U even until everyone is unionized. If anyone is interested send me an email! Siobhan.Senier@unh.edu
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When Amazon and Whole Foods announced this week that they were lowering prices on a lot of produce, I wondered who was taking the hit — is it the farmers and workers who will be paid even less for their produce, or will A/WF make less of a profit? People are so driven to shop for the cheapest price; they don’t realize that the low price is possible because somewhere down the line someone is barely surviving. How do we move towards the true cost? How do we convince people that paying more is better, that everyone has a duty to act for the good of the whole rather than just themselves? And how can we as workers afford to buy products at their true cost? I am grateful for the people and companies who do care and are working on solutions; we need more of them. I do my best to support local farmers and businesses, and other businesses that care. They can be difficult to find; a directory, or rating system, would be helpful so we know who to support.
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I appreciate your questions, Cathy. And I am thinking a lot about how people in lower and middle economic classes are being forced to “fight over crumbs” while SO MUCH money is being tied up by the ridiculously rich (can we say, oligarchy?!). What could we do together to reclaim that abundance that many are working so hard to create for the elite classes? Enough already!
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Before I came to the United States, I had the notion like many of my people hold that all Americans and people who live in America are rich. Yes, it is a land of dreams but not everyone is rich and majority of the people that earn poverty wages are the food workers. They tend to face the highest level of food insecurity and inability to buy food to eat despite working as food chain workers. This is the irony and the hard core truth I have come to learn. Consequently, they face the worst safety violations, several hours of work with little breaks and minimal or less acces to health benefits. Until we recognize every ones ecological importance and treat food workers with respect we are still going to have problems for they hold the key to a true sustainable food system that not only determines the health and survival of societies but has the potential to lift up communities for the betterment of mankind and the environment
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Thank you for this. An really appreciating your last sentence – “Until we recognize every ones ecological importance and treat food workers with respect we are still going to have problems for they hold the key to a true sustainable food system that not only determines the health and survival of societies but has the potential to lift up communities for the betterment of mankind and the environment.”
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Thank you
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When I first learned of the 21 day food challenge, I admit to rolling my eyes and saying aloud “Why only 21 days in April? Confronting racism in it’s MANY forms, is a 365 thing, that People Of Color live with, under and through, daily.” Then I joined this particular forum, because I didn’t want someone else, who has little or no understanding of my world, speaking for or about “me”, and by me, I mean People Of Color (not that I represent ALL POC). I wanted to ensure we had a seat at the table, with a voice filling the space clearly, with my own words. Today’s speakers reinforced
(yet again) the disparities and “lack of …” for POC and POC whose native language is not English- when it comes to being paid a fair wage for their labor, treated with respect while doing an honest job and having access to own land (and resources that afforded to landowners) so that financially, they too can benefit (financially) from the fruits of their labor. I hope for non people of color involved in this challenge, that this goes beyond 21 days, and spills into your daily lives. Sometimes it’s not about helping someone step up, as it is about stepping out of their way.
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Thanks for this, LeNay. We definitely hope that the Challenge is a jumping off point for people to take into their lives well beyond the 21-days, that by participating we can start to develop racial equity and social justice habits that inform our daily lives. So glad that you have joined us for the challenge this year.
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