Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW)

The Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) is a worker-based human rights organization internationally recognized for its achievements in the fields of corporate social responsibility, community organizing, and sustainable food.  The CIW is also a leader in the growing movement to end human trafficking due to its groundbreaking work to combat modern-day slavery and other labor abuses common in agriculture. The CIW works in three broad and overlapping spheres:

The Campaign for Fair Food

The CIW’s national Campaign for Fair Food educates consumers on the issue of farm labor exploitation – its causes and solutions – and forges alliances between farmworkers and consumers in an effort to enlist the market power of major corporate buyers to help end that exploitation.  Since 2001, the campaign has combined creative, on-the-ground actions with cutting edge online organizing to win Fair Food Agreements with eleven multi-billion dollar food retailers, including McDonald’s, Subway, Sodexo and Whole Foods, establishing more humane farm labor standards and fairer wages for farmworkers in their tomato suppliers’ operations.

The Fair Food Program

In 2010, the Campaign for Fair Food resulted in the creation of the CIW’s Fair Food Program (FFP), a groundbreaking model for social responsibility based on a unique partnership among farmworkers, Florida tomato growers, and participating buyers.  Under the FFP, the CIW conducts worker education sessions, held on-the-farm and on-the-clock, on the new labor rights set forth in the Fair Food Code of Conduct; the Fair Food Standards Council, a third-party monitor created to ensure compliance with the FFP, conducts regular audits and carries out ongoing complaint investigation and resolution; and participating buyers pay a “penny per pound” premium which tomato growers pass onto workers as a line-item bonus on their regular paychecks (Between January 2011 and May 2013, over $10 million in Fair Food Premiums were paid into the Program). The FFP standards are backed by the market consequences established in the CIW’s Fair Food Agreements, in which participating buyers commit to buy Florida tomatoes only from growers in good standing with the FFP, and to cease purchases from growers who fail or refuse to comply with the Program.  The FFP has been called “a brilliant model” and “one of the great human rights success stories of our day” in a Washington Post op-ed. 

Anti-Slavery Campaign

The CIW’s Anti-Slavery Campaign has uncovered, investigated, and assisted in the prosecution of numerous multi-state, multi-worker farm slavery operations across the Southeastern U.S., helping liberate over 1,200 workers held against their will; pioneered the worker-centered approach to slavery prosecution; played a key role in the passage of the 2000 Trafficking Victims Protection Act; and co-founded the national Freedom Network USA and the Freedom Network Training Institute, which is regularly attended by local, state and federal law enforcement officials.  The implementation of the Fair Food Program has ushered in the newest phase of the CIW’s anti-slavery efforts, that of prevention, whereby the market consequences built into the FFP, including zero tolerance for forced labor, encourage participating growers to actively police their own operations, and the worker-to-worker education program at the heart of the FFP informs and empowers tens of thousands of workers to serve as monitors to identify and expose slavery operations wherever they might be present.