Food Workers—Food Justice: Bridging the food justice, labor, and immigrant rights movements

The global food crisis—made worse by the financial crisis—has exposed the roots of an inequitable, unsustainable and unhealthy corporate food regime. Rapidly-growing food movements for neighborhood food security , food justice , and even food sovereignty reflect widespread discontent with the state of the U.S. food system. These movements are actively advancing equitable and sustainable alternatives including food banks, Community Supported Agriculture (CSAs), farmers markets, farm-to-school programs, food policy councils, buying local and fair trade, in an effort to address deteriorating health, environment and food security issues. Missing in most of these movements, however, is attention to how the corporate food regime exploits the workers employed in producing, processing, distributing, preparing, and selling our food.

Food First’s new collaborative program, Food Workers—Food Justice, seeks to address labor justice in the food system. In order to overcome the structural inequities and unsustainable aspects of the corporate food regime, linkages are needed between the food movement, the labor movement and the immigrant rights movement.