The Top 10 Reasons We Should Care About Food Workers

1. Millions of Your Fellow Humans. Maybe this num­ber alone will con­vince you: 20 mil­lion work­ers toil every day—often under inhu­mane conditions—harvesting fields, killing and cut­ting up ani­mals, pack­ing boxes, dri­ving trucks, cook­ing meals, ring­ing up orders, serv­ing tables, and clean­ing up your mess.

2. Worker Conditions Tied to Food Safety. Research has shown a con­nec­tion between worker con­di­tions and food safety. For exam­ple, speed­ing up lines in slaugh­ter­houses puts food at higher risk for con­t­a­m­i­na­tion, and endan­gers worker safety. Also, work­ers who expe­ri­ence labor vio­la­tions in restau­rants are more likely to be forced to per­form duties that might harm con­sumers. So bet­ter treat­ment of work­ers in the fields, in meat pack­ing plants, and in other set­tings means safer food for everyone.

3. Sick Workers Mean Sick Customers. As I wrote about before, the health of restau­rant work­ers is espe­cially tied to food safety. Obviously it’s not a good thing for restau­rant work­ers to be sneez­ing all over your meals. That’s why we need to sup­port paid sick days for all workers.

4. Workers Risk Lifelong Injuries. While many food-related jobs are back­break­ing work, meat­pack­ing plants are espe­cially noto­ri­ous for being extremely dan­ger­ous places to work. If you care about how ani­mals are treated on fac­tory farms, you should also care about the work­ers suf­fer­ing along with them.

5. Farm Workers Exposed to Pesticides. While most food­ies are con­cerned about their own expo­sure to pes­ti­cides and other harm­ful chem­i­cals used in agri­cul­ture, remem­ber those most at risk are the farm work­ers who have to spray the crops and work in the fields. In other words, it’s not enough to just buy organic, we need poli­cies that pro­tect work­ers too.

6. Food Workers Living in Poverty. According to this must-read report from the Food Chain Workers Alliance, The Hands that Feed Us, “more than 86 per­cent of work­ers reported earn­ing sub-minimum, poverty, and low wages.” If you only care about how this effects you, con­sider that nearly 28% of food sys­tem employ­ees are on Medicaid, more than a third use the emer­gency room for pri­mary care, and espe­cially tragic is how food sys­tem work­ers use food stamps at 1.5 times the rate of oth­ers U.S. work­ers. In other words, the low stan­dard of liv­ing suf­fered by most food work­ers effects us all through higher insur­ance costs and tax­payer pro­grams. This is a fancy way of say­ing we are all sub­si­diz­ing an indus­try that pays its work­ers slave wages.

7. Wage Theft. While I obvi­ously live a priv­i­leged life, I like to con­sider myself fairly knowl­edge­able about the plight of those less for­tu­nate. However, “wage theft” is a term I am ashamed to admit I only heard of fairly recently, in rela­tion to farm work­ers and oth­ers work­ing in the food sys­tem. (Of course, it can apply to any work sec­tor.) It means exactly what it says: that employ­ers sim­ply fail to pay what their work­ers right­fully earned. It’s com­mon­place with immi­grant work­ers who often have no recourse to complain.

8. Race and Gender Discrimination. Also applic­a­ble to the work­place in gen­eral, but in her book, Jayaraman paints an espe­cially dire sit­u­a­tion in restau­rants, where women and work­ers of color are often not pro­moted to higher-paying posi­tions. The Darden Group, which owns such chains as Olive Garden and Red Lobster has been hit with a class action for dis­crim­i­nat­ing against work­ers in its Capital Grille out­lets, along with wage theft and other labor law violations.

9. Healthy Food Is More Than Nutrition. One of the most trou­bling short-comings among many of my pub­lic health col­leagues is to only see “healthy food” in terms of fiber grams and vit­a­mins. This is far too nar­row a lens for many rea­sons, includ­ing the moral oblig­a­tion to also care about how the food was grown, raised, har­vested, pre­pared, and served. This is why I can­not blindly sup­port part­ner­ships such as this one between Let’s Move and United Fresh (the trade asso­ci­a­tion for fresh pro­duce) to pro­mote fruits and veg­eta­bles to chil­dren. We have to also ask how such a group treats its workers.

10. A Sustainable Food System Must Include Workers. Hopefully this is obvi­ous by now, but we can­not talk about sus­tain­abil­ity with­out includ­ing the work­ers, who are on the front lines of all the prob­lems that food pol­icy wonks com­plain about. Every pub­lic health, envi­ron­men­tal, and ani­mal wel­fare prob­lem that has been writ­ten about for decades inter­sects with the plight of food work­ers. We need them to help inform our analy­sis and to help forge solu­tions. Also, as good food advo­cates, we have a moral oblig­a­tion to help ensure they can live sus­tain­able lives. We are in this fight together.

Have more rea­sons? Feel free to add them in the com­ments. Stay tuned for solu­tions and how to get involved to fix these problems.

Michele Simon

Michele is a pub­lic health lawyer who has been research­ing and writ­ing about the food indus­try and food pol­i­tics since 1996. Visit her site at www.EatDrinkPolitics.com/