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Fair Food Program seeks alternative to slow regulations

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Agreements with Walmart ( WMT ), Whole Foods and McDonald's

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Active in 10 states, but that set to double

By Carey L. Biron

WASHINGTON, July 8 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Heat

records have repeatedly been toppled in recent weeks, just when

farms in some of the hottest parts of United States are at their

busiest.

That has Lupe Gonzalo worried.

"A lot of places in the field, you don't have access to

shade, to clean and fresh drinking water," said Gonzalo, a

senior staff member with the non-profit Coalition of Immokalee

Workers (CIW), who works with farmworkers across several

southern states.

For years Gonzalo picked tomatoes, berries, sweet potatoes

and other produce, and the heat was always an issue. But her

concerns are mounting.

"It's getting hotter and hotter as climate change continues,

and it will continue to be an issue for workers," Gonzalo, 43,

told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

"We've already seen far too many people become ill and even

lose their lives. So this is truly an urgent issue," she said.

While regulations to protect agricultural workers from the

heat have been held up by political wrangling, Gonzalo and her

colleagues have spearheaded an alternate strategy.

They seek to sidestep the slow and increasingly politicized

government machinery and instead appeal directly to consumers

and large brands.

Gonzalo and others in the CIW set up the Fair Food Program

to strike deals directly with large companies.

The companies pledge to pay fair wages, eliminate sexual

harassment and other issues - including increasingly stringent

heat protections - in return for Fair Food Program certification

for their products.

The heat-related measures include providing shade, having

required breaks, training for workers and supervisors,

electrolyte-infused water, and the ability to seek care without

fear of retaliation.

'SOURCED FOR GOOD'

The program currently covers tens of thousands of workers in

10 states, through agreements with companies such as Walmart ( WMT ),

McDonald's, Subway and others.

The group also works with farmworkers in Chile and South

Africa, and is seeking to expand to other countries.

At national grocery store Whole Foods, for instance,

consumers can purchase Fair Food Program-certified sweet

potatoes and cut flowers labelled as "Sourced for Good".

Now the program's reach is about to expand significantly,

after the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) highlighted its

approach for special acknowledgement under a new program aimed

at addressing human rights and worker retention on farms.

Last month, the first-ever pilot awards were made under the

program, which the Fair Food Program said would see it expand to

13 new states, nearly doubling the number of farms covered.

Tomato grower Jon Esformes, whose company received one of

the awards, has implemented the Fair Food Program guidelines on

his operations across the United States and Mexico. He said he

took the steps after sitting down for the first time to simply

talk with his workers about their concerns.

"I found very quickly a group of people that were interested

in the same things I was interested in," he said. "We want to

provide a safe and fair workplace, we want to have transparency,

we need our workers to feel like it is their farm."

PROTECTION DECADES OVERDUE

The U.S. government has dragged its feet on worker heat

protections for decades, said Juanita Constible, a senior

advocate with the heat solutions program at the Natural

Resources Defense Council.

About 51 million U.S. workers are at high risk to heat, with

less than a fifth of those covered by standards, the think tank

has found.

The federal government is only now updating 1970s rules,

last week releasing a proposal that would offer heat protections

for indoor and outdoor workers, including requiring employers to

provide workers with water and shaded or air-conditioned areas

above certain temperatures.

Still, a final rule could take years, with recent moves by

the Supreme Court potentially further threatening such efforts.

While business associations said they were still reviewing

the new proposal, farming and construction lobby groups have

criticized early steps in the new process, warning of burdens to

businesses.

Yet, Constible said, "the research has kept piling up that

heat is not only potentially deadly to workers, but also

drastically affects their productivity - billions of work hours

lost in the U.S. and around the world because it's too darn

hot."

The probability of work-related accidents rises by nearly 6%

when temperatures pass 90 degrees Fahrenheit (32 degrees

Celsius), according to research from the Workers Compensation

Research Institute published in May.

In the absence of federal action, five states have passed

their own laws with a sixth on the horizon, though these vary

significantly in scope.

Cities have also taken proactive steps, including in June in

Tucson, Arizona, but such efforts have run into political

resistance, with new local rules in Florida and Texas halted by

state officials.

Constible worries such politicization could continue, which

she says underscores the importance of the Fair Food Program's

strategy of appealing to brands and consumers.

"I'm a huge fan. I think it's been amazingly significant for

those workers," she said.

Farms that can ensure workers feel safe and have access to

the tools to keep them healthy have found it easier to entice

prospective workers, a UDSA spokesperson said.

That is what Esformes, the CEO of Pacific Tomato Growers,

has found amid recent worker shortages.

"When the rest of North America was reeling with lack of

workers, we did not have enough jobs for the people who wanted

to work for us. And the reason is we've created a

workplace-of-choice environment," said Esformes, 61.

He said May saw the hottest temperatures ever recorded in

parts of Florida, just as farms were in full harvest, but that

Fair Food Program heat guidelines were in operation for the

nearly 3,500 workers on the company's 15,000 acres (6,070

hectares).

"There's definitely a cost associated with it. Electrolyte

powder is not cheap; breaks aren't cheap," Esformes said. "But

you know what also is not cheap? People getting sick and people

feeling like they're not safe."

(Reporting by Carey L. Biron; Editing by Jon Hemming. The

Thomson Reuters Foundation is the charitable arm of Thomson

Reuters. Visit https://www.context.news/)