What Oxfam is Doing
As part of Oxfam's Make Trade Fair campaign, we are launching a labor rights and trade campaign to urge corporations to respect labor rights in their supply chain management.
As part of this launch, Oxfam recently released two groundbreaking studies on labor rights and trade. The first, Trading Away Our Rights, explores how the purchasing practices of brand name companies are eroding the rights of 32 million workers in 13 countries.
Oxfam America is also bringing the story closer to home. Our second study, Like Machines in the Fields: Workers without Rights in American Agriculture, sheds light on the exploitation of farmworkers in the United States. Nearly two million, mainly immigrants, toil without rights, earn sub-standard wages, and live in dehumanizing conditions here in the United States.
It's time to reverse this trend. Oxfam America has joined the campaigns of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers and the Farm Labor Organizing Committee to urge big food buyers to make sure their suppliers respect labor rights.
The Coalition of Immokalee Workers, based in Florida, is pressing Yum Brands—the parent company of Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, and Kentucky Fried Chicken—to negotiate a penny per pound of tomatoes wage increase for farmworkers. Yum buys about 40 million pounds of tomatoes through a single company and could have a substantial impact on farmworkers' wages.
Likewise, in North Carolina, the Farm Labor Organizing Committee is calling on the Mt. Olive Pickle Company to urge their suppliers to recognize the right of farmworkers to organize and bargain collectively.