Image Courtesy of UNITE HEREShouldn't workers who serve food on college campuses be free to speak up on the job? Food integrity can't really exist if those charged with handling your food have no voice.

Fortunately, UNITE HERE – the largest worker organization in North America representing food service workers – has launched its Real Food Real Jobs campaign at universities in the nation's capital to ensure better working conditions and worker participation in bringing safe, healthy food options to students.

In addition to pushing for traditional benefits – including living wages, health care benefits, and full-time work hours – the campaign is also making worker voices a priority. Erin O'Donnell, a UNITE HERE research analyst working on the campaign, explained why worker input is an incredibly valuable asset to the food movement.

They are on the front-lines of the growing, preparing, cooking, serving, of the foodservice industry, and their voices not only matter in a basic human sense in that everyone should have the right to be able to speak up on their job and talk about what matters to them and have their voices be heard, but they're also really valuable because they know what it means to try to serve thousands of often pretty picky students every single day and try to feed them the best quality food possible.

To ensure the workers have a voice, UNITE HERE is working to establish a "joint worker/management committee" that involves workers and campus community members in food-related decision-making. It gives those on the front-lines a key voice where it counts. Again, from O'Donnell:

That committee is also going to conduct a survey of workers to get everyone's input on what kind of changes should be made in the dining halls. The committee is also going to serve as a place where workers can bring concerns about food safety and food quality if issues like that happen to arise, which is a great protection for workers.

The effort in DC has already found success at American University (AU), where a major landmark agreement was made in late January between AU workers and Bon Appétit Management Company that achieves all major upgrades the workers sought – including the assurances of whistleblower protections.

Good news surfaced last week when the Department of Labor announced a settlement resulting in compensation for foreign student workers who faced labor abuses at a Hershey candy company packing plant. Three companies, including Hershey contractor Exel Inc. (which oversaw the plant), agreed to pay $213,042 in back wages to more than 1,028 students in the J-1 visa Summer Work Study program. In addition to the back wages, the settlement also requires two of the companies to pay $148,000 in safety and health violation fines.

FIC blogged last summer about the students' brave disclosures, including meager wages and harsh working conditions, amidst the threat of deportation – a far cry from the fun cultural experience they were promised.

A new report by the Midwest Coalition for Human Rights details the dangerous working conditions and human rights violations that occur in meat and poultry processing facilities in the Midwest. Based on interviews with Latino and other immigrant plant workers, researchers revealed the significant health and safety risks these workers faced every day, and unsurprisingly, workers provided a clear link between these risks and fast-paced line speeds.

How poignant, given that the USDA's proposed poultry inspection rule would further increase line speeds even more! FIC has highlighted the concerns of USDA whistleblowers regarding the agency's plan, which they say would replace government inspectors with plant workers who are powerless to speak out against their employers (including when they see food safety concerns). One retired USDA inspector, Phyllis McKelvey, has worked at poultry plants where the proposed rule's faster line speeds are already implemented in a pilot program. As a consequence, Phyllis told FIC, not only do the plant workers miss problems with the birds, but they also expose themselves to injury. Sign Phyllis's petition to stop this flawed rule from moving forward!

Photo via flickr user iantmcfarlandBig news came yesterday with the announcement that Mexican fast food chain Chipotle has, at last, signed an agreement with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) to improve wages and working conditions for Florida's tomato farmworkers. The agreement comes right before the winter growing season, when most of the nation's tomatoes come from Florida.

It's about time, Chipotle! Earlier this year, FIC explained how the chain's trademarked slogan of "Food with Integrity" continued to ignore the routine exploitation of food workers – potential whistleblowers whose voices should be heard. Now that Chipotle has joined CIW's Fair Food Program (making it the 11th company to do so), its public image has some real accountability to back it up.

Phyllis McKelvey is a retired Food Safety Inspection Service (FSIS) Inspector who spent 44 years working in the poultry sector (both for private industry and the government). Yesterday, I reported her concerns about HIMP, the USDA plan to unsafely privatize poultry oversight. In a recent interview with GAP, this longtime Alabamian highlighted the importance of the Latino work force throughout the industry – and how Alabama’s new immigration law has had a major impact on Hispanic poultry workers in the state.

Sanderson Farms, the third largest poultry producer in the United States, is coming under fire for an unsafe and hostile work environment at its chicken processing plant in Hazlehurst, Mississippi. One former employee, who worked at the plant for four years, said he was fired for raising concerns about working conditions to his supervisor.

UPDATE 6/30/12: Walmart announced it has suspended C.J's Seafood after Walmart's own investigation uncovered violations of some of its supplier standards.

Inadequate whistleblower protections already leave many American food industry workers vulnerable to retaliation for speaking out against exploitative practices, so you can imagine how guestworkers (hired from abroad) are treated.

Last year, student guestworkers risked their jobs exposing harsh working conditions at a Hershey packing plant in Pennsylvania. Now, guestworkers are trying to hold Walmart accountable for atrocious labor conditions along its food supply chain.