Student-Farmworker Alliance and Unite Here Call to Campus Activists
Attention Campus Activists!
The Student Farmworker Alliance (SFA) and UNITE HERE are taking their campaigns for worker justice to colleges all over the country this school-year. Collectively, these two organizations will be fighting in solidarity with workers at both ends of the food industry: the farmworkers who pick the produce in the fields and the cafeteria workers who cook and service it at college campuses. We are looking to join with activists like you to demand that both students and workers have greater voice in the decisions universities, colleges and corporations make about the food we eat each day.
SFA
Student-Farmworker Alliance (SFA) is a national network of students and youth organizing in partnership with farmworkers to eliminate sweatshop conditions and modern-day slavery in the fields. SFA works most closely with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, a community based organization of agricultural workers based in Florida. Together with farmworkers, SFA has fought for, and won, responsible purchasing policies from food industry giants such as Burger King, Taco Bell and most recently Compass Group, a major provider of campus food service.
Now, SFA is putting pressure on the largest contracted food service companies in the world, such as Aramark and Sodexo, to agree to policies that ensure that farmworkers in Florida can work under dignified conditions and receive decent wages for their labor. Check out the Dine with Dignity campaign to find out how you can get involved! There is a week of action coming up Oct 5-9.
UNITE HERE
UNITE HERE is the country’s leading labor union for university food service workers. It represents workers at universities around the country such as Yale University, the University of Southern California and Saint John’s University.
This fall UNITE HERE is stepping up its campaign to raise standards for university food service workers. Stir It Up, a website devoted to student involvement in campus food service, will be chronicling students’ efforts to support, and to raise consciousness about, campus food service workers. Stir It Up will also follow SFA campaigns as they unfold.
Join us!
SFA and UNITE HERE are looking forward to working with students across the country to win these campaigns. Please monitor our websites, Dine with Dignity and Stir It Up, for regular updates and join our groups or become our friends on Facebook (SFA, Stir It Up). Contact Ian Mikusko (UNITE HERE) at imikusko [at] unitehere.org and Marc Rodrigues (SFA) marc [at] sfalliance.org for more information.
In solidarity,
UNITE HERE
Student-Farmworker Alliance
