Creating a Sweatfree World

Sweatshops in the Fields

In the 21st century a small handful of global conglomerates and increasingly consolidated global retailers are once again creating the conditions that flourished in the late 1700s. One can see hints of the extent of the abuses throughout their supply chain in stories of forced labor, forced child labor, and farmers in abject debt bondage to the companies from which they must buy the seeds, and to which they must sell products at an unsustainable price. A small handful of multinational corporations, unfamiliar to most consumers (i.e. Cargill, Monsanto, Archer Daniels Midland), sit atop this production cartel, as do some more familiar brands, like Nestle and Unilever. Wal-Mart delivers these commodities at seductive prices to working-class consumers.

A sustained movement connecting producers of these goods with consumers around the world is absolutely vital if we are to have any hope of rendering global corporations accountable, or of developing space for workers, including the farmers who are in essence now mere employees of global agribusiness, to organize and to negotiate for fair and decent terms and conditions for themselves. ILRF supports the rights of the workers who are producing the food that US consumers depend on every day.

ILRF has for several years pressured companies like Dole, but now sees a sea change in control over supply chains. Large retailers like Wal-Mart demand low prices even from companies like Dole, placing even more pressure on an already broken system that serves companies looking to making a hefty profit, but not the women and men in the world's fields, harvesting cocoa, sugarcane, flowers, fruits or cotton.

Join ILRF today in demanding that food and agricultural workers throughout the world will be guaranteed safe and equitable jobs.

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