Food Chain Workers Alliance

Building the Infrastructure for a Food Worker Movement

Model and Strategy

The Food Chain Workers Alliance (FCWA) is a bi-national coalition of advocacy organizations, unions, and workers centers that collectively represent more than 375,000 workers across every sector of the food chain: farming, processing, retail, restaurant and service, distribution, and vending. Together with its 34 member groups, FCWA fights for a sustainable food system in which workers earn living wages and have safe and healthy working conditions, access to the food they produce, and a voice in their workplaces and communities.

FCWA is building the infrastructure food workers need to organize effectively. It provides space and support for our member groups to network, share strategies, train worker leaders, collaborate on local, federal, and global campaigns, and build solidarity with broader labor and food justice movements. It bolsters members’ capacity with communications, research, and legal, and funding support.

FCWA strategically intervenes in federal labor, immigration, food, and agricultural policies on behalf of its members and all food workers who are underrepresented in policy decisions. It also builds strategic and grassroots campaigns for cities and states to adopt effective policies (including the Good Food Purchasing Program but also beyond) that change how public dollars are spent on food and food services, with a particular emphasis on wages, worker health and safety, and the right to organize.

FCWA is led by members, who comprise our Board of Directors and determine its priorities and overall direction. Three simple rules guide its efforts: 1) all work should be created and/or led by workers; 2) the work should weave together member-to-member and leader-to-leader relationships; and 3) the work should build power by advancing an escalating agenda, moving the needle, providing a lever for change, and strengthening alliances.

Impact

When FCWA arrived on the scene, the food movement narrative rarely included workers and when it did, it often was about workers and not with them. In the 13 years since, FCWA and its member groups have helped create a dramatic shift: not only does today’s food movement include workers in their overall narrative, involving workers now brings more legitimacy and weight to food systems work. FCWA’s organizing platform is rooted in what its membership wants and needs. The pillars of that platform include the right to organize, just wages, health and safety, fair work standards, migrant justice, and climate justice. FCWA has provided various types of support to members to achieve victories in all of these areas, including support for a local minimum wage of $15 per hour in multiple cities and counties, and One Fair Wage – the elimination of the tipped minimum wage – in many states and jurisdictions. At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, FCWA supported members to lead campaigns and win the groundbreaking New York Health & Essential Rights Act, which created COVID-19 protections for all workers in New York State, and coordinated nationwide actions to protest lack of OSHA Emergency Temporary Standard to protect all workers from COVID-19. Most recently it supported members to participate in the creation of the Protecting America’s Meatpacking Workers Act. FCWA helped launch the Good Food Purchasing Program (GFPP) and over the last decade, supported coalitions to win GFPP policy adoptions by the Los Angeles Unified School District; Oakland Unified School District; Chicago Public Schools; the City of Chicago, the Chicago Parks District, Cook County, IL; District of Columbia Public Schools; Cincinnati Public Schools; and Boston Public Schools. It has helped institutionalize GFPP across New York City agencies, introduced NYC GFPP resolutions, and is now working on passing the first statewide GFPP policy, which was introduced in the New York State Senate in 2021.
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Leadership

  • Suzanne

    Suzanne Adely

    Co-Director

  • Sonia

    Sonia Singh

    Co-Director

  • Fabiola

    Fabiola Ortiz Valdez

    Lead Organizer

  • Christina

    Christina Spach

    Food Policy Coordinator

  • Jose

    Jose Lopez

    Operations Director

  • Elizabeth

    Elizabeth Walle

    Development Coordinator