Farmworkers’ Rights

At Bon Appétit Management Company, we believe that farmworkers should not only be honored for their contribution to our food system, but enjoy the same rights and protections as employees in other occupations.

Did you know the crop farmworkers who plant, harvest, and pack the food grown throughout the United States are excluded from the basic labor and safety standards that other employees take for granted? Likewise, many people would be shocked to learn that farm work has lenient child labor restrictions and little or no overtime limits, collective bargaining rights, or workers’ compensation insurance, despite the fact that agriculture is among the most hazardous industries in the U.S.

What We’re Doing

We empower farmers and set standards. We are proud to be a founding member of the Equitable Food Initiative (EFI), a unique partnership that brings together growers, farmworkers, retailers, and consumers to transform agriculture and improve the lives of farmworkers.
We educate consumers about these issues during our annual National Farmworker Awareness Week. Every March, dozens of our cafés spotlight issues facing farmworkers with activities and educational materials.
We’ve documented farmworker issues and protections. In March 2011, we collaborated with United Farm Workers of America and Oxfam America to release a groundbreaking report detailing the lack of laws and protections for crop farmworkers in the U.S. The report has become required reading in many classrooms.

We were the first food service company to partner with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), a farmworker organization with whom we forged the Fair Food Agreement that frames acceptable working conditions and enforces those conditions with a strict code of conduct for tomato growers.
In 2001 we were the first food service company to support the boycott of produce grown by NORPAC, Oregon’s largest food processing and packaging cooperative, which was refusing to negotiate with farmworkers represented by Northwest Treeplanters and Farmworkers United, better known by its Spanish acronym PCUN (Pineros y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste). In 2002 NORPAC agreed to abide by a set of labor guidelines.