On July 26, 2018 CLASP and CIWO hosted a labor standards enforcement webinar on monitoring strategies. 

Presenters were:

• Greg Asbed, Coalition of Immokalee Workers
• Gerardo Reyes Chavez, Coalition of Immokalee Workers; and 
• Judge Laura Safer Espinoza, Fair Food Standards Council

The CIW has rewritten the script for labor monitoring. The CIW’s Fair Food Program is a unique partnership among farmers, farmworkers, and retail food companies that ensures humane wages and working conditions for the workers who pick fruits and vegetables on participating farms. Designed, monitored, and enforced by workers, we can draw valuable lessons and ideas from the robust, comprehensive, on the ground monitoring of the CIW’s Fair Food Standards Council.

In addition to worker-to-worker education sessions, which take place on the farms and on the clock, and a 24-hour hotline answered by an inspector in real time, FFSC has full-time bilingual investigators and a full-time financial investigator who conduct thorough announced and unannounced inspections and financial audits of every grower every season. The investigators produce official Corrective Action Plans that stipulate specific steps that must be taken. If the grower fails to comply, they can be placed on probation or suspended from the program, with real market consequences.

Many enforcement agencies already work with labor compliance and monitoring organizations or require monitoring in their settlement agreements. The CIW and FFSC’s experience offers insights for enforcement agencies on conducting strategic enforcement, such as focusing on buyers at the top of the supply chain, rather than growers who are direct employers, as well as on promising practices for monitoring that ensures ongoing compliance with labor laws.

View the slides here.