New Report Finds Challenges Along the Food Chain

by Eric Galatas/TNS

AUSTIN, Texas – Workers in the food industry, who make up one-sixth of the nation’s workforce, are twice as likely to receive food stamps, confront food shortages and depend on such public support as Medicaid and energy assistance, according to a new report.

The study from the Food Chain Workers Alliance found that workers also face on-the-job health and safety issues. The Walmart chain featured heavily in its findings, said Jose Oliva, the alliance’s co-director, in an interview with Workers Independent News Service.

“We found in our report there were a slew of major problems,” he said, “everything from gender and racial discrimination, unfair treatment, low pay, violations of workers’ freedom of association – all the way to worker fatalities.”

Walmart commands about one-third of the grocery market.

The Food Chain Workers Alliance has issued a report critical of wages and working conditions across the food industry, and says these issues affect consumers. Photo: U.S. Dept. of Health and Human ServicesThe report also alleged that food-industry corporations receiving government subsidies and tax breaks are buying up their own suppliers, creating unfair competition for small- to medium-sized companies. Ultimately, Oliva said, it’s the consumer who pays more as a result.

More than half of all workers surveyed said they didn’t receive health and safety training, and more than one in 10 said supervisors had directed them to do something that they felt put their safety at risk. Olivia cited Walmart as an example of large companies that need independent oversight to better monitor problems in their supply chain.

“I think the next step is for them is to actually put their money where their mouth is,” he said, “and to stop giving lip service to environmental and worker issues and actually set up a third-party, independent monitoring entity.”

After months of public protests about wages and working conditions, Walmart workers recently won a wage increase, Oliva said, and warehouse workers in California and Illinois now are suing contractors operating Walmart distribution centers and staffing agencies for wage violations.

The report is online at foodchainworkers.org.