Students protest labor conditions at Trader Joe's

Customers of Trader Joe’s on 21st and Market streets were met with signs and chants from protestors yesterday.

Food justice activists gathered by a Fair Food Sukkah outside the Trader Joe’s entrance to protest the grocery store chain’s lack of participation in the Coalition of Immokalee Workers’ Fair Food Program, a worker-led initiative designed to instate fair labor conditions for Florida farm workers.

A number of Penn students affiliated with Penn’s Student Labor Action Project were involved in the protest, which was organized by local food justice and religious organizations and included members of the Occupy Philadelphia movement.

“We want to bring attention to the fact that these workers have no protection and are some of the most vulnerable to abuses,” College junior and SLAP member Meghna Chandra said. “Instead of giving money to the farm workers, [the movement] works to change the system so that they can get a fair wage … [the workers] are organizing it and we are standing with them for what they are trying to achieve.”

The event featured several speakers, including Rabbi Anna Boswell-Levy of local Reconstructionist synagogue Tzedek v’Shalom and the Philadelphia branch of Rabbis for Human Rights, who told the protesters about her experience meeting affected farm workers and hearing their pleas for action.

Rabbi Lauren Grabelle-Herrmann of Kol Tzedek West Philadelphia Synagogue, Jade Walker of Mill Creek Farm and the Food Organizing Collaborative, and Temple University student Kate Kelly gave speeches to the crowd as well.

Part of the National Supermarket Week of Action — as well as a number of CIW-affiliated protests across the country — the event coincided with World Food Day and the Jewish holiday of Sukkot. “Sukkot is a harvest holiday … and bringing attention to farm worker’s rights has a strong connection to a bountiful, peaceful and just harvest,” Wharton senior Max Cohen said. The protests will culminate next weekend at the Trader Joe’s headquarters in California.

According to Cary Beckwith, a member of the Philadelphia committee of the Campaign for Fair Food, the Trader Joe’s management did not stand in the way of the protests. Additionally, Trader Joe’s has refuted CIW’s accusations and has published a letter on the subject to its customers.

“We buy only five Florida tomato items, and we only buy them during the growing season in Florida,” the letter reads. “Wholesalers have indicated to us that they have agreed to pass along an extra ‘penny per pound’ to the workers who harvest these tomatoes.”

“Trader Joe’s presents itself as an ethical company … so a lot of people are disappointed with them,” Beckwith said.

Several of the Penn students present had participated in Trader Joe’s protests in the past and decided to take part when approached by organizers of the Philadelphia protest. “This was a way to get involved beyond the Penn community,” Cohen said.

Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.