NEWSFOOD WORKERS

Mario Batali, the celebrity chef whose orange crocs grace the likes of Iron Chef America, owns a slew of restaurants in New York, Los Angeles, and Las Vegas. One of those restaurants, Del Posto — a super swanky, high-end Italian joint — recently got an impressive four-star rating from the New York Times.

Despite the high marks, workers at Del Posto aren't happy. A group of 40 Del Posto staffers say they have faced wage theft, discrimination, abuse, and retaliation for trying to organize a group that might be able to address these issues. That's why the Restaurant Opportunity Center (ROC) of New York, an advocacy group dedicated to winning improved conditions for restaurant workers, filed suit against Del Posto and is asking for your help in the fight for respect and fair treatment.

The lawsuit alleges that Del Posto uses a point system to distribute tips based on position in the staff, with "captains." the highest ranked waiters, receiving the most, followed by bartenders, then front waiters, and expediters. Stockers get just one-third of what captains get. The lawsuit also claims that wait staff who worked banquets at Del Posto were not paid the tips they earned, getting a flat fee instead. ROC says they had been in talks with Del Posto to address these issues and others for nearly six months before they finally filed the lawsuit.

Like most parents, Michigan resident Rachael Hilliker cares very much about the kinds of foods her kids eat. Hilliker has a three-year-old daughter, Claire, and her fiance is the father of an eight-year-old and 10-year old. All three children attend Michigan's public school system. So when Hilliker found out about House Bill 4306, she was understandably irate.

"The types of foods kids are going to end up with on their plates is not going to be healthy food," Hilliker says.

That's because HB 4306 could be the death knell of fresh, nutritious school meal programs in Michigan. The legislation, sponsored by Rep. Dave Agema, mandates that public schools throughout the state must privatize their custodial, transportation, and food services programs. In other words, say goodbye to the lunch lady and freshly prepared, local foods and hello to corporate catering services like Sodexo, Aramark, and Chartwells.

By now many of us have read the widely divergent reactions to Walmart's new Healthy Eating campaign. Anna Lappé came out with a withering assessment, Marion Nestle expressed a great deal of skepticism, and Corby Kummer has written not one, but two defenses of Walmart. Jane Black writes that Walmart is right to take small, slow steps because that is the most customers will tolerate. I think the campaign is a (teensy) step in the right direction, but it merits little more than a polite golf clap.

Here's a brief outline of what, exactly, Walmart plans to do through its Healthy Eating campaign:

• Work with manufacturers to reduce sodium, sugar, and trans-fats
• Narrow the price difference between "regular" and "healthier" versions of the same foods
• Continue selling produce at competitively low prices
• Create front-of-the-package seals of approval for "healthier" foods (although the store hasn't defined its criteria for this yet)

Black is correct in saying that Walmart is making changes at a rate that's most comfortable for its customers. But as I see it, Walmart is just doing the absolute minimum it needs to do in order to break into the last remaining markets — namely urban food deserts. This looks like PR spin engineered to make the company look a little more attractive to New York City hunger advocates.

If you can make it in New York City you can make it anywhere — unless you're Walmart. When the superstore tried to open years ago in Queens and Staten Island, New Yorkers told the company "Fuggedaboutit!" (Yeah, I know... someone had to say it.) Now Walmart wants to open its first NYC-based store in East New York, an underserved Brooklyn neighborhood that could very much use some affordable grocery stores. It's a neighborhood that could use jobs, too. But would a Walmart really be a good deal for Brooklynites? Let's examine Walmart's supposed benefits.

Affordable food: Yup, the food at Walmart is cheap. No denying that. And Walmart is even supposedly making an effort to do more sustainable sourcing, too. It's easy for me — a middle-class person living within walking distance from the nation's oldest food cooperative — to say "Cheap food at what cost?" But let's get real, food fighters. Affordability is a hurdle we haven't surmounted.

However, Walmart is not the solution. The big box store is full of food from exploited farmers and mass-produced processed food. It also threatens small businesses and the local, sustainable food projects that do exist. East New York Farms — a group that runs farmers' markets, CSAs, and urban farms — offers an excellent alternative to big box stores. I have a lot of faith in food stamp/farmers market' programs. We'll need more solutions like these if we really want to ward off the likes of Walmart.

Jobs: You know the deal: no unions — ever — and low wages. Good luck getting a decent benefits package.

Dick Bengen gives new meaning to his first name. He's the owner of Ruby Ridge Dairy in Pasco, W.A., a company that has been fighting worker unionization efforts for years. Dairy work, especially at a big factory farm, is difficult and dangerous under even the best conditions, but at Ruby Ridge, workers are subjected to long hours with no lunch, no breaks, and no overtime. Workers report that they aren't provided with drinkable water and are subjected to racist slurs.

This abuse has had activists targeting the dairy for some time now, and there is an ongoing effort by employees to organize with the United Farm Workers (they would be the first dairy ever to do so). Now Bengen has reached a new low: carrying a rifle to work to scare his employees back in line.

According to United Farm Workers, Bengen let former employee Miguel Cuevas know exactly what purpose that rifle serves, telling him, "This rifle is for those people with the union." Cuevas was fired after signing a union card, and he says the company gave him an illegal ultimatum: renounce the union or lose his job. Not only that, but Ruby Ridge lied and told authorities that Cuevas had quit, blocking him from receiving unemployment. Plus, the dairy farm provided bad references so that Cuevas couldn't get a new job. He lost his house and wound up sleeping in his car for a time, all because he stood up for his rights.

Cuevas has joined several other former employees in suing Ruby Ridge for these kinds of abuses and threats, but they are just a handful of the third of the Ruby Ridge workforce that has been unlawfully discharged.

Serving ware isn't of much use if you don't have any food to fill it. That's the exact point one South Carolina non-profit is trying to make by sending a collection of paper plates to lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

The Harvest Hope Food Bank recently finished up the planning stages of its Paper Plate Campaign. As part of an effort to raise awareness about children's hunger in South Carolina, volunteers decorated about 500 paper plates with personalized messages. According to WLTX.com, the food bank plans to send the plates to Washington, D.C. next week.

South Carolina delegates won't be the only ones receiving a collection of decorated paper plates. According to the Food Research and Action Center (FRAC), organizations from more than 10 states are working on their own Paper Plate Campaigns to raise awareness about child hunger in the U.S. The plate collections couldn't come at a better time — according to CNN, food insecurity is at its highest level in 15 years. Plus, due to budget constraints, a number of kids' feeding programs are currently on the chopping block, including the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).

I wrote about Chipotle's refusal to meet with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) and sign on to the organization's Campaign for Fair Food. The campaign fights farm worker exploitation, and several major fast food chains have already joined the Fair Food Fight. More than 100 Change.org members signed our petition asking Chipotle to sign on to CIW's Campaign for Fair Food, and many were confused by the response we received back from the Mexican restaurant. The response read in part:

"When Chipotle signed an agreement with East Coast Growers last year to improve wages and working conditions for farm workers who pick our tomatoes, it was an important step toward getting tomato growers to take action on this issue. Today, all of the tomatoes we use in our restaurants come from growers who have signed on with the CIW and its Campaign for Fair Food to ensure better wages and working conditions for farm workers."

This is the latest way in which Chipotle has justified refusing to sign a Fair Food agreement or even have a discussion with the CIW, the nation's most preeminent force battling agricultural slavery and exploitation in the United States. But the CIW immediately blasted these claims as mere spin when Chipotle first started spewing this rubbish. The CIW's Gerardo Reyes and Sean Sellars wrote for Grist and detailed why Chipotle's response just isn't good enough.

Chipotle is something of a beacon in the world of fast food. The company has gone out of its way to source humane, non-factory-farmed meat and an ever-increasing percentage of organic beans and produce. This commitment to sustainability has helped make Chipotle one of the world's fastest-growing restaurant chains, but unfortunately it seems that the commitment does not extend to the workers who plant and pick the Mexican restaurant's food.

As Change.org editor Sarah Parsons wrote last month, modern-day agricultural slavery is unfortunately alive and well. Conditions for the workers who pick our food are bad enough given the lack of labor protections and overtime pay, but in the most extreme cases, the workers are actual slaves. They are kept in debt and controlled with sexual and physical violence, along with the ever-present threat of deportation. In September, federal prosecutors announced forced labor indictments in what the FBI is calling the "largest human trafficking case ever charged in U.S. history."

At least 400 Thai workers were lured here with the promise of guest worker visas, only to have their passports stolen and be forced to work without pay once they arrived. It is the ninth time Florida producers have been implicated since 1997. The Florida-based Coalition of Immokalee Workers labor organization (CIW) has an amazing track record in fighting these kinds of abuses. The non-profit has gotten nearly every major fast food chain — except Chipotle — to sign accountability agreements with the CIW as part of its Campaign for Fair Food.

Restaurants agree to prioritize and reward producers who meet the CIW's standards and code of conduct by paying a penny more per pound of produce. CIW has now turned its sights to supermarkets and food service companies and has already won some big victories on that front. The CIW has earned praise from human rights organizations the world over, and even from the Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton.

They say that if you give a man a fish, he eats for a day, but if you teach a man to fish, he eats for a lifetime. Well the same is true for giving someone food-versus-teaching a person some skills in the kitchen. No one knows that fact better than Sandra Marilyn, Bill Taylor, and Sally Ray.

According to a recent story in the San Francisco Chronicle, Marilyn, Taylor, and Ray run San Francisco's CHEFS program, or "Conquering Homelessness through Employment in Food Service." The innovative initiative, which is run by the Episcopal Community Services of San Francisco, offers cooking courses and job placement opportunities to local homeless people. Once folks complete months of rigorous culinary lessons and a three-month internship at a local restaurant, CHEFS then helps place program graduates in food service jobs throughout the city. The program's proved successful in not only getting people off the streets, but in boosting culinary literacy.

For one student, 36-year-old Ray Camarena, CHEFS became a life-saver. As the San Francisco Chronicle reported, Camarena returned to the U.S. from Spain several years ago, and her husband was tragically murdered. Camarena then spent six years in a federal prison for conspiracy, winding up at a half-way house once she was released. The half-way house burned down, and Camarena moved into a trailer. It wasn't until she got accepted to the CHEFS program that things finally started looking up.

In a major victory for Florida farm workers, one of the nation's top three food service corporations, Sodexo, signed on this week to an agreement with The Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), a community-based, farm-worker justice organization. Sodexo pledged to pay more for the Florida tomatoes it purchases and abide by a new, farmer-developed code for the food suppliers that provide Sodexo's tomatoes.

So why is this a major victory? Sodexo, a food management services corporation, serves 9.3 million meals each day in school cafeterias, universities, hospitals, and nursing homes across North America. Figure in all the salads, burgers, sandwiches, Italian entrees — that's a ton of tomatoes. Sodexo will pay an additional 1.5 cents to each pound of tomatoes it purchases from suppliers in Florida, the top tomato producing state after California. This raise will in turn boost the average farm worker's wages. The company will also require its suppliers to follow a strict code mandating fair and humane labor practices, and will "steer its tomato purchases toward those growers who make a genuine effort to meet the specific code of conduct," according to BusinessWire.

“We are happy to be working with an industry leader like Sodexo to advance fundamental human rights in Florida’s fields,” said CIW's Lucas Benitez.