Bon Appetit Mgt. Co. has announced an agreement with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) on a code of conduct for tomato growers from which Bon Appetit will purchase tomatoes. CIW is a farmworker organization seeking better working conditions for Florida tomato pickers. Under the agreement, Bon Appetit will favor buying from growers that abide by CIW’s farm labor standards, provides preferential purchasing incentives for growers exceeding those standards and threatens to cease purchasing from those that fail to meet the standards.
Bon Appetit buys almost five million pounds of tomatoes a year. Among highlights of the agreements are a “minimum fair wage,” an end to traditional forms of wage abuse that take into account both time worked and pounds harvested, worker empowerment, worker safety and third party monitoring.