Low wages of workers documented
The majority of people working in food industry jobs earn low- to poverty-level wages, do not have health benefits and have little to no chance of advancement, according to a study released Wednesday by a nonprofit labor advocacy group.
The Food Chain Workers Alliance found that only 13.5 percent of those working in farm, food processing, warehouse, grocery store, and restaurant and food service jobs make a living wage. Of the 700 workers the alliance inter-
viewed, 86 percent reported that they couldn’t support themselves on the wages they made.
“In fact, food system workers use food stamps at double the rate of the rest of the U.S. workforce,” the report said.
The group estimated that there are 20 million workers— one-sixth of the nation’s entire workforce — in these five core segments of the food chain, and 17 million of them make as little as $18,900 a year.
“Seven of the 10 lowestpaying jobs in this country are in food service,” said Saru Jayaraman, who wrote the report and is director of the Food Labor Research Center at UC Berkeley, which helped analyze data from the survey. “Given that the food industry makes up much of the nation’s workforce, and if these are the jobs that are growing and proliferating, we need to be very concerned about the bad conditions.”
Together, food production, processing, distribution, retail and service industries sell more than $1.8 trillion in goods and services per year, which accounts for 13 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product, according to the alliance’s findings.
“The top-paid eight CEOs in the food system, after combining their salaries, stock options and benefits, earn $200 million, equal to what 10,300 food system workers earn,” said Joann Lo, executive director of the Los Angeles organization. “So the money is there. They’re just not spreading the wealth.”
Lo said she hopes the report will raise awareness about the plight of these workers at a time when consumer interest in where their food comes from is strong.
“The cost of paying better wages and making conditions better for workers doesn’t necessarily have to be passed onto the consumer,” she said.
Philip Martin, a labor economist at UC Davis, has estimated that if field workers were paid 40 percent more — lifting them above the federal poverty line — the cost to consumers would only be about $15 more a year at the check-out stand, she said. “That’s pretty negligible.”
The group is advocating for the minimum wage for food workers to be increased and that employers develop programs for advancement and provide employees with health benefits and sick leave.
According to the report, 81 percent of the workers surveyed never received a promotion, 79 percent did not have paid sick days or did not know if they do, 53 percent reported coming to work sick, 83 percent don’t receive health insurance and 58 percent have no health care coverage.
“We’ve done a wonderful job of moving the food system forward — thinking about sustainability and eating locally and regionally. Now we have to demand that employers do the right thing,” Jayaraman said. “After eating at a restaurant, let the management know that you’re unhappy that they don’t pay their workers for sick days and that you’re concerned that this is a health risk to the consumers. Ultimately, as voters we need to let our legislators know how we feel about the issue. The industry will have to respond.”