Laboring to Reset the Good Food Table: Food Worker and Local Food Activist Alliance Formation

• In Event: 211 - Section on Environment and Technology Paper Session. Environmental Inequality

Abstract

Struggles to include food worker politics in the alternative food movement’s platform have increased with the intensification of economic inequality and low-wage occupational restructuring in the United States post-Great Recession. In Los Angeles, food worker and local food activists are increasingly engaged in innovative cross-movement organizing indicative of such changes. Representative of these changes are strategic alliances between groups such as United Food and Commercial Workers Local 770 (UFCW 770) and different food and health activists. A number of key local processes explain why alliances evolved to include the interests of food workers and expanded the notion of food justice. First, the visibility of poverty and economic inequality for food workers represents wider trends, which activists are fighting through efforts such as strikes and living and minimum wage campaigns. Second, labor activists and increasingly local food activists reflect the racial, ethnic and class makeup of Los Angeles, which correlates with a greater empathy for the plight of food workers. This social context tempers issues more relevant to the middle to upper class white segment of the local food movement. Third, labor unions such as UFCW 770 recognize the need to expand their scope to address issues of food insecurity and food deserts, and participate in the local food movement. In short, I argue that food justice has greater power as a concept when it foregrounds economic justice, and collaborating with food labor organizations helps the alternative food movement engage in confrontational politics.

Author

• Joshua Sbicca, Colorado State University