ORGANIZE, FIGHT AND WIN!
Organizing and winning our fight for food rights
and a sustainable food system
ORGANIZE:
- For living wages for all food workers to ensure that they and their families have food security, with special attention to raising the living and working conditions of agricultural workers
- Develop strategic organizing campaigns for agricultural unions to assist them to increase union density in rural workplaces
- Increase the capacity of unions to negotiate for sustainable food systems
- Develop a network of unions committed to work on the right to food who will support IUF’s work in particular in the Food and Agriculture Organization’s Committee on World Food security
- To support and promote systems of food production and processing closer to the point of consumption and organize for greater union membership in the potentially significant growth in jobs this would create
- Alliances with civil society organizations, including family farmers’ organizations, sharing our views on how to ensure the world’s food resources are used for the common good
FIGHT:
- For enforceable pesticides policies based on reduced use and banning of the most toxic pesticides in the transition to organic farming
- For governments to fulfill their international treaty obligations to ensure their citizens have adequate, affordable and safe food and potable water, e.g. by establishing national bodies to monitor and enforce food rights and by including the right to food in national constitutions
- For universal acceptance that decent work and living wages are key to policies for achieving the right to food at national and international level
- For a sustainable food system based on decent work and living wages for workers throughout the food system
- For restored government power to build/rebuild and use strategic food reserves to limit price volatility and ensure an adequate return to small producers and a living wage for workers
- To limit investment in commodities and future indexes, and for real investment in agriculture which can benefit workers and support a transition to socially and environmentally sustainable food production
WIN:
- Inclusion of unions in developing national policy on pesticide use and food security
- Universal access to potable water for agricultural workers
- International agreements with agro food companies which facilitate organizing throughout the supply chain to advance the right to food, including a living wage for agricultural workers
- The establishment of strategic food reserves at national and international level in the interest of workers and small food producers
- Meaningful limitations on and regulation of financial speculation in food commodity markets
