At the beginning of May, on International Workers’ Day, we celebrate the strength and sacrifices of workers all over the world. But there are workers who are persistently overlooked – the millions who labour to produce, process and serve people their food, most of whom are in the informal economy – who we focus on in this edition of Supermarket Watch.
Whether we are talking about peasant farmers in Peru, street vendors in Zimbabwe or gig workers delivering food in India, workers across the food system - in production, processing, distribution or preparation - are essential for bringing food to people's tables and yet they remain among the most exploited workers in the world.
Peasants and landless farmers are often forcefully removed from ancestral lands by industrial agriculture or pushed out due to climate change and eco-destruction and must struggle to survive. Many migrate to become underpaid and undocumented workers in the agriculture industry of wealthier countries. These are the unseen workers who pick fruits, harvest vegetables, and pack meats for far away consumers — often with no healthcare, legal protection, or right to unionise.
In cities, street and market vendors, many of whom are women, face harassment and violence on a daily basis. They provide nutritious and accessible food to low-income communities but are still not recognised as workers providing essential services and typically have no access to any social protections.
Then we have the food delivery workers, dependent on a platform economy governed by algorithms that promises freedom and efficiency but only offers them insecurity, arbitrary penalties and meagre pay.
Food connects us all, but the people producing and supplying it are often rendered invisible. Their labour is considered "unskilled," their struggles are ignored, and their organising is suppressed. In the month when we celebrate International Workers’ Day, we must own up to the human cost of our increasingly corporatised, exploitative and profoundly unequal food system. Every meal is made possible by workers whose rights — to rest, to organise, to live with dignity — are too often denied. The vast majority of food workers in the global South, and many in the global North, don't have access to basic social protections. With retirement pensions, for instance, after decades of hard work, farmers, fishers, farmworkers and food vendors across nearly the entire global South are either completely without a pension or only get paid a pittance.
Food sovereignty cannot be dissociated from labour justice. That means fair wages, healthy and safe working conditions, social protection and collective bargaining. For the millions of workers in the informal economy, it also means ensuring their
rights to full legal and social protections and participation in policy-making. This is possible to do, and, for instance, there are examples out there already of global South countries where governments, usually pushed by strong social movements, have enacted
public pension systems designed to provide a dignified retirement for small farmers and their families. At the upcoming 113th International Labour Conference in Geneva, governments, workers and employers the world over will be discussing labour standards for both those in the informal economy and those in the platform economy. It is crucial that the needs and interests of food workers, in all their diversity, are front-and-centre in these discussions.
Let's fight together for a food system rooted in solidarity, not exploitation!
