Coalition of Immokalee Workers

The Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) is a worker-based human rights organization  focusing on social responsibility in corporate supply chains, human trafficking, gender-based violence at work and occupational health and safety.

Starting in 1993 from a foundation of farmworker community organizing in Immokalee, Florida, the CIW is best known today for its Fair Food Program (FFP), launched in 2011. The FFP harnesses the purchasing power of over a dozen retail food brands, from Taco Bell to Walmart, to compel compliance with a human rights-based code of conduct on participating farms. The Program was born in the Florida tomato industry and has spread to ten US states and Chile, including expansion into the cut flower industry and multiple additional crops, and incipient expansion efforts in South Africa and Mexico through the support of the US Department of Labor.^[1] A new channel for co-ops and smaller independent grocery stores to support the Program is expanding through the FFP Sponsor Program.

The FFP also gave rise to the Worker-driven Social Responsibility model (WSR), which has been successfully replicated in the apparel industry in Bangladesh through the Bangladesh Accord (now the International Accord), in Lesotho through the Lesotho Agreements,^[2] and in the dairy industry in the state of Vermont through the Milk with Dignity Program. The CIW provides technical assistance to organizations that are interested in adopting the WSR model through an umbrella organization, the WSR-Network.

Along with its campaigning and human rights enforcement efforts, CIW was a pioneer in the early days of the US anti-trafficking movement, uncovering several forced labor operations and collaborating with federal authorities in successful prosecutions in the 1990s.^[3][4] Since then, the CIW has continued its anti-slavery efforts,^[5] collaborating with law enforcement in more than a dozen domestic and transnational slavery prosecutions, helping to free thousands of workers from slavery operations in the Southeastern US, and training state and federal law enforcement officers in what has come to be known as the “victim-centered” approach to fighting human trafficking.