NORTHAMPTON – The Pioneer Valley Workers Center is being honored for its work around food justice as one of the recipients of this year’s James Beard Leadership Award.
Not only does the James Beard Foundation recognize and honor the nation’s best restaurants, bakers and chefs, but the foundation also spotlights organizations working towards food justice and public health.
“We feel really honored and humbled by this recognition of the work of our organization and our worker members and immigrant leaders,” said Rose Bookbinder, an organizer with the Workers Center. “It’s an incredible platform to have to share the voices of our farm workers and restaurant workers that make up the bulk of our membership.”
The Workers Center is part of the national Food Chain Workers Alliance, which is made up of workers that are involved in all aspects of the food chain, including planting, harvesting, processing, packing, transporting preparing and selling food. The alliance works to improve wages and working conditions for nearly 350,000 food chain workers across the country, Bookbinder said.
The Pioneer Valley Workers Center is a cooperatively-run organization operated by worker committees. Bookbinder said that the Workers Center’s goal is to make systemic changes in the food system and be inclusive of groups that are subjected to discrimination.
“Most food system workers live below the poverty line, and many people of color and women make far less than co-workers in the industry,” Bookbinder said, adding that the food justice movement in the state should have “voices critical in shaping the movement.”
Voices from the “many that experienced exploitation, wage theft, sexism and racism and abuses in the food system” should be included, Bookbinder said.
In 2017, the Northampton City Council passed an ordinance that punishes restaurants that improperly withhold payment from employees after a 2016 study by the Workers Center shed light on minimum wage violations in Northampton.
Bookbinder said the organization also highlights businesses that promote fair-labor practices such as the Haymarket Cafe on Main Street. The restaurant raised the starting wage to $14 for all employees in November 2015 and implemented $1 increases in the subsequent three years.
Currently, the Workers Center is campaigning to get non-citizen immigrants the right to get a drivers’ license. In Massachusetts, non-citizens cannot get a drivers license, according to Bookbinder.
“With farm worker members, there are so many living in Springfield and working in the upper Valley,” Bookbinder said, adding that driving should not be considered a privilege, but a right.
On Sunday, March 24, at 1:30 p.m. the Pioneer Valley Workers Center is organizing a march in Calhoun Park in Springfield to advocate for non-citizens to gain the right to get a drivers license.
Bookbinder said that the James Beard Foundation will film the march and it will be shown at the annual Leadership Awards ceremony in Chicago in May.
“We dedicate this honor to our compañero and incredible organizer Eduardo Samaniego who we wish could be with us to accept this award,” said Bookbinder. Samaniego, a local activist leader and undocumented immigrant, was deported in January to Mexico despite repeated efforts by the Workers Center, U.S. Rep. Henry Johnson of Georgia, and U.S. Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Worcester, to block the deportation.
Luis Fieldman can be reached at lfieldman@gazettenet.com