This story comes to us from Errol Schweizer’s newsletter The Checkout, the essential take on the $1 trillion U.S. grocery industry. We encourage you to, if you will, check it out.
“Oh America, how often have you taken necessities from the masses to give luxuries to the classes.” – Martin Luther King Jr.
MLK saw that economic justice and mutuality were key to the changes he had preached, marched for, and written about. He had an unflinching analysis not only of capitalism, but also how essential workers could organize within the framework of American democracy to win better livelihoods for themselves, their communities, and their descendants.
MLK’s economic philosophy is even more relevant today, especially in the grocery industry. We are living in a time when up to 75% of grocery employees have been food insecure and over 10% have been homeless in recent years; where farmworkers are still mostly excluded from basic labor protections; where Amazon employs 36% of warehouse personnel but accounts for over 53% of warehouse injuries; where multiple studies document how Walmart drives down wages and living standards in heartland communities; where migrant and undocumented workers perform some of the most daunting, dangerous jobs in meat processing and food manufacturing, under threats of deportation and harassment by law enforcement, sexual violence, and worse.
So while there are opportunities in the grocery industry for some of us to make a good living, start a business, move up the corporate ladder and graduate into the middle class, that is not the case for many, many people who we depend on for our livelihoods: those who make sure that supply chains keep running no matter what; the folks working in the fields during hurricanes and wildfires; the truck drivers waiting ten deep to drop their loads at fulfillment centers; the migrant kids scrubbing grease off packing machinery after the shift workers go home; the women cooking meals and taking care of the kids after 14 hours of bent, stooped work in the fields picking berries, celery, tomatoes; the grandparents working as cashiers and people greeters instead of enjoying a well-earned retirement; the food processing workers who were laid off after years of corporate profiteering drove up prices, cratered consumption volumes and shuttered processing facilities; the retail clerks and cashiers working second and third jobs as their hours get cut while their hourly wages fall further and further behind spiraling costs of living; the 99% of wage earners who have lost $80 trillion in income since 1975 as the gains of productivity were shared by an elite few that now account for over 50% of consumer spending, the economy gone K-shaped.
“All mankind is tied together; all life is interrelated, and we are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” –MLK
The pursuit of justice is the legacy of MLK. It is carried on today by Amazon workers demanding safer jobs and better pay; by Florida farmworkers holding growers accountable through legal binding purchase agreements with grocers; by Whole Foods clerks in Philadelphia demanding that the company return to its roots of providing best in class wages and benefits; by the food processing workers at Kellogg’s, Mondelez and Frito Lay who walked off their jobs during Covid-19 to demand better pay, commensurate with their skills and productivity; by the beef and poultry processing workers pushing for safer line speeds and better staffing levels by the immigrant dairy workers risking deportation while marching for fair wages, better housing, and decent medical care; by high road business owners and purchasing managers making sure their brands, stores and facilities sell the highest quality, most ethically sourced products that take into account worker treatment, agrochemical usage and fair wages.
“The fact is that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor. It must be demanded by the oppressed—that’s the long, sometimes tragic and turbulent story of history.” – MLK
MLK’s ideas are not stagnant, ancient history, not museum set pieces or folk tales. They are living, fire-breathing ideals that can inspire, energize and emancipate, just as MLK was inspired, energized and emancipated by the gospel or his friend Rabbi Heschel by the Talmud and Pirke Avot. They are a road map to justice, to a better food industry, to a better humanity, on MLK Day, and every day, but only if we take the steps now, to build that road as we travel forward.
Comment