Fast food and the movement for food sovereignty
Date: 14 April 2015
When you think of food sovereignty your mind often gets drawn to the rural; small-scale farmers, community gardens, allotments and ecological growing practices. All this is true. But if we in the post industrialised UK are ever to achieve food sovereignty we also need decent livelihoods as part of decent food systems in our cities. And in a country where millions are employed in manufacturing or servicing the food industry their rights and livelihoods are vital.
Tomorrow is a day of action for fast food rights which will see protests outside Macdonalds in towns and cities across the UK. Led by the Bakers’, Food & Allied Workers Union, these protests are in solidarity with the strikes for a living wage in the US. But also to galvanise a fair wages movement for food workers here in the UK.
Over the last couple of years, protests that started in New York led to thousands of strikes and walkouts in over 60 cities across the US. The protests have focused on fast food stores (such as Macdonalds, Pizza Hut and KFC) that have continued to pay poverty wages and threaten workers with dismissal if they take industrial action. Fast food workers in the US are typically paid $9/hour, a wage that forces many to rely on government food stamps and food banks. They say that the multinational corporations that own these stores, who make vast profits and award their bosses with massive pay increases, can afford to pay their workers at least $15/hour.
Unlike in many global south countries, the UK has relatively few food producers due to our industrialised system and dependence on imports. Yet everyone relies on food. A widely shared vision of food sovereignty is to have many more people growing food for themselves and their communities. The UK has a long way to go. But in working towards this vision, the notion of communities having better democratic control of their food systems is key. Currently, many people who sell us our food are trapped by poverty wages and so cannot afford good food themselves. And so a unionised food industry that gives workers more control is an important step towards food sovereignty in the UK.
Alex Wood, a sociology PhD student at Cambridge University researching job insecurity, says: “Fast Food workers are fighting against the same commodification of our food system as the Food Sovereignty Movement. For fast food workers this commodification means the misery of poverty pay and insecurity. But thousands of fast food workers in the US have successfully taken part in strikes, protests and civil disobedience against the corporations who control the food system. In doing so they have shown the potential power of communities, social movements and workers when they unite to fight commodification.”
Supermarkets and multinational food companies are squeezing the prices they pay to farmers around the world. At the same time they are paying their workers poverty wages. Both these actions are to ensure cheap prices and large profits for their shareholders. It’s time to connect the struggles for good food and decent livelihoods. Let’s help build a better, fairer food system by standing in solidarity with food workers.
