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Examining the essential role—and exploitation—of frontline workers across the food chain.
Consumers are demanding a healthier and more sustainable food system. Yet labor is rarely part of the discussion. In Will Work for Food, Laura-Anne Minkoff-Zern and Teresa M. Mares chronicle labor across the food chain, connecting the entire food system—from fields to stores, restaurants, home kitchens, and even garbage dumps.
Using a political economy framework, the authors argue that improving labor standards and building solidarity among frontline workers across sectors is necessary for creating a more just food system. What would it take, they ask, to move toward a food system that is devoid of human exploitation? Combining insights from food systems and labor justice scholarship with actionable recommendations for policy makers, the book is a call to action for labor activists, food studies students and scholars, and anyone interested in food justice.
Teresa M. Mares is Associate Professor of Anthropology and Affiliated Faculty of Food Systems at the University of Vermont. She is the author of Life on the Other Border: Farmworkers and Food Justice in Vermont.
List of Illustrations
List of Abbreviations
Introduction: A New Opening for Worker Justice in the Food System
1 • Industrialization and Racialized Dispossession on the Farm
2 • Deskilling in the Assembly Line and on the Factory Floor
3 • Precarity and Deregulation in the Warehouse and on the Road
4 • Consolidation and Vulnerability from the Corner Store to the Superstore
5 • Intersectionality and the Fight for a Fair Wage in Food Service
6 • Reproductive Labor, Gender, and Food Work in the Home
7 • Value, Work, and Food Waste at the End of the Line
Conclusion: Working toward a Just Food Future
Acknowledgments
Appendix
Glossary of Terms
Notes
Bibliography
Index