Join us to celebrate five years of protecting and advancing the rights of retail and food employees at the 2012 Brandworkers Awards Dinner.

Please mark your calendar:

2012 Brandworkers Awards Dinner Celebrating our Fifth Anniversary
Honoring Champions of Economic Justice
October 24th, 2012 | 6pm

Angel Orensanz Foundation
172 Norfolk Street
New York, NY 10002

After enduring a withering worker-led campaign, Flaum Appetizing, a prominent producer and distributor of hummus and other kosher food products, has accepted a global settlement which will return $577,000 in unpaid wages and other compensation to workers and subject the Brooklyn-based factory to a binding code of conduct protecting workplace rights. The victory comes after the workers' group, Focus on the Food Chain, in partnership with Orthodox social justice organization, Uri L'Tzedek, persuaded over 120 grocery store locations in New York City to stop selling Flaum products, including its Sonny & Joe's hummus, until workers' rights were respected.

Brandworkers members are transforming their jobs and helping remake the labor movement through worker-led organizing and direct action.  Help Brandworkers keep pace with the fast-growing demand from workers for the kind of organizing support it takes to win.

Make a contribution to Brandworkers in honor of international workers' day and help us hit our goal of $5000 raised by May 1st.  Thank you.

Focus on the Food Chain is very gratified that tortilla factory owner Erasmo Ponce has been brought to justice in a case stemming from the workplace death of Juan Baten.  While nothing will bring Juan Baten back to his widow and daughter, this arrest is an important step forward toward accountability in New York City's food processing industry, where reckless disregard for worker health & safety is increasingly the norm.  Juan Baten started working at the Chinantla tortilla factory at age sixteen, working as much as twelve hours a day, six days a week.  OSHA, the federal workplace safety agency, concluded that Mr. Baten would not have been crushed to death in a mixing machine had the employer installed a simple and legally required machine guard.