This commentary is by Mary Dingee Fillmore of Burlington, a member of Community Voices for Immigrant Rights, and author of an award-winning historical novel, “An Address in Amsterdam.”
“That’s happening here in Vermont?” The middle-aged woman looked shocked as we chatted outside the North Avenue Hannaford in Burlington. “On our dairy farms?”
She was delighted to learn that there was something she could do: Speak up so the supermarket chain would join the Milk with Dignity campaign, created by farmworkers themselves through Migrant Justice. Ben and Jerry’s signed on years ago.
Why should Hannaford join them? If Woody Jackson included people in his iconic paintings of Vermont cows and barns, most of them would be brown immigrant workers who live in crowded, often unsanitary housing. They are paid less than the minimum wage to work long shifts at all hours. Few have access to the full range of safety equipment essential to a modern dairy operation.
Dairy farms are still a crucial part of Vermont’s economy. According to the Farmworker Housing Needs Assessment prepared for the Vermont Housing & Conservation Board, “Dairy farms represent just 10% of the farms in the state, but they generate roughly 70% of the state’s agricultural revenue, employ nearly half of all hired farmworkers, house a substantial majority of those farmworkers who live on-farm, and employ nearly all of the migrant workers who are not fully authorized to work in the U.S.”
The assessment found that many such workers, mostly single, live in housing on the farms that is overcrowded and poorly maintained.
Overcrowding means more than inconvenience and lack of privacy, or even Covid risk. It also means that people can’t sleep — and since the cows work around the clock, so do the workers. Sleep-deprived people are more vulnerable to illness and accidents. Poor sanitation adds to the risks. Isolation and lack of transportation even to buy groceries make for an unlivable situation, particularly when compounded by feeling unwelcome at best, and persecuted at worst.
That’s before we even talk about issues of underpayment and long, erratic hours.
The Milk with Dignity campaign addresses all of these issues at their root, through an agreement that a big chain like Hannaford will source its milk only with farms that meet basic fair employment and housing standards for their workers. The agreement has already had a significant impact on the farms supplying Ben and Jerry’s.
Hannaford is a northeastern U.S. chain based in Maine; Vermont is its neighbor and back yard. It professes high ideals, as does its parent company Delhaize, and this is its chance to take action on them.
What can you do?
- Talk with your local store manager and let them know how strongly you feel that milk sold under the Hannaford brand should be produced by fairly paid workers in humane conditions. Take it a step further: Call Hannaford headquarters with the same message: 207-883-2911.
- Send the form email to Hannaford to give it the message that it’s time for Hannaford to do the right thing by our dairy workers in Vermont. You’ll find the form here. Take it a step further: You can compose your own letter to CEO Michael Vail at Hannaford Corporate Headquarters at 145 Pleasant Hill Road, Scarborough, ME 04074, USA. Check out the Milk with Dignity resources here.
- Wear a button wherever you go, and talk to people about it, especially when shopping at Hannaford’s. Take it a step further: Put up a lawn sign so your neighbors know you support a decent and dignified life for Vermont’s immigrant dairy workers. Order the lawn signs here.
- Talk with your friends and get them to join the effort. No one wants to drink milk that has been produced by people who are underpaid and working for too many hours under harsh conditions. Take it a step further: Leaflet your local Hannaford to let other shoppers know what’s going on, and enlist them to talk with the manager, too. Learn more here.
- Post on your social media about these issues. Migrant Justice has great stuff to share at https://migrantjustice.net/Hannaford-action-toolkit. Be sure to tag @migrantjustice and @hannaford on Facebook and Twitter, or @migrantjusticevt and @hannafordmkts on instagram, and to use #MilkWithDignity in your post. Take it a step further: Write a letter to the editor to your local paper or other media outlets, asking for more coverage of this issue and stating your position clearly. This is a great way to spread the word.
- Invite Migrant Justice to speak at your church, community group, action committee or other organization. Everybody needs to know about this important campaign. Take it a step further: See if Migrant Justice has an organizing committee in your location, and if not, offer to help set one up. You can reach them at info@migrantjustice.net.
