This story by Aaron Calvin was first published in News & Citizen on Nov. 20, 2025.
For the second time in just over a year, farm workers and immigrant rights advocates last Saturday staged protests at multiple Hannaford supermarket locations to pressure the regional grocery chain to guarantee better labor conditions for dairy workers.
Locally, protesters gathered outside the Hannaford in Morrisville’s Fairground Plaza on Nov. 15 to push the company and its multinational Dutch parent company, Ahold Delhaize, to participate in immigrant rights advocacy group Migrant Justice’s Milk with Dignity program.
The Milk with Dignity program asks participating corporations to pay more for dairy products to ensure better working conditions for workers on dairy farms. Vermont-based ice cream giant Ben & Jerry’s has participated in the program since 2017.
In October, Vermont Way Foods, a progressive distributor of Vermont products, announced a partnership to allow Migrant Justice to monitor working conditions in their products’ dairy supply chain, and even promoted the partnership with a “Cheese with Dignity” product.
In a survey conducted by Migrant Justice of Vermont farmworkers, over two-thirds of survey takers said they make less than minimum wage — in some cases far less — while another two-thirds reported suffering an injury due to working conditions.
Though Migrant Justice has targeted Hannaford in pressure campaigns to join Milk with Dignity since 2019, the campaign has escalated since protestors last appeared at the Morrisville location in October 2024.
In April, Migrant Justice filed a complaint with the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, an international trade forum in which 37 countries develop policy around economic trade, alleging “grave human rights violations” in Hannaford’s dairy supply chain.
Ahold Delhaize responded by commissioning an independent human rights investigation. Migrant Justice “recently hosted the investigators charged with looking into labor violations, connecting them with workers on farms supplying Hannaford-brand milk,” the group said in a website post promoting the Nov. 15 protests, as investigators return to the Netherlands to submit their report.
Representatives for Portland, Maine-based Hannaford grocery or Ahold Delhaize did not respond to requests for comment.
With Hannaford under greater pressure, protestors returned to Fairground Plaza on with makeshift instruments, blaring music and chants in English and Spanish, handing out flyers to would-be shoppers and asking them to boycott the supermarket for a day.
A farmworker employed on a farm that guarantees fair labor conditions as part of the Ben & Jerry’s supply chain and asked that his name be withheld due to concerns of retaliation said that he valued the working conditions guaranteed by the Milk with Dignity program compared to what he sees on other farms.
“I have a voice, and I know that I have rights,” he said in Spanish, according to Migrant Justice spokesperson Will Lambek, who acted as translator. “For example, if I get sick, I can take a day off and I’ll still be paid for it. For Hannaford supply chain workers, even if they get sick, they have to keep working.”
Hannaford responded with an increased security detail, employing not just private security guards as they had the previous year but also law enforcement with the Morristown Police Department and the Lamoille County Sheriff’s Department. Officers questioned anyone attempting to park in the Hannaford parking lot to ensure only customers were allowed.
Farmworkers and activists gathered publicly on Nov. 15 even as federal immigration detainment actions have become increasingly common, with nine people detained in Hardwick in September and another seven detained after a targeted raid at a gas station in Jeffersonville earlier this month.
Eight people were detained after an immigration police raid on a Franklin County dairy farm in April, and Jose Ignacio De La Cruz, an organizer with Migrant Justice, and his stepdaughter were detained after being pulled over on the road by the United States Border Patrol in Richford in June.
“We are here again, speaking up and demanding our rights, and there is a lot of risk to that,” the farmworker said. “We understand that, but if we were to let ourselves be conquered by our fear, that would be letting them win.”
