{"id":373191,"date":"2018-08-13T12:40:12","date_gmt":"2018-08-13T11:40:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/ben-jerrys-farmworker-exploitation\/"},"modified":"2018-08-13T12:40:12","modified_gmt":"2018-08-13T11:40:12","slug":"ben-jerrys-farmworker-exploitation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/ben-jerrys-farmworker-exploitation\/","title":{"rendered":"Ben &#038; Jerry\u2019s Farmworker Exploitation"},"content":{"rendered":"<div itemprop=\"articleBody\">\n<p>These are harrowing times for the nearly 1,500 migrant workers laboring on Vermont\u2019s largest dairy farms. These farmworkers, predominantly from Mexico, are forced to live in the shadows, where their farm bosses harbor them in exchange for long hours, low wages, and cheap housing. It\u2019s a human rights stain on the state, allowing these migrant workers to live and be treated this way. And it continues because there\u2019s a whole lot of \u201clooking away\u201d from the deep-rooted ugliness of this system, which has been described by human rights advocates as <a href=\"https:\/\/www.splcenter.org\/sites\/default\/files\/d6_legacy_files\/downloads\/Close_to_Slavery.pdf\">\u201cclose to slavery.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Worse than looking away, with its implicit acceptance of the exploitation, is the complicit role Vermont\u2019s dairy industry giants are playing to maximize their profits on the backs of this cheap labor. As the state\u2019s near-billion-dollar-a-year ice cream and cheese corporations \u2013 Ben &amp; Jerry\u2019s and Cabot Creamery \u2013 continue to pay less than the cost of production for its dairy supply, Vermont\u2019s remaining 700-or-so dairy farms are forced to cut costs at every opportunity, particularly when it comes to labor. Gone are the days when these farm jobs were filled by neighbors and community members, as the danger, speed, scale and filth \u2013 coupled with poverty-level wages \u2014 has made it impossible to attract local workers.<\/p>\n<p>But Ben &amp; Jerry\u2019s took its complicity in the migrant worker exploitation to a whole new level of cruel and delusional recently when, in what can only be called a publicity&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/2018\/08\/13\/migrant-injustice-ben-jerrys-farmworker-exploitation\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>These are harrowing times for the nearly 1,500 migrant workers laboring on Vermont\u2019s largest dairy farms. These farmworkers, predominantly from Mexico, are forced to live in the shadows, where their farm bosses harbor them in exchange for long hours, low wages, and cheap housing. It\u2019s a human rights stain on the state, allowing these migrant [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-373191","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373191","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=373191"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373191\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=373191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=373191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=373191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}