ABSTRACT
This chapter develops an account of corporate colonization of food system communication, focusing on the negative impacts of a low-road model of corporate employment defined by poor working conditions, poverty wages, lack of security, and scarce benefits. Examples from the fast-food and grocery industries demonstrate the overlapping negative impacts of the low-road model for employees and their communities. Providing sketches of important sites where food chain workers are contesting corporate power, it examines recent efforts by the Fight for $15 campaign and the Coalition of Immokalee Workers. The chapter contributes an understanding of the critical importance of worker-centered coalitional organizing, the uses of social media, and growing unionization efforts by food chain workers. Developing multiple examples of worker-led collective actions, the chapter demonstrates the need to challenge the corporate colonization of food system communication and the low-road model of employment in our food system.
