The chapter ’s main focus is to describe in depth an approach developed in the US agricultural setting by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), a worker-based human rights organisation in southwest Florida.

Over the past decade, CIW campaigns of worker and consumer pressure have led to negotiated bilateral agreements with national and international retail brands (fast food chains, food service companies and supermarkets) that have implemented a prescribed substantial wage increase and dramatically improved other conditions for tens of thousands of workers in Florida’s tomato-growing industry. The agreements are monitored and enforced through an unprecedented programme combining worker-driven complaint investigations and comprehensive audits, coordinated by the Fair Food Standards Council (FFSC), a third-party monitor launched by CIW in 2011.

This framework of private labour standards agreements negotiated with leading food retail brands and imposing severe market consequences on suppliers who fail to comply — based on extensive annual audits and an omnipresent complaint resolution system in which workers play pivotal roles — offers distinctive lessons for labour relations in global corporate supply chains.