organizing around community benefit agreements

[Discussion list for COMM-ORG]

From:
"Peter Dreier" <dreier at oxy.edu>


If you haven't already heard the name TESCO, you soon will. It is the 
world's third largest food retailer and, like Wal-Mart, is seeking to 
expand its global corporate empire. The British giant has an ambitious 
plan to open hundreds of supermarkets in the U.S., starting in southern 
California, Arizona and Nevada with its "Fresh and Easy" markets, but no 
doubt ultimately to open mega-stores that sell toys, electronics and 
other items besides food. A grassroots campaign is underway, among a 
coalition of community, union and environmental groups -- the Alliance 
for Healthy and Responsible Grocery Stores -- to make TESCO a socially 
responsible company in terms of workers' rights, food quality and 
accessibility, and environmental practices. Read about the Alliance 
here: http://www.goodgrocerystores.com/ and here: 
http://www.laane.org/newsletter/0709/grocery_alliance.html. My 
colleagues at Occidental College have been working with this coalition, 
whose work is beginning to bear fruit. The activists have been able to 
inject this "frame" of corporate accountability into the national and 
local news stories about TESCO in the past few months. Although some of 
the news coverage about TESCO has been one-sided and fawning 
(http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-tesco9nov09,1,5910929.story?coll=la-headlines-business&track=crosspromo; 
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21710275/), much of it has been somewhat 
balanced thanks to the coalition's work 
(http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-fresh7nov07,1,340359.story?track=rss 
; http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2007/aug/03/usnews.supermarkets) My 
Oxy colleagues Amanda Shaffer and Bob Gottlieb published an op-ed in the 
Los Angeles Times last week: 
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-gottlieb5nov05,0,7040113.story?coll=la-opinion-rightrail, 
based in part on a great report, "Shopping for a Market: Evaluating 
Tesco's Entry into Los Angeles and the United States," that they helped 
write about the gap between TESCO's promises and its business practices: 
http://departments.oxy.edu/uepi/publications/tesco_report.pdf. I wrote 
an op-ed in the LA Business Journal this week about the Tesco campaign. 
Because it is only accessible to LABJ subscribers, I have pasted it below.


Los Angeles Business Journal

Tesco Should Sign L.A.’s Community Benefits Agreement
11/12/2007
By PETER DREIER

In the past decade, Los Angeles has been ground zero for several highly 
visible David vs. Goliath battles around social justice issues. 
Community, faith-based, consumer, labor, and environmental groups have 
clashed with large national corporations, including hotel and 
supermarket chains, big real estate developers, clothing firms that 
employ sweatshop workers and big retailers such as Wal-Marts. These 
feisty activist groups have won significant victories, getting these 
firms to be more accountable and socially responsible in terms of their 
impact on workers, consumers, communities, and the environment.

Now Tesco, the world’s third largest food retailer, wants to open 
hundreds of supermarkets in this country, including 50 in Southern 
California in the next year alone. Last week it opened its first in 
L.A., in Glassell Park.

Tesco has made big promises about providing healthy and affordable food 
and good jobs, locating stores in low-income underserved neighborhoods 
and limiting the environmental impact of how the food is grown and 
transported from farms to warehouses to stores. Tesco has spent big 
bucks wooing community groups, hoping to avoid the political quagmire 
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. faced in trying to open mega-stores in Los Angeles, 
Inglewood and elsewhere.

But L.A.’s grassroots groups are skeptical. They worry that Tesco’s 
first few stores in Southern California will be “loss leaders” – 
attractive operations designed to lure new customers and marketing 
visibility – but then revert to more traditional business practices. The 
activists have learned, from counterparts in Europe, that Tesco has a 
history of broken promises.

For example, Tesco has pledged that its Fresh & Easy Markets will be 
good employers, but the company has been regularly criticized for 
exploiting child labor in countries where they manufacture products, as 
well as for contracting with manufacturers in England that pay less than 
minimum wage.

Tesco presented itself to L.A.’s politicians and community groups as a 
worker-friendly unionized employer in Britain, but they’ve been 
unwilling even to meet with the United Food and Commercial Workers union 
that represents employees of major supermarkets. In fact, Tesco plans to 
mostly hire part-time workers for its U.S. stores, hardly middle-class jobs.

Similarly, Tesco wants consumers to trust that its local stores will be 
a model of environmental responsibility; but an independent report 
released in Britain reveals that the firm’s “carbon footprint” – its use 
of energy resources – may be twelve times higher than what Tesco 
acknowledges.

According to a recent Occidental College report, Tesco’s centralized 
distribution system will result in more trucks and pollution emissions 
in this region.

Safe and healthy

Tesco also claims that its Fresh & Easy markets will provide safe and 
healthy food, but British health inspectors recently found that more 
than 45 percent of its produce tested positive for pesticides and 
insecticides – including some baby food.

Tesco has refused to make any firm commitments about its business practices.

So a broad coalition of over 25 community, faith, labor, environmental, 
and consumer groups – the Alliance for Healthy and Responsible Grocery 
Stores – is demanding that Tesco sign a “community benefits agreement” 
to ensure that it will live up to its promises.

Such agreements, called CBAs, are enforceable contracts signed by 
community organizations and corporations. They set forth specific 
benefits the corporation will provide in exchange for the community’s 
support.

They are not new to Los Angeles. Several community groups and grassroots 
coalitions have already persuaded several giant corporations – including 
developers of the Staples Center expansion, AEG; the LAX modernization 
plan; and the Hollywood and Vine mixed-use hotel, entertainment, and 
retail project – to participate in such compacts. Typically, they 
include things like local-hiring programs, environmental mitigations, 
affordable housing, living wage provisions, and “right to organize” 
guarantees.

Los Angeles has been a pioneer in this movement, but the idea has spread 
across the country. CBAs give all stakeholders a voice in development 
and help ensure that projects meet the real needs of communities. As a 
practical matter, CBAs help companies avoid costly litigation and 
delays, while securing a positive image and broad public support for 
their projects.

Tesco isn’t trying to win approvals for one mega-development and then 
leave town. It wants to establish a permanent presence in Southern 
California, and win the ongoing loyalty of communities and consumers. 
Tesco surely doesn’t want to engage in local brushfire battles each time 
it tries to open a new store here. Accordingly, the company would be 
wise to avert regular clashes with L.A.’s spirited and effective 
community groups.

Although contentious, the past decade’s David vs. Goliath frays have 
made Los Angeles a better city to live and work. In the process, L.A. is 
on the cutting edge of redefining what we mean by a “healthy business 
climate” – a city with good-paying jobs, a clean environment, and 
housing affordable to employees with a range of incomes.

The burgeoning coalition of neighborhood and community groups, 
environmental and public health activists, and unions and faith-based 
institutions wants the private sector to invest and thrive in the city, 
but they are insisting that the ground rules be up-front, transparent, 
and sealed by binding agreements that guarantee a creative balance 
between social responsibility and private profit. As Tesco seeks a 
foothold in Southern California, its relationship with the Alliance for 
Healthy and Responsible Grocery Stores will be an important test of this 
new way of doing business.

Peter Dreier is the E.P. Clapp Distinguished Professor of Politics at 
Occidental College. He is coauthor of “The Next Los Angeles: The 
Struggle for a Livable City.”
Los Angeles Business Journal, Copyright © 2007, All Rights Reserved.

_____________________________________
Peter Dreier
Dr. E.P. Clapp Distinguished Professor of Politics
Chair, Urban & Environmental Policy Program
Occidental College
1600 Campus Road
Los Angeles, CA 90041
Phone: (323) 259-2913
FAX: (323) 259-2734

"The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in times of great 
moral crises maintain their neutrality" - Dante