“The cows don’t milk themselves”: “Migrant justice” brings U.S. labor fight to Dutch doorstep

“¡Las vacas no se ordeñan solas!”, “the cows don’t milk themselves!”, reads a T-shirt worn by supporters of the U.S.-based farmworker organization, Migrant Justice. Dozens of activists demonstrated inside the corporate headquarters of Ahold Delhaize in Zaandam, demanding the Dutch supermarket giant – parent company of Albert Heijn, Etos, and Gall & Gall – address severe labor and human rights abuses in its supply chain. 

April 7 marked the start of a week of resistance targeting Ahold Delhaize, as Migrant Justice organizers traveled from Vermont, U.S., to the Netherlands to meet with supermarket workers, farmers, students, and scholars, and to confront the company itself at its annual shareholder meeting. Migrant Justice is lobbying Ahold Delhaize to adopt its “Milk With Dignity” (MWD) program, a farmworker- led initiative that would require Ahold Delhaize’s northeastern U.S. subsidiary, Hannaford Supermarkets, to purchase milk only from dairy farms that comply with the program’s housing and labor standards. Farms participating in the MWD program are paid a premium by buyers such as ice cream producer Ben & Jerry’s, a partner since 2017, which directly supports higher wages, improved housing, safer working conditions, and access to paid sick leave and time off for farmworkers. 

Under pressure from Migrant Justice’s MWD campaign, Ahold Delhaize has conceded by commissioning an independent human rights impact assessment (HRIA), dispatching investigators to dairy farms in Hannaford’s supply chain this past autumn. The investigation has since been completed, however, Ahold Delhaize refuses to release its findings. At Ahold Delhaize’s Zaandam headquarters, demonstrators demanded greater transparency from the company and the release of the HRIA report. 

Life on Vermont Dairy Farms
“You live where you work and you work where you live,” Migrant Justice organizer Marita Canedo said, describing the isolated and harsh labor and living conditions on Vermont dairy farms.

A 2024 study conducted by Migrant Justice found that more than half of surveyed workers worked 12 or more hours per day without overtime pay, while one-quarter worked seven consecutive days. Eighty-two percent reported problems with employer-provided housing, citing pest infestations, mold, lack of heat and insulation, and overcrowding, with workers often sharing beds in shifts. Seventy-seven percent said they had suffered a work-related injury or illness, while more than half of workers were refused paid medical leave.

Migrant Justice was founded in 2009 after the tragic death of José Obeth Santiz Cruz, a dairy worker from Chiapas, Mexico, who was killed on a Vermont farm when his arm became entangled in a chain-driven gutter cleaner, a piece of heavy machinery used to remove manure from a dairy barn.

Besides difficult working and living conditions, migrant farmworkers in Vermont also live under constant threat of detention and deportation by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Border Patrol. Vermont, a state with a population smaller than Amsterdam’s at 650,000 residents, saw more than 900 immigrants apprehended by ICE in 2025 alone. 

“When you maintain people in such a state of precarity and fear, and have this state apparatus and profession, which is dedicated to detaining them and deporting them, people will ultimately accept labor conditions that they would not otherwise accept.”

“The purpose of repression and criminalization is not about expulsion but it is about the maintenance of that system of hyper exploitation,” said Migrant Justice organizer Will Lambek. “When you maintain people in such a state of precarity and fear, and have this state apparatus and profession, which is dedicated to detaining them and deporting them, people will ultimately accept labor conditions that they would not otherwise accept,” Lambek added. 

Vermont’s USD 5.4 billion dairy industry would effectively collapse without migrant workers. A 2025 state report found that 94% of the state’s dairy farms rely on migrant labor.

Solidarity Across the Atlantic 
“We cannot understand the food system by just looking within our borders,” said Stijn Kluck, an organizer with the Agroecology Network Netherlands (AEN). “Migrant Justice is inspiring and teaching the Dutch agroecology movement how they are successfully fighting for migrant workers’ rights in the U.S.,” continued Kluck. The AEN is an international movement that unites farmers, researchers, and activists to advance an ecological, locally rooted and socially just food system while challenging industrial agriculture and labor exploitation. At a workshop co-hosted by the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) and the AEN in The Hague, Migrant Justice met with migrant workers in the Netherlands facing similar struggles over wages, housing, and precarious contracts in the agri-food sector. 

Among those present was Pawel Rudzki, a Polish-born Albert Heijn (AH) warehouse worker of eight years and Netherlands Trade Union Confederation (FNV) delegate, who was fired after organizing a strike demanding improved working conditions and collective labor agreements for his fellow temporary workers. Rudzki had a permanent contract through staffing agency OTTO Work Force, a structure in which, as FNV spokesperson Levin Zühlke-van Hulzen explained, “you cannot be fired, but you can always be sent away.” Workers are then reassigned to other employers, often on lower pay, farther from home, and with fewer benefits. “If you don’t accept it, it’s your fault. You will be unemployed, and you don’t even have the right to unemployment,” said Zühlke-van Hulzen. Albert Heijn, a subsidiary of Ahold Delhaize, is the largest supermarket chain in the Netherlands, with more than 1,250 stores. 

"The simple fact is that immigrant rights are labor rights and labor rights are immigrant rights. You can't extricate the two," said Lambek. Migrant Justice is urging supporters to join its campaign by pressuring Ahold Delhaize to adopt its MWD program and demand that the company immediately release itsHRIA.