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Farmworkers were leading a five-day, 45-mile (72-kilometer) trek on foot this week from one of the poorest communities in Florida to a mansion-lined, oceanfront town that is one of the richest in an effort to pressure retailers to leverage their purchasing power for better worker pay and working conditions. The farm worker s said they were march ing to highlight the Fair Food Program, which has enlisted companies like McDonald’s, Walmart, Taco Bell and Whole Foods to use their clout with growers to ensure better working conditions and wages for farm worker s. They hoped to use the march to pressure other companies , like Publix, Wendy’s and Kroger, to join the program that started in 2011. The march began Tuesday from the farming community of Pahokee, one of the poorest in Florida, where the median household income is around $30,000. The march’s launching point was a camp where farmworkers were coerced into working for barely any pay by a labor contractor who was convicted and sen...

More than 800 Amazon employees are calling on the company to step up its response to climate change through foreign aid — a sign internal activism is still alive at tech companies despite layoffs and a slowing economy.  The employees say the aid is a way for Amazon to take greater responsibility for its role in producing the greenhouse emissions that cause climate change. In a petition posted on an internal system, the worker s are asking Amazon to contribute toward “reparations” for Pakistan —which suffered devastating floods last summer and fall— by matching employee donations to relief efforts, according to screenshots given to NBC News. They also want the company to match employee donations in future climate related disasters. “Amazon’s success and scale comes with a broad responsibility,” the petition reads. “As Amazonians, we are proud to uphold our leadership principles, and in that spirit, we owe it to our workforce, our customers, and the planet we live on to mitigate the h...