I’m Leavin’ It: Students and Farmworkers Take on a McDonald’s

Two student activists sent us this report from the Student Labor Action Project (SLAP) week.

Sean Sellers, with the Student/Farmworker Alliance (SFA), describes the alliance as a national network of youth and students organizing with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers to eliminate sweatshops and modern-day slavery in the fields. From March 26–April 4, SFA activists will join a caravan of coalition farmworkers traveling from Immokalee, Florida to Chicago—home of McDonald’s—to educate consumers about the labor conditions in McDonald’s tomato supply chain and to demand real rights for farmworkers. For more information on the “Real Rights Tour” and the April 1 mobilization in Chicago, including daily photos and updates from the road, click here.

Marc Rodrigues, an intern with the Student/Farmworker Alliance in Immokalee in summer 2005, currently is a member and organizer with the alliance and a graduate student in Labor Studies at University of Massachusetts-Amherst, where he is a member of the Graduate Employee Organization-UAW. He sends us a first-hand report on action in the field.

This week, the first-ever McDonald’s Truth Tour, led by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers will travel by caravan from Immokalee to Chicago, stopping at some 17 cities along the way to spread awareness about the conditions faced by farmworkers whose exploitation and poverty lay behind the multi-billion-dollar profits of the fast-food industry.

Like hundreds of students across the country who have been inspired by the coalition to take on this struggle as our own, I’ve spent the week flyering, organizing events, and mobilizing other youth in solidarity with the Truth Tour, the Student-Labor Week of Action, and Farmworker Awareness Week. Thursday, I join friends and compañeros from the coalition and the Student/Farmworker Alliance plus what are sure to be thousands of allies in Chicago for a weekend of actions culminating in a major march and rally on Saturday, April 1. 

In recent years, McDonald’s has responded to a slumping public perception by reinvigorating its marketing machine to the tune of $1.5 billion a year—focusing particularly on what it calls its “sweet spot” of 18 to 24-year-olds. But a ticking time bomb is threatening to explode the grand visions of McDonald’s brand gurus. On campuses across the country, the “sweet spot” has been engaged in very serious conversations about the harsh realities concealed behind glossy logos.

In particular, many students and youth have learned of workers in Florida who pick tomatoes that end up in McDonald’s sandwiches and salads, Taco Bell Chalupas, and stock the shelves of Wal-Mart.

This discussion has been led by the Student/Farmworker Alliance, a national network of students and youth organizing in direct partnership and solidarity with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers. The coalition—a grassroots organization comprised of mostly Mexican, Guatemalan and Haitian immigrant workers in Southwest Florida—has been organizing for over a decade from the fields and trailer parks of Immokalee to the headquarters of multinational fast-food chains to change the abysmal conditions endured by farmworkers in the United States. The Coalition’s worker-led, popular-education-based approach that places emphasis on leadership development, consciousness-raising, and alliance-building have put it front and center in a vibrant, national social movement that will stop at nothing less than real reform of the entire industry. 

Like the Zapatistas in Mexico, the coalition has become a model of a social movement that my generation looks to for inspiration and examples. Countless students and youth have cut their activist teeth, developed their political analysis and leadership skills, built relationships and had life-changing experiences through alternative Spring Break programs or internships in Immokalee, national and regional actions led by the coalition, and participating in the four-year boycott of Taco Bell. Throughout the boycott, student activists cut or blocked campus contracts with Taco Bell at 22 universities and high schools nationwide including high-profile victories at UCLA, University of Chicago, and University of Notre Dame. Along the way, they turned Taco Bell’s image on its head, confirming that brands truly are the corporate Achilles heel.

The Taco Bell boycott victory resulted in a groundbreaking agreement for workers’ rights.  McDonald’s, however, has taken a path that threatens to undercut the wage gains won by farmworkers in the Taco Bell boycott and to push workers back away from the table where decisions are made that affect their lives.  As a result, when we received word from the coalition in fall 2005 that McDonald’s was to be the next piece in the puzzle of farmworker justice, we were more than eager to hit the ground running. The “target-market revolt” was back. 

Instead of learning from the mistakes of Taco Bell, McDonald’s is on a path to repeat them. Meanwhile, students and youth aren’t waiting around for McDonald’s to see the light. Across the country, we’ve deployed the networks, skills and relationships built through years of struggle to take on the next fast-food giant. We’re analyzing the successes and mistakes of the “Boot the Bell” campaign, honing our political understanding around what it means to be an ally, and getting more of our friends and peers involved in this dynamic movement.

The coalition now is seeking to expand the precedents established by the Taco Bell agreement throughout the rest of the fast-food industry. If successful, this would mean much more than an extra $6,000 to $7,000 annually in the pockets of workers who must currently pick two tons of tomatoes just to make $50 in a day without overtime pay or any benefits whatsoever. It would mean respect for workers within East Cost agriculture, an industry with a history as brutal as the Florida summer sun is hot.

Many Florida farmworkers are our age: 18 to 25. Through a myriad of historic and social injustices, they have found themselves toiling in the fields of Florida and we are bombarded with the insidious advertising of an industry—of a system, really—that has no regard for human dignity. Obviously, our struggles are not the same, but they converge. Taking leadership from the coalition, students and youth across the country have helped to forge this vibrant social movement. Together with farmworkers, we are one step closer to building a world where we all fit, a world of freedom, dignity and justice.

One multinational fast-food corporation at a time.
 

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