• Farm workers who pick tomatoes for the fast-food industry are among this country’s most exploited workers. They face sweatshop conditions every day in the fields, including sub-poverty wages. Tomato pickers make, on average, less than $10,000 a year.
• No raise in nearly 30 years. Pickers are paid virtually the same bucket piece rate today as they were in 1980. At the going rate, workers have to pick nearly 20 tons of tomatoes just to earn minimum wage for a typical 10-hour day.
• Denial of fundamental labor rights. Farm workers in Florida have no right to overtime pay and no right to organize or bargain collectively.
• Modern-day slavery. Federal civil rights officials have prosecuted five slavery operations involving over 1,000 workers in Florida’s fields since 1997.

The Taco Bell agreement established a pay raise nearly doubling the going piece rate when workers pick for Taco Bell, a verifiable zero-tolerance policy for modern-day slavery and the right for workers to participate in defining and implementing an enforceable code of conduct.

Taco Bell also challenged its fast-food industry counterparts to follow its lead and demand fair wages and humane treatment for the workers who pick their tomatoes.

But nearly two years later, McDonald’s, the undisputed leader of the $100 billion fast-food industry, has refused to meet that challenge. Despite increasing public pressure on the fast-food giant—including the endorsement of labor, community and human rights leaders from AFL-CIO President John Sweeney to Nobel Prize winner Jody Williams—McDonald’s has refused to work with the CIW to meaningfully address the exploitation of farm workers in its supply chain. 

Instead, it has chosen to work with agricultural industry lobbyists to undermine the hard-won advances in wages and working conditions established in the agreement with Taco Bell.

So today, we are declaring that we are tired, in the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., of  “relying on the goodwill and understanding of those who profit from exploiting us,” and are escalating our campaign to convince McDonald’s to end human rights violations in its supply chain.

As our first major action in this new phase of the campaign, we are organizing two days of action in McDonald’s corporate backyard, Chicago. On April 13, we will hold a march and protest outside McDonald’s corporate headquarters in Oak Brook, Ill., followed by a day of colorful street protests April 14 in downtown Chicago in the Latin American tradition of “Carnaval.”

We are asking all our sisters and brothers in the labor movement to join us April 13–14 in Chicago to demand that the fast-food industry doesn’t rely on the endless exploitation of farm workers.

To learn how you can join us for all the action in Chicago, go to the CIW’s website today.