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Tomato Workers Need Your Support in Burger King Campaign
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The Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) asks us to post this call to action for workers who pick tomatoes for the nation’s fast-food industry.
Just two months ago, farm workers from southwest Florida, represented by the CIW, won a groundbreaking agreement with fast-food giant McDonald’s to improve wages and working conditions in the fields that supply the world’s largest restaurant chain with its tomatoes.
The McDonald’s agreement builds and expands upon an earlier agreement won by the CIW and its allies after a four-year boycott of Taco Bell, part of the giant restaurant company Yum! Brands Inc., and sets a clear path to real rights and decent pay for farm workers.
Miami-based Burger King, the world’s second-largest burger chain, has rejected working with the CIW to improve farm worker wages and conditions, even though it recently announced an initiative to improve the living conditions of farm animals in its supply chain. Burger King still refuses to agree to the principles signed onto by Yum! and McDonald’s. Rather than pay tomato workers a decent wage and improve working conditions, Burger King claims it’s not possible to institute those same principles in their supply chain.
Instead, Burger King announced its own plan to address farm worker poverty. In a press statement earlier this year, Burger King declared:
We have spoken to CIW representatives about our interest in recruiting interested Immokalee workers into the Burger King system. We have offered to send Burger King Corporation recruiters to the area to speak with the CIW and with workers themselves about permanent, full-time employment at Burger King restaurants. Burger King Corporation offers ongoing professional training and advancement opportunities around the country for both entry-level and skilled employee jobs, and we are hopeful the CIW will accept our offer.
Rather than work with the CIW to support the principles of fair pay and decent conditions established in the Taco Bell agreement, Burger King has chosen to offer empty alternatives that show a complete disregard for the reality of human rights abuses in Florida’s fields and the company’s role in contributing to those abuses.
In response to the Burger King statement, CIW spokesperson Lucas Benitez said:
It’s simple. The farm workers who pick tomatoes for Burger King are among this country’s worst paid, least protected workers. They earn poverty wages, have no right to overtime pay even when they work 60 to 70 hour a week, and have no right to organize. And Burger King has an active hand in creating these unconscionable conditions, as its enormous volume purchasing power allows it to demand lower and lower prices for its tomatoes, resulting in lower and lower wages for already exploited workers.
Yet, when presented with the opportunity to take a stand against the exploitation of farm workers in their home state, Burger King executives refused. Incredibly they actually offered to address farm worker poverty by retraining tomato pickers to work in Burger King’s restaurants—eliminating farm worker poverty by eliminating farm workers—adding insult to injury with such an obviously unworkable, and frankly pretty ridiculous, idea.
The question must be asked: How much longer will Burger King continue to ignore the squalid conditions in which its tomatoes are picked? How much longer will Burger King stand in the inevitable path of progress?
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