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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?
7 Comments
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I’m all for the extra penny per pound as long as the increased wages go to LEGAL workers. All I want for illegals is deportation!
With a little luck, we can get Burger King on board too. A job at Burger King wouldn’t do anything for the CIW tomato picker that replaces their new employee. Good Grief, Burger King!
I totally agree No Amnesty!
The lack of solidarity within the working class continues to destroy us! The American labor movement will steadily decline until we realize that workers are workers, regardless of which state claims juristiction over us. Frankly, those of us advocating police state “law and order”, and the building of walls to seperate workers, have no buisness in the labor movement at all! I would trade 1,000 of them for one freedom loving immigrant.
I met some C.I.W.’s at an I.W.W. meeting & at a C.L.E.P. class at U.I.C. I partcipated in the McDonalds campaign. I am going to do the same with the B.K. campaign. Burger Kings offer is no good. First of all Burger King doesn’t pay their employees enough. Which needs to be adressed. Second of all we would still need workers to pick the tomatoes. I strongly agree ibewdan. I was just out at an I.B.E.W. strike this week displaying some solidarity unionism. The working class & the employing class have no common interest. The capitalist know this. The workers need to know this. We need to build a class consciousness. As frustrating as it is wobbly it is our job to educate those who are ignorant. I very strongly agree with you wobbly. Though it’s not a perfect solution the only choice is amnesty for all. Then we need to adress these so call free trade agreements. We need fair trade agreements so people don’t have to leave their homelands to survive.
This is a CIW fabrication, taken directly from the CIW web site with no real basis in fact. The Coalition of Immokalee Workers is in fact an activist group with NO real working members. They attack Burger King and other companies apparently to creat conflict and line their own pockets with donations. The real exploiter of the tomato workers in Immokalee is the CIW! Burger King and others would like to help the workers but have been blocked buy this group to creat conflict. The workers will never see penny of the money the CIW is demanding. We MUST work directly with Burger King and others to form a real union to directly help the workers! Has anyone else talked to Burger King about this!
Are these legal US workers or are they working to make American labor cheap? I am shocked we would support non-union workers and a non-union organization. They need a union and need to become legal!!