Join Tomato Workers in Miami to Fight for Justice at Burger King

by James Parks, Nov 28, 2007

Thousands of religious, community, union and immigrant rights activists and working people are set to converge in Miami to let Burger King know that it is making a whopper of a mistake if it thinks it can continue to exploit the workers who pick tomatoes for its products.

The three-day event begins Friday morning when marchers will walk nine miles from the center of Miami’s Burger King headquarters, where they will rally to demand that the nation’s second-largest hamburger chain join its competitors in paying workers a better wage.

AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker will speak at the rally along with Kerry Kennedy, founder of the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Center for Human Rights and the Rev. Felipe Estevez, bishop of the Archdiocese of Miami. A Concert for Fair Food will follow on Dec. 1, with more activities among Miami-area faith communities on Dec. 2.  

(In the area and want to take part? Click here to learn more and here to sign up to participate.)

Farm workers who pick tomatoes for the fast-food industry are among this country’s most exploited workers. They earn sub-poverty wages, have no health care coverage, no freedom to form unions and have not had a significant raise in nearly 30 years. In the most extreme cases, farm workers are held in modern-day slavery conditions and forced to work against their will. Since 1997, federal civil rights officials have prosecuted five such operations run by Florida growers, involving more than 1,000 workers. 

In April, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (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. McDonald’s agreed to pay a penny more per pound to workers harvesting tomatoes, which means the workers will get 72 cents to 77 cents for every 32-pound bucket of tomatoes they pick, up from 40 cents to 45 cents. 

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. 

But Burger King, the world’s second-largest burger chain, has rejected working with the CIW to improve farm workers’ wages and conditions. Not only does Burger King  refuse to agree to the principles signed onto by Yum! and McDonald’s, the company has joined forces with the most conservative elements of the Florida tomato industry to launch an aggressive assault on the CIW’s agreements with the other two chains.    

According to the Associated Press (AP), the state’s tomato lobby has threatened to levy fines of $100,000 on any grower who tries to sell tomatoes to Taco Bell or McDonald’s under the terms of the agreements. Do the math: If Burger King simply gave the workers an extra penny for each pound picked (raising their pay to 72 cents per 32-pound bucket), that $100,000 would pay for about 445,000 pounds of tomatoes.

 Lucas Benitez, a co-founder of CIW, told the AP it’s more important now than ever for working people to speak out against Burger King’s tactics.  

There’s no one company that buys the majority of tomatoes that we can just pressure to change this industry. With each agreement, we are building a house brick by brick.

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