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Fair-food Activists to Burger King: Where's the Love for Florida Tomato Pickers?

(St. Paul Union Advocate)Fair-food Activists to Burger King: Where’s the Love for Florida Tomato Pickers?
By Michael Moore
St. Paul Union Advocate editor
A member of the Student Farmworker Alliance waited patiently in line as the Burger King franchise downtown Minneapolis bustled around him during the Feb. 14 lunch rush. When the activist finally reached the counter, he glanced coyly at a fellow SFA member covertly recording the events on camera, elevated his voice and said, “I’d like a Whopper with sweatshop-free tomatoes please.”
For this SFA member, it was a Valentine’s Day without lunch.
Burger King, the world’s second-largest burger chain, has rejected calls by the SFA and other human rights organizations that it work with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) to address sweatshop conditions and slave wages in the tomato fields of Florida, a major link in the fast food company’s supply chain.
What do the tomato pickers want? Just a penny more per pound of tomatoes they pick, and a little respect for the work they do.
The CIW reached such an agreement with the world’s largest fast food company, McDonald’s, last year. Yum Brands, the parent company of Taco Bell, also has agreed to pay a penny more per pound and work to ensure its providers maintain decent working conditions in their tomato fields.
But the King won’t budge.
Not only has Burger King refused to meet with the CIW, the company has aligned itself with the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange (FTGE), which is working to nullify the agreements Yum Brands and McDonald’s made with the CIW.
To discourage tomato growers from paying workers a penny more per pound, the FTGE has threatened to fine any grower that participates in the agreements $100,000. The threat of legal action has made it financially difficult, if not impossible, for otherwise willing growers to participate in the Yum Brands and McDonald’s agreements.
That’s bad news for tomato pickers, who are among the most exploited workers in the U.S.
The CIW reports that its members, mostly Latino, Haitian and Mayan Indian farmworkers, earn subpoverty wages without overtime pay, have no health insurance and do not enjoy the protections of a union contract.
Tomato growers have paid their workers roughly the same wages for the past 30 years. Given that rate, workers have to pick 25 tons of tomatoes just to earn minimum wage in a 10-hour day. In one year, the average tomato picker makes just $10,000.
Whether the FTGE is successful in subverting the CIW’s agreements with McDonald’s and Yum Brands is mostly a legal question, SFA Steering Committee member Stephanie Bates of Minnetonka said. And while lawyers and lawmakers sort it out, fair-food activists will continue to petition Burger King on tomato pickers’ behalf.
“Right now we’re just working to get on Burger King’s radar,” Bates said. “There have been actions going on around the country, but Burger King is not responding real well to what the CIW is asking them. So the campaign will really be amping up in the near future.”
How negligent has Burger King been to the conditions in Florida’s tomato fields?
“In December, Burger King came out and said there wasn’t any slavery in the fields,” Bates said. “On the same day a slavery ring was discovered where farmworkers were being held against their will.”
Bates and other Twin Cities SFA activists, who presented a heart-shaped Valentine to the downtown franchise’s manager before being escorted off the premises, are confident they can bend the King to their will – even if the company, as Bates said, seems “unabashed about playing the game a little dirtier” than McDonald’s and Taco Bell.
“We have seen one of the largest fast food giants meet our demands,” Bates said, “and meet them above and beyond, with improved human rights standards. We know when we start these campaigns that it’s going to be a long, hard fight, but it’s something that so many people believe in.
“We should have justice for workers in this country. We should be treating the workers who produce our food with dignity.”

Reprinted from The Union Advocate, the official newspaper of the St. Paul Trades and Labor Assembly. Used by permission. E-mail The Advocate at: advocate@stpaulunions.org