F15 protest at Miami Burger King Hdq exposes farmworker exploitation and poverty : Miami IMC

Promising to preach about farmworker exploitation in churches, teach about farmworker abuse in schools, and take their campaign for farmworker justice to the streets, workers from Immokalee and their Miami area religious and community allies are joining forces to expose the truth about the sweatshop conditions in the fields where Berger king’s tomatoes are picked.

“It’s simple,” said Lucas Benitez of the Coalition of Immokalee workers (CIW). “The farmworkers 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 60-70 hour weeks, 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.

Benitez continued, “Yet, when presented with the opportunity to take a stand against the exploitation of farmworkers in its home state, Burger King executives refused. Instead, incredibly, they actually offered to address farmworker poverty by retraining tomato pickers to work in Burger King’s restaurants – eliminating farmworker poverty by eliminating farmworkers – adding insult to injury with such an obviously unworkable, and frankly pretty ridiculous, idea.”

Sean Sellers of the Alliance for Fair Foods added, “Equally frustrating are the half-truths and fabrications that Burger King used in its public statement to justify its decision. Their claim to buy tomatoes from re-packers, while technically true, does not, as they claim, make it impossible to trace their tomatoes back to the farm where they were picked or to implement a satisfactory payment system to get the penny per pound requested to the workers. Taco Bell has a very similar supply chain structure and the Taco Bell system has worked smoothly for nearly two years now. Furthermore, Burger King’s decision to cite a thoroughly discredited ‘study’ paid for by McDonald’s to ’prove’ farmwokers earn an average of $14 per hour is just outrageous. It’s one thing for McDonald’s to commission a bogus study. It’s something else altogether for Burger King to cite that study knowing that it has been discredited as sham science, plain and simple, by every economist to look at it.”

BACKGROUND:

1. Farmworker poverty - Farmworkers who pick tomatoes for the fast food industry are among this country's most exploited workers. Workers face sweatshop conditions every day in the fields, including:

* Sub-poverty wages - Tomato pickers make, on average, $10,000/year;
* No raise in nearly 30 years - Pickers are paid virtually the same per bucket piece rate today as they were in 1980. As a result, workers have to pick nearly twice the number of buckets per hour today to earn minimum wage as they did in 1980. At today’s rate, workers have to pick nearly 2½ TONS of tomatoes just to earn minimum wage for a typical 10-hr day;
* Denied fundamental labor rights - Farmworkers in Florida have no right to overtime pay, even when working 60-70 hour weeks, and no right to organize;

In the most extreme cases, workers face modern-day slavery - Federal Civil Rights officials have prosecuted five slavery operations, involving over 1,000 workers, in Florida's fields since 1997.

2. Principles of Taco Bell agreement – In 2005, after a 4-year boycott, the CIW reached an historic agreement with Taco Bell to address the ever-deepening poverty and degradation of farmworkers in Florida, establishing:
• A penny per pound pay raise, nearly doubling the going piece rate when workers pick for Taco Bell;
• Supply chain transparency and a verifiable zero tolerance policy for modern-day slavery;
• The right for farmworkers to participate through the CIW in the definition and implementation of an enforceable code of conduct.

3. Burger King’s role in deepening farmworker poverty – An article published in the produce industry journal “The Packer” casts light on how major fast-food tomato purchasers, including Burger King, use their volume purchasing power to demand deeper and deeper price cuts from their tomato suppliers, cuts that are passed on to farmworkers in the form of wages cuts.

* Read the article, “Big fast-food contracts breaking tomato repackers,” at
http://www.ciw-online.org/images/Packer2005.pdf