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News :: Labor |
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No Quiero Taco Bell |
Current rating: 0 |
by Ricky Baldwin
Email: baldwinricky (nospam) hotmail.com (unverified!)
Phone: (217)356-2205
Address: 606 West White St., Champaign, IL 61820 |
07 Sep 2002
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Students across the country are joining tomato pickers, organized by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, to boycott Taco Bell over conditions in the fields. |
"No Quiero Taco Bell":
Students join farmworkers' struggle against "sweatshops in the fields"
By Ricky Baldwin
On college campuses around the US, anti-corporate attention is turning from Pepsi and Nike to a new goliath: Taco Bell. Since November, students have demonstrated at local franchises from Florida to California. Students at the University of Chicago and other schools where the chain has lucrative food service contracts are also agitating to "Boot the Bell" off campus.
Meanwhile, thousands of Latino, Haitian and Mayan members have been demonstrating for over a year at Taco Bell restaurants across Florida, like the one in Tallahassee featured in the Christian Science Monitor Feb. 1. About 400 people organized by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), the paper said, carried giant papier-mâché tomatoes, signs reading, "We are not slaves," and bullhorns, shouting, "Boycott the Bell!"
The reason is the abysmally poor working conditions among tomato pickers in the fields that supply the restaurant chain. The mostly immigrant farmworkers earn 40 to 45 cents for each 32-pound bucket of tomatoes they pick, or $50 a day if they manage to pick two tons of tomatoes. One worker named Romeo Ramirez, told the Naples [Florida] Daily News that his pay has varied from $58 on his best day, down to $8.50 one day when the tomatoes were scarce on the vine. "I didn't even make enough money to buy soap to wash my clothes," Ramirez said.
Another tomato picker named Luis Alvarez told the BBC, "When I came out here I had a dream of supporting my family [of five]. But they are exploiting us, and I can barely pay the rent." The US Department of Labor lists the median farmworker income between $5,000 and $7,500 a year - well below the new federal poverty level of $8,794. Taco Bell reported over $5.2 billion in sales in 1999.
But Ray Gilmer, spokesman for the Florida Fruit and Vegetable Association, says Florida growers are "concerned about the welfare of their workers," (Naples, Dec. 9). However, he notes, the growers have not "traditionally" recognized CIW. And they aren't required to. The National Labor Relations Act and the Fair Labor Standards Act, among other labor laws, specifically exclude agricultural workers, meaning farmworkers have no legal right to collective bargaining, minimum wage, or overtime pay.
Welfare of the workers
On June 29, the Associated Press reported the "conviction [in Florida] of three citrus contractors on federal slavery charges." CIW had turned in the growers, brothers Ramiro and Juan Ramos and their cousin Jose Ramos, to the FBI and US Border Patrol over two years earlier. The Ramoses had held workers at gunpoint and had attacked van drivers, smashing windshields, pistol-whipping drivers and threatening pickers. They had also deducted money from workers' pay for rent, transportation and equipment, and threatened visitors to the labor camp, at times blocking their exit.
The Ramoses are not tomato growers, but as the AP story makes clear, "violence and farmworker mistreatment [have] plagued the industry" for decades. At least five cases of slavery among Florida tomato fields and citrus groves have surfaced in as many years, and threats and beatings are not uncommon. Another grower was found guilty of holding over 400 farmworkers in tomato fields, employing armed guards to watch them. And angry farmworkers marched on yet another abusive grower's house after he severely beat a picker who asked for water, (The Nation, March 18).
Now Florida farmworkers are taking their case to Taco Bell's target demographic, 18-to-24-year-olds, in hopes the youthful enthusiasm that forced Pepsi out of Burma can break through the supply-side shell game at Taco Bell. The problem is, as the chain's spokespersons are always quick to point out, Taco Bell doesn't directly employ either growers or pickers. Tomato production is all outsourced. So, the direct employer may be the local grower, but the downward pressure on wages and working conditions ultimately comes from Taco Bell, which remains free to tell the press, "We do require that all our suppliers comply with federal, state and local laws..." although Taco Bell doesn't "meddle" in the "relationship between farmers and their field workers," (Naples).
Not meddling
One typical such "relationship" became the focus of legal proceedings this spring at Six L's Packing Company, one of the country's largest tomato producers, according to the industry journal "The Packer." A Florida judge had to issue an emergency injunction May 16 to allow employees in Six L's labor camps to have visitors - without "erection or maintenance of any physical barrier, by physical force or violence, by threat of physical force or violence, or by verbal order..." Six L's has not been convicted of slavery, but its union-busting and intimidation keep tomato prices artificially low and directly help the bottom line for one of their largest customers, Taco Bell.
In March, CIW's "Taco Bell Truth Tour" rumbled through fifteen cities between Immokalee, Florida, and Taco Bell's corporate headquarters in Irvine, California, bringing these stories and others to Taco Bell's customer base. Then the May 16 shareholders meeting of Tricon Global Restaurants, which owns Taco Bell as well as Pizza Hut and Kentucky Fried Chicken, exploded with tomato pickers demanding that the restaurant giant take responsibility for conditions in the fields. Once a subsidiary of PepsiCo, Tricon controls more than 300,000 restaurants around the world, making them the "world's largest restaurant system in terms of units."
As supporters demonstrated outside the meeting, CIW founder Lucas Benitez urged Tricon directors inside to "think outside the bun" and become "the socially responsible company in the fast-food industry," reported the Louisville Courier-Journal. Describing the poverty in Florida's farm labor camps, Benitez asked Tricon to pay one cent more per pound of tomatoes, which would help pickers to pressure growers for modest payraises. CEO David Novak responded simply, "We hear you." He then added, "We see this as a labor dispute with our supplier." A shareholders' resolution in support of the farmworkers failed. "As long as it takes," says Benitez, "we'll be there." |
