Organize the South

This is great news. The Coalition of Immokalee Workers has forced Burger King to sign a deal to pay 1 penny per pound more for tomatoes. This is after BK had been trying to get companies that have signed the deal (McDonald's and Taco Bell) to back out of it. Amazing. Congratulations.

Burger King Signs Deal with Tomato Workers

By Bob Dart
Palm Beach Post-Cox News Service
May 23, 2008

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/content/business/epaper/2008/05/23/a1f_tomato_0524.html?cxtype=rss&cxsvc=7&cxcat=6

WASHINGTON

Burger King and an organization of South Florida farmworkers signed an agreement Friday that would nearly double tomato pickers' pay and make it easier for them to report illegal treatment.

But it's unclear how the workers, who were the focus of a Senate hearing last month that described their working conditions as modern-day slavery, will actually get the money because growers are refusing to cooperate with the deal.

By agreeing to pay the Coalition of Immokalee Workers a penny a pound more for tomatoes they pick, Burger King moved to increase their earnings by about 70 percent - from an average of 45 cents to 77 cents per 32-pound bucket.

Fast-food giants McDonald's Corp. (NYSE: MCD, $57.73) and Yum! Brands Inc. (NYSE: YUM, $38.49), the parent company for Taco Bell, KFC, Pizza Hut and Long John Silver's, already had signed a pact to pay workers the extra penny a pound.

Lucas Benitez, president of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, urged Subway, Wal-Mart and other large purchasers of Florida tomatoes to also pay the extra penny.

"Company by company, we are building a path toward justice," Benitez said at a U.S. Capitol news conference where his words were translated from Spanish to English.

Based on the number of tomatoes purchased last year, the agreement will cost Burger King about $250,000 a year in increased payments to the workers. But the complete cost will be up to $350,000 a year because the company will pay growers for their increased payroll taxes and administrative expenses. The total cost to Burger King will be about 1.5 cents per pound of tomatoes.

Burger King hopes growers will cooperate, as the agreement "won't cost them anything," said Amy Wagner, a vice president of Miami-based Burger King Holdings Inc. (NYSE: BKC, $27.72).

However, the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange, which represents the growers, said its members would not "participate in any kind of scheme of this nature,"
said Reggie Brown, the group's executive vice president.

"We have a number of legal and business concerns,"
Brown said.

The signing ceremony was hosted by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., who has helped broker the labor agreements after visiting the tomato fields and communities where workers live.

Workers' standards of living are falling across America, Sanders said, but "I saw the bottom in Immokalee, Florida."

"Senator Sanders walked in our shoes," Benitez said.
"And he saw our reality."

At a Senate hearing last month, a witness compared the working conditions of the tomato pickers to slavery.

"Today's form of slavery does not bear the overt nature of pre-Civil War society, but it is nonetheless heinous and reprehensible," Collier County sheriff's Detective Charlie Frost told Democratic members of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pension Committee. No Republican attended the hearing.

At the Senate hearing, Brown said the exchange did not oppose the fast-food chains raising pay for pickers, but that they would have to pay the extra penny a pound directly.

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