Farm workers ask Taco Bell's help in dispute with growers
Coalition seeks aid of tomato buyers
By Dick Hogan
January 18, 2000
Farm workers need Taco Bell's help getting better conditions for tomato pickers, Coalition of Immokalee Workers officials said during a news conference Monday outside the fast-food chain's south Fort Myers franchise.
"We're here today to ask that the buyers of the tomatoes from the growers also ask for a dialogue," said Lucas Benitez, coalition staff member, at a lunch-time .of the restaurant on U.S. 41 South of College Parkway.
Six L's farm in Immokalee has a contract with Taco Bell to supply tomatoes year-round, Benitez said. That's why the farm workers chose the restaurant as the first target in its campaign to bring their dispute over wages and conditions to "the next level" by involving big buyers.
The coalition over the past couple of years has tried unsuccessfully to get talks going with the big growers. Efforts have included a one-month hunger strike and intervention by former President Jimmy Carter.
Other big buyers to be contacted for the coalition's campaign will be Wendy's, Publix, Winn-Dixie, and Carnival Cruise Lines, Benitez said.
Laurie Gannon, a spokeswoman for Taco Bell in Irvine, Calif., said she couldn't comment because the company hadn't yet received a letter the farm workers sent Monday to Tricon Global Restaurants, the chain's Dallas-based corporate parent.
Benitez stressed that the coalition is not calling for a boycott of the restaurant. "We're not anti-Taco Bell."
The coalition members were accompanied by some officials of organizations sympathetic to their cause.
"We harvest food in the United States; now we must harvest justice," said Bert Perry, southeast director of the DeLand-based National Farm Worker Ministry. "The people who work in the field are not equipment."
Joe Cox, 38, of Fort Myers paused to watch the demonstration as he went to have lunch at Taco Bell.
"I agree wholeheartedly with the farm workers," he said. "That's back breaking work; you spend half your life bent over. They take advantage of people who don't speak English well."