On March 8, 2005, representatives of Taco Bell
and its parent company Yum Brands (the world’s
largest restaurant company) held a joint press conference
with representatives of the Coalition of Immokalee
Workers at Yum Brands headquarters in Louisville,
Kentucky. At that press 
conference,
Yum Brands Vice President Jonathan Blum (left, with
Lucas Benitez of the CIW) announced that Yum had
signed an historic agreement to “work with
the CIW to improve working and pay conditions for
farmworkers in the Florida tomato fields.”
After nearly four years of a tenacious and growing
boycott, Taco Bell and Yum Brands finally agreed
on March 8th to “take a leadership role within
our industry… and work with the CIW for social
responsibility.” In return, we ended our four-year
boycott of Taco Bell.
The boycott victory was celebrated by 
observers
from former President Jimmy Carter to former guitarist
for Rage Against the Machine, Tom Morello, who said
of the agreement, "This is a major victory
for the workers and demonstrates that by standing
up and standing together, we can overturn any injustice.
By standing up and standing together, we can change
the world."
The CIW-Yum agreement sets several important precedents,
establishing:
The details of the agreement can be separated into
two broad categories: 1) Improving farmworker wages,
and 2) Progress toward equal rights for farmworkers:
Improving
Farmworker Wages |
Progress
Toward Equal Rights for Farmworkers |
| * Taco Bell will
pay 1 cent more per pound for all tomatoes
it buys – for both corporate-owned and
franchise stores – from Florida growers.
Given that workers today receive roughly 1.3
cents per pound (40-45 cents for every 32-lb
bucket), the raise amounts to an increase
of roughly 75% for workers picking tomatoes
for Taco Bell;
* Taco Bell will buy only from growers who
pass the penny per pound on to their workers;
* Taco Bell will establish a monthly monitoring
process with the CIW to track and enforce
the “pass-through” payment;
* Growers who fail to pass the penny through
to their workers will lose their right to
do business with Taco Bell;
* Taco Bell and Yum Brands will work with
the CIW in efforts to convince the Florida
Tomato Committee to institute an industry-wide,
penny per pound surcharge on all buyers of
Florida tomatoes so that the wage increase
established here for workers who pick tomatoes
for Taco Bell may be extended to all Florida
tomato pickers
|
* Yum has agreed to add the
following statement to their General Supplier
Code of Conduct:
"Supplemental
Policy Statement for Florida Tomato Growers
YUM suppliers are required
to abide by all applicable laws, codes and
regulations, including, but not limited to,
any local, state or federal laws regarding
wages and benefits, working hours, equal opportunity,
and worker and product safety. In addition,
YUM strongly encourages Florida growers in
the tomato industry to provide working terms
and conditions similar to those provided by
suppliers outside of the agricultural industry,
and will conduct business with those tomato
growers that demonstrate consistent adherence
to these higher standards.
In the event YUM and/or
the Coalition of Immokalee Workers ("CIW")
receives a credible complaint* from a tomato
picker alleging conduct by a Florida tomato
grower that violates any applicable laws,
codes or regulations as specified above, YUM
and CIW will work together to investigate
the complaint with no undue delay, and if
it is determined that there are reasonable
grounds to believe that a violation has occurred,
YUM may revoke a supplier's approved status.
YUM and CIW will also jointly refer the complaint
to the applicable state enforcement agencies.
If the applicable enforcement agency determines
that a violation has occurred, and YUM and
CIW determine that the violation was serious
or systemic, YUM will revoke a supplier's
approved status until such time that the supplier
remedies the situation to the satisfaction
of YUM and CIW; provided that YUM shall have
a reasonable time to transition purchases
from that supplier to provide for sufficient
supply of tomatoes for its business.
* A credible complaint -
the complaint cannot be anonymous (but can
protect anonymity) and through a description
of the facts indicate how relevant laws, codes
or regulations have been violated."
* Other additions to the Yum Code of Conduct
include a strict prohibition against indentured
servitude, a right to unannounced inspections
of their suppliers operations, and enforcement
consequences for violations of provisions
of the Code of Conduct.
* Yum and Taco Bell will work together to
lobby the Florida legislature and governor
for laws guaranteeing tomato workers the same
rights, protections, and privileges that other
non-agricultural workers enjoy. |
What do the wage provisions of this agreement
mean for workers?
Clearly,
Taco Bell is only one major buyer of many. As such,
the penny more per pound will not have an immediate
impact on all workers across the entire tomato industry.
But this agreement represents the first time –
ever -- that a fast-food leader has agreed to address
directly the sub-poverty wages paid to farmworkers
in its supply chain. This seminal agreement establishes
real accountability at the top of the agri-food
market for the wages of those who toil at the bottom
of the industry, the farmworkers who pick this country’s
crops. In so doing, it charts a path that will certainly
be traveled by many more workers in the years to
come whose wages are currently squeezed by the unprecedented
buying power of the fast-food and supermarket giants
like McDonalds, Subway, and WalMart.
In the words of CIW member Rolando Sales, “This
change isn’t just for us, it’s for everyone.
We should be respected and treated as human beings
with rights just as any others.”
The amount of the increase is significant as well.
While one penny may sound minimal on the surface,
those who know something about agricultural markets
know that shares are defined by cents on the pound
and battles are fought over a penny every day between
growers, brokers, and buyers. So, for workers picking
tomatoes for Taco Bell, that penny more per pound
will be a meaningful increase. It will also set
a valuable base line for future agreements with
other leaders of the fast-food and supermarket/retail
industries.
Finally,
the penny pass-through agreement guarantees -- for
the first time – that Taco Bell’s Florida
tomato supply chain will be 100% transparent. Florida
has been called “ground zero for modern-day
slavery,” yet the murky nature of the tomato
market has thus far successfully thwarted any efforts
to trace tomatoes picked by forced labor to the
corporations that bought and distributed them. That
will no longer be the case for tomatoes bought by
Taco Bell. The next time a slavery case arises in
Florida, there will be a mechanism in place to ensure
that Taco Bell does not purchase those tomatoes,
even inadvertently.
What do the provisions on labor rights
signify for workers?
As Yum Brands Vice President Jonathan Blum said
at the press conference announcing the agreement,
“We recognize these workers do not enjoy the
same rights and conditions as employees in other
industries, and there is a need for reform.”
Farmworkers rights today are diminished in two
significant ways: first, by the failure to enforce
those rights which farmworkers are legally guaranteed,
and second, by the exclusion of farmworkers from
many of the fundamental labor rights guaranteed
to other US workers, including the right to organize
and the right to overtime. This agreement addresses
both of those aspects in a first step toward ensuring
equal rights for farmworkers. It does so by harnessing
the very market power that the mega-corporations
have used to drive down supplier prices, only in
this case that power is being used by Yum Brands
as an incentive for suppliers to improve working
conditions for their employees.
The Supplemental Policy Statement for Florida Tomato
Growers sets several important new standards for
social responsibility with respect to farm labor
rights in the fast-food industry. First, it defines
clear enforcement consequences to guarantee the
respect of those rights guaranteed by law to farmworkers
by law in Yum’s tomato supply chain. Second,
it establishes a straightforward investigative mechanism
to monitor compliance with those rights, one which
explicitly includes the CIW in the investigative
process when workers’ complaints arise. And
third, it places the CIW, a worker-based organization,
firmly in the decision-making process with regard
to enforcement of those rights.
Finally,
the statement establishes a new concept in the agri-food
market, that of an incentive to recognize “aspirational
rights” for Florida farmworkers, workers who
have been excluded from many of the fundamental
labor rights enjoyed by other American workers for
nearly a century. While the statement does not require
Yum’s suppliers to respect those rights –
Yum’s power as a major buyer does not extend
to demanding that its suppliers surpass the current
legal requirements – it does guarantee that
if a supplier were to move in that direction, it
would have a market for its tomatoes, even if the
tomatoes cost a bit more due to the suppliers’
adherence to those higher standards.
In summary
Lucas
Benitez, an elected leader of the CIW, said at the
March 8 press conference: “Human rights are
universal, and if we as farmworkers are to one day
indeed enjoy equal rights, the same rights all other
workers in this country are guaranteed, this agreement
must only be a beginning. To make those rights truly
universal, other leaders of the fast-food industry
and the supermarket industry must join us on this
path toward social responsibility. With a broad
coalition of industry leaders committed to these
principles, we can finally dream of a day when Florida’s
farmworkers will enjoy the kind of wages and working
conditions we deserve. And when that day comes,
the restaurants and markets of this country will
truly be able to stand behind their food, from the
fields to America’s tables.”
With this agreement, farmworkers from one of the
country’s poorest towns took on a corporate
giant larger than McDonald’s and won. In an
era where workers are losing more often than winning,
where unionization rates and company-paid benefits
like health insurance and pensions are dropping,
and poverty is rising – dirt-poor workers
from Immokalee organized an aggressive national
campaign of creative actions and mass mobilizations
that never wavered, grew stronger with the commitment
of youth, religious, and union allies, and finally
convinced the world’s largest restaurant company
to change the way it does business forever.
