Thank you, Jonathan. My name is Lucas Benitez,
and I am a Co-Director of the Coalition of Immokalee
Workers. I’d like to begin by thanking everyone
for coming, and to thank Jonathan Blum and everyone
else here at Yum and Taco Bell whose hard work has
helped make today possible.
Today, we have some good news to share: Today,
Taco Bell has agreed to work with us to address
the wages and working conditions of farmworkers
in the Florida tomato industry. And so, today, we
are ending our boycott of Taco Bell.
And today’s message is simple: Taco Bell
and the CIW -- one a fast-food giant and the other
a farmworker organization -- are indeed part of
the same industry. The food industry in this country
is rooted in communities like mine, Immokalee, where
every season thousands of farmworkers arrive to
pick the tomatoes that end up, just a few days later,
on tables across the country. Many of those tables
are found in Taco Bell restaurants, from Florida
to California. It is that connection, from the field
to the table, that makes us members of the same
industry, and it is that connection that is, finally,
recognized in this agreement today.
Not much more can be said about the conditions
in Florida’s tomato fields that hasn’t
been said already. Wages are extremely low, working
conditions can be brutal -- Florida’s fields
have seen some of the most shameful extremes of
exploitation that this country has known, both decades
ago and still today. My community is one of the
poorest communities in the country, and our sacrifices
have helped make Florida’s tomatoes some of
the least expensive, highest quality tomatoes on
the market today.
But with this agreement, we are laying the groundwork
for real change, both in the concrete conditions
of farmworkers’ everyday lives and in the
market itself, where this agreement is establishing
important new standards of social responsibility.
With the penny more per pound, Taco Bell has recognized
that it can – and should – help improve
the wages of the men and women who pick their tomatoes.
And with the strict new additions to its Code of
Conduct, Yum and Taco Bell are making the working
conditions in the fields where we labor their business.
But the real significance of this agreement lies
in the promise it holds for much greater change
in the future. As Jonathan himself has so eloquently
put it, 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.
So, today, we call on those food industry leaders
to rise to this challenge and to follow Taco Bell’s
leadership. And today we call on our supporters
across the country to end their boycott of Taco
Bell.
