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AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE - GLOBAL ETHICS MONITOR
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Corporate Responsibility News
www.globalethicsmonitor.com
LABOR ISSUES
May 15, 2003
Yum! Brands faces dissent from
shareholders and protests over worker
treatment
By Joanna Sabatini
NEW YORK (AFX-GEM) - Yum! Brands Inc faced dissent
Thursday from both
shareholders within its annual meeting and labor rights groups protesting
outside their company headquarters over the fast-food chain's alleged
abusive treatment of workers at its suppliers.
The company would not disclose the final vote tally on a shareholder
proposal asking the owner to stop neglecting the poor treatment
of workers
at its suppliers but would only say it did not receive a majority
of votes.
The vote must be filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission
next
week.
One of the groups that supported the shareholder proposal, citing
figures
obtained from Yum! company lawyer John Daly, said the proposal received
23.7
percent of the votes but the company would not confirm this.
Yum has come under attack from activists in recent months for allegedly
mistreating tomato pickers who work for Six L's Packing Co, an Immokalee,
Florida-based supplier to Yum's Taco Bell chain.
Six L tomato pickers who protested outside the company headquarters
in
Louisville, Kentucky while shareholders met inside said they are
being
denied minimum wage, the right to organize and that they receive
no overtime
pay or health insurance.
Another Yum fast food chain, KFC, has been under fire for slitting
the
throats of chickens rather them using gas to kill them.
After pressure from the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals
(PETA),
KFC said earlier this month it would unveil new guidelines for the
humane
treatment of poultry by the producers it buys from.
"We call to everyone's attention that the living standards
now required for
animals far outstrip the living standards for workers, especially
the
agricultural workers who supply YUM Brands," Oxfam America
consultant
Simon Billenness said during the meeting, reading a statement by
the Hartford,
Connecticut-based Center for Reflection, Education and Action, one
of the
groups supporting the shareholder proposal.
The shareholder proposal filed by a group of investment managers
including
Boston-based Trillium Asset Management and Christian Brothers Investment
Services called on Kentucky-based Yum to report to shareholders
on labor
conditions up and down its supply chain by October.
They said the request is designed to improve the wages of workers
at tomato
suppliers to Taco Bell.
Shareholder groups said they were very pleased with the voting result,
particularly because it was the first time the proposoal was voted
on at the
company.
A Yum spokeswoman said the two other shareholder proposals voted
on during
the annual meeting did not receive majority votes. One proposal
asked Yum to
ban smoking in its company-owned restaurants by January 1, 2004.
The other shareholder proposal asked the company to hire people
from various
religious backgrounds in Northern Ireland.
Yum has twenty-eight Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise restaurants
in
Northern Ireland. The company also owns fast food chains Pizza Hut,
KFC,
Long John Silvers, and A&W Restaurants.
Yum officials have previously told AFX Global Ethics Monitor that
the
company, concerned about its reputation with consumers, had asked
Six L's to
settle with the 2,000-plus workers in early 2002 but was rebuffed.
They had declined to intervene further, saying they were not party
to the
dispute between Six L's and its employees.
After trying for years to gain raises and improvements in work conditions,
the tomato pickers' Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) in April
2001
launched a nationwide boycott of Taco Bell, a major buyer of tomatoes
from
Six L's.
CIW said their wages have remained at the 1979 level of 7,500 dollars
per
year.
Trillium submitted a similar measure last year but withdrew it when
Yum
executives said they would look into labor conditions. The proposal
was
refiled because Yum executives have not done as they said they would,
said
Shelley Alpern, assistant vice president at Trillium.
"The issue is not going to go away - we will return the resolution
if
necessary," said Ruth Rosenbaum, founder of the Center for
Reflection,
Education and Action, a faith-based advocacy group.
joanna.sabatini@afxnews.com
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