wfn.org | Taco Bell boycott to start on Labor Day

[PCUSA NEWS <PCUSA.NEWS@ecunet.org>]

Note #7401 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

23-August-2002
02318

Taco Bell boycott to start on Labor Day

Resources to support beleaguered tomato pickers available on Web

by Jerry L. Van Marter

LOUISVILLE - Presbyterian Church (USA) officials have chosen Labor Day to launch a General Assembly-authorized boycott of Taco Bell restaurants.

The aim of the action is to pressure Taco Bell's parent company, fast-food giant Yum! Foods, to raise the wages of tomato harvesters in Imokalee (rhymes with broccoli) in Florida.

Commissioners to this year's GA voted 297-176 in favor of an overture from Tampa Bay Presbytery in support of the Coalition of Imokalee Workers (CIW), a farm workers' organization in southwestern Florida comprised mainly of Haitian and Mexican migrant workers.

Six L's Packing Company, one of the nation's largest tomato growers and a major supplier of Taco Bell, pays a CIW worker about $25 for picking and hauling a ton of tomatoes. According to the U.S. government, the piece-rate of 40 cents per 30-pound bucket hasn't changed since 1978. 

Six L's annual profit has averaged $120 million since 1986. Taco Bell reported $5.2 billion in sales in 1999.

The boycott will be "Web-based," according to the Rev. Gary Cook, coordinator of the Presbyterian Hunger Program, who explains, "Taco Bell's target market is 18- to 24-year-old males, so the place to reach them is on the Web."

Cook said existing denominational networks, such as the Presbyterian Peacemaking Program and women's and racial-ethnic advocacy groups, will help rally support for the boycott. 

The Rev. Noelle Damico, a United Church of Christ (UCC) minister who is married to a Presbyterian minister, will coordinate of the PC(USA) campaign. She is a former coordinator of the UCC's year-old Taco Bell boycott.

A variety of boycott-related resources for congregations, including litanies, minutes for mission, skits, hymns and lectionary-based material, is available on the campaign's official Web site: www.pcusa.org/boycott. 

Also in the works is a Thanksgiving-holiday "immersion experience" for Presbyterians who would like to experience first-hand the living and working conditions of the Imokalee workers. The Rev. Clifton Kirkpatrick, the denomination's stated clerk, is scheduled to meet with CIW leaders in Imokalee on Nov. 13 - shortly before the opening of the National Council of Churches General Assembly in nearby Tampa.	 

According to Cook, the PC(USA) boycott has drawn the attention of Yum! Foods, whose corporate headquarters is in Louisville.

After receiving notification of the boycott from Kirkpatrick, Yum! officials sent letters to John Detterick, executive director of the General Assembly Council (GAC) and the Rev. Fahed Abu-Akel, the GA moderator, calling the boycott decision "a mistake."

Yum! argues that the labor dispute is between CIW and Six L's. Not so, says Cook.

"There's some good debate out there now about corporate 'supply line' behavior," Cook told the Presbyterian News Service in an Aug. 22 interview, pointing out that Six L's is "heavily dependent" on its contract to supply tomatoes to Taco Bell.

Citing controversies over U.S. clothiers' use of offshore sweat-shop labor to produce low-cost garments and the growing movement demanding "fair trade" in commodities such as coffee, Cook said corporate giants like Taco Bell are under increasing pressure to see that their contractors are offering adequate wages and decent working conditions.

"It's ironic that animal-rights activists have forced more humane treatment of animals by these giant companies, but they feel no such compulsion when it comes to the treatment of their workers," Cook said.

The temptation in boycott situations like this, Cook said, "is for the church to bargain on behalf of the workers." On the other hand, he said, "Our approach to Taco Bell is to tell them, 'Look, if you want to talk, it should be with the workers, not with us.'"

He said the message to Taco Bell consumers is equally clear: "If you'd be willing to spend a half-cent more for your chalupa, and Taco Bell passed that half-cent on to its tomato pickers, their pay would double."
------------------------------------------
Send your response to this article to pcusa.news@pcusa.org

------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, send an 'unsubscribe' request to

pcusanews-request@halak.pcusa.org