wfn.org | [PCUSANEWS] Holding fast

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Note #8239 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

04235
May 18, 2004

Holding fast

Religious groups to fast, pray while Yum! shareholders meet

by Evan Silverstein

LOUISVILLE - With a boycott of Taco Bell in full swing, Presbyterians and
other people of faith are being asked to fast and pray on May 20, as
shareholders of the fast-food giant's parent company gather here for their
annual board meeting.

	The vigil outside the Louisville headquarters of Yum! Brands, Inc. is
intended to support justice for farmworkers who are demanding higher wages
and better working conditions in the Florida fields where they pick tomatoes
for the Mexican-style restaurant chain.

	A shareholder sustainability resolution calling on Yum! to report
comprehensively on labor conditions throughout its supply chain is on the
meeting agenda.

	While the shareholders discuss the resolution inside, farmworkers and
their supporters will gather outside to fast and pray from 8:30 a.m. to 5
p.m. (EDT).

	A prayer vigil and news conference involving national religious and
human-rights leaders will also take place outside the Yum! offices.
Meanwhile, congregations across the United States will schedule their own
times of fasting and prayer.

	"We are fasting because we do not want to eat food tainted with the
exploitation of our sisters and brothers," said the Rev. Thomas Hoyt Jr.,
President of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the USA (NCC), a
bishop in the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church.

	The religious communions are calling on their members to join
students and farmworkers in fasting and prayer to draw attention to
conditions in the fields of growers that supply Yum! Brands with tomatoes,
and to express support for the shareholder resolution.

	The fast will end with a 6 p.m. community meal at a local retreat
center and the screening of a new documentary film chronicling the struggles
of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), a community-based group of
Florida farmworkers that launched the consumer boycott in 2001.

	The boycott has drawn the support of national religious groups
including the PC(USA), the NCC, the United Methodist Church, the United
Church of Christ, the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), the American
Friends Service Committee and the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee.

	The 213th General Assembly of the PC(USA), in 2002, endorsed the
boycott and called for good-faith dialogue between Taco Bell's supplier and
representatives of the workers' coalition.

	The Rev. Clifton Kirkpatrick, the PC(USA)'s stated clerk, voiced the
concerns of many in the religious community.

	"We are particularly concerned with the role Yum! Brands has played,
or more accurately, has not played, in this situation," he said. "Yum!
benefits by being able to purchase these tomatoes cheaply on account of the
poverty wages earned by farmworkers. As such, we believe that Yum! Brands has
a clear moral responsibility to take leadership to assure just working
conditions and compensation for the very persons who provide the products
which are at the heart of its operation."

	Institutional shareholders including the Center for Reflection,
Education, and Action, Inc., and Trillium Asset Management Corporation filed
the sustainability resolution. An identical resolution introduced during last
year's meeting received 43 percent of shareholders' votes.

	Boycott organizers are working to get Yum! to use its power as a
major purchaser to see that the food it serves is not only fast, but fair. In
addition to Taco Bell, Yum! Brands owns Kentucky Fried Chicken, Long John
Silver's, A&W Restaurants and Pizza Hut.

	Farmworkers must pick two tons of tomatoes to earn $50. The U.S.
Department of Labor has said that their piece-rate pay has been essentially
unchanged for more than 25 years.

	The CIW wants Taco Bell to:

	* Participate in three-way talks involving the company, their tomato
suppliers and CIW representatives;

	* Contribute to an increase in farmworker wages through an increase
in the per-pound rate Taco Bell/Yum! Brands pays for tomatoes, with an
agreement from suppliers to pass the increase along to the workers; and

	* Work with Taco Bell's suppliers and the CIW to establish a code of
conduct that would ensure workers' fundamental rights.

	For more information about the boycott, visit the Web sites of the
workers' coalition, the PC(USA) and the NCC.

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