This story located at: http://www.pcusa.org/pcnews/2006/06299.htm
Tomato pickers, allies challenge McDonald's
Fast food giant told to "change course" after failed tomato study
by Evan Silverstein
LOUISVILLE - A group of Florida farm workers and members of the growing Alliance for Fair Food (AFF) (http://www.allianceforfairfood.org/index.html), which includes the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), recently descended on the Chicago-area headquarters of McDonald's Corp. (http://www.mcdonalds.com/usa.html)
As shareholders and executives arrived for the company's annual meeting May 25, the peaceful group of about 30 called on the fast-food hamburger giant to drop its "public relations campaign" by partnering with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) (http://www.ciw-online.org/) to address what they described as exploitative wages and a human rights crisis in the tomato fields of Florida.
Protesters lined the street outside McDonald's sprawling tree-lined campus in Oak Brook, IL, holding signs with slogans such as "Our Sweat, Your Tomatoes," demanding respect for farm workers rights.
"Consumers of conscience care that the food we purchase at McDonald's
be produced fairly and insist that the farm workers harvesting the tomatoes be partners with the company in advancing their own human rights," said the Rev. Noelle Damico, a United Church of Christ minister
who serves as the PC(USA)'s associate for Fair Food. (http://www.pcusa.org/fairfood/)
The CIW represents more than 3,000 mostly Mexican, Guatemalan and Haitian
farm workers throughout Florida, and hopes eventually to persuade all major fast-food companies to ensure their suppliers pay for fair wages and to end human rights abuses of farm workers in their supply chains.
Last year the coalition scored its first victory with a landmark agreement
with Taco Bell.
As protesters outside called for improved working conditions and higher pay, inside McDonald's shareholders were addressed by a CIW leader and a representative of the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Center for Human Rights in Washington, DC.
"The workers who pick the tomatoes that go on McDonald's sandwiches and salads work under conditions that can only be described as sweatshops: poverty wages, no overtime pay, no right to organize and no benefits," CIW co-founder Lucas Benitez said during the meeting, according to news reports.
McDonald's Corp. CEO Jim Skinner responded that McDonald's has worked
closely with its suppliers to maintain the highest standards for its workers and will continue doing so.
Skinner said McDonald's is a leader in food safety and quality, toy safety, employment opportunity, training and development, charitable giving, animal welfare and the environment.
The AFF was officially launched in March to work in partnership with the CIW to promote socially responsible purchasing practices among major retail food corporations, with a particular focus on improving farm labor
wages and guaranteeing the human rights of farm workers.
The PC(USA) became a founding member when the denomination's General Assembly Council voted in September to join the AFF, which includes dozens of religious organizations, non-governmental organizations (NGOs),
community agencies and student and labor groups.
The first objective of the alliance was to pressure McDonald's to improve salaries and labor conditions in its tomato-supply chain.
AFF endorsers include the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Center for Human Rights, Amnesty International USA, the AFL-CIO, "Fast Food Nation" author Eric
Schlosser, the Rev. Bob Edgar, General Secretary of the National Council of Churches (NCC), Julian Bond, Board Chairman of the NAACP, and United Students Against Sweatshops.
On March 8, 2005, the CIW successfully concluded a nearly four-year-long national boycott of Taco Bell restaurants, which led to increased wages for immigrants who pick tomatoes for the company's suppliers and set historic precedents for human rights and corporate accountability in the country's vast agri-food industry.
The CIW and Taco Bell's parent company, Yum! Brands Inc. of Louisville,
announced an agreement requiring the company to pay one cent more per pound for tomatoes and requiring suppliers to pass the increase on to the workers.
The agreement also called on Yum Brands to work with the CIW to establish and monitor a code of conduct while guaranteeing transparency in the company's tomato supply chain.
The wage increase means that a picker who was getting 40 to 45 cents for filling a 32-pound bucket with tomatoes and hauling it to a truck - a rate of pay that hadn't changed for three decades - now gets more like 72 to 77 cents; almost double the earnings when picking tomatoes for Taco Bell.
But the agreement applied only to the approximately 1,000 who pick tomatoes sold to Taco Bell. Many farm workers continue to toil at the bottom of the
agri-food industry.
Despite the pact with Taco Bell, McDonald's and Mexican-style restaurant
chain Chipotle, in which McDonald's is a majority shareholder, have refused to work with the CIW to raise wages in the fields they control, establish
safeguards for human rights or ensure transparency in their supply chains.
"It's beyond time for McDonald's to stop treating a human rights crisis as a public relations campaign," said Todd Howland, director of the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Center for Human Rights. "This attitude not only perpetuates the exploitation of the farm workers, but threatens to discredit McDonald's own reputation in the area of social responsibility."
The AFF also took issue with the hamburger giant in April when McDonald's released a study called "Economic Impact: Tomatoes in Florida, Report 1."
The study was commissioned by McDonald's and prepared by the faith-based
non-profit Center for Reflection, Education and Action (CREA) (http://www.crea-inc.org/). It was compiled in response to a January 2006
public assertion by McDonald's that its suppliers and growers already equal or better the Taco Bell "penny a pound" solution.
The validity of the study has been questioned by labor experts and 30 social scientists who agree with Dr. Bruce Nissen, director of the Research Institute on Social and Economic Policy at Florida International
University in Miami, FL. He claims the report is "so riddled with errors
both large and small that it cannot be accepted as factually accurate by virtually any measure."
AFF members released a public statement concurring with critics of the report while challenging the company to "reevaluate its approach and change course" by working as partners with the CIW.
Among those signing onto the statement was the Rev. Clifton Kirkpatrick, stated clerk of the PC(USA) General Assembly.
"The PC(USA) prepared this critique of the McDonald's tomato study together with our other partners in the Alliance for Fair Food in order to help Presbyterians and all consumers of conscience understand the grievous human rights abuses in the fields of McDonald's suppliers," Kirkpatrick said, "and the moral responsibility McDonald's has to work
with the CIW to address these abuses immediately."
Other religious signatories included the NCC, United Church of Christ, Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations, National Farm Worker Ministry, Interfaith Worker Justice, and the National Catholic Rural Life Conference.
Former Secretary of Labor Robert B. Reich was among three former federal labor officials who rejected the report in a statement that called on McDonald's to "act constructively in the face of serious infringements
of the rights of farm workers."
Despite repeated attempts by the Presbyterian News Service, McDonald's spokeswoman Lisa Howard refused to comment on the report Thursday (June 1). She referred questions to Sister Ruth Rosenbaum, executive director of CREA, who said she did not have time to comment.
For more information about the AFF log on
http://www.allianceforfairfood.org/index.html, or visit the CIW's Web site, http://www.ciw-online.org, or the PC(USA)'s Fair Food site, www.pcusa.org/fairfood.
To view the statement from AFF members denouncing McDonald's study: http://www.allianceforfairfood.org/docs/studyresponse.html. For the tomato study prepared for McDonald's by the Center for Reflection, Education and Action: http://www.crea-inc.org/tomatoproject.htm.