Note #9163 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:
06125 Feb. 22, 2006
Penny wise and pound foolish?
Balky McDonald's is target of Presbyterians' letter-writing campaign for tomato pickers
by Evan Silverstein
LOUISVILLE - Presbyterians are active in national letter-writing campaigns intended to pressure fast-food giant McDonald's to improve salaries and labor conditions in its tomato-supply chain.
Some participants are hand-delivering letters to managers of McDonald's restaurants in their communities, urging the hamburger company to pay a penny more per pound for the tomatoes it slaps on those Big Macs, and to pass the increase along to the farmworkers who pick the fruit.
Others have made their feelings known by communicating directly with McDonald's corporate offices in suburban Chicago by email, fax and regular mail.
"I knew this campaign was going on, and just felt it was my responsibility to add to it and bring the letter in myself," said Presbyterian Janel Geary, who earlier this month had a special delivery for the manager of a McDonald's in Chicago Heights, IL.
The store is between Geary's home in Chicago Heights and First Presbyterian Church of Chicago, where she worships. Neither is very far from McDonald's headquarters in Oak Brook, IL.
That restaurant is also the one Geary and her 4-year-old son, Caden, visit most often.
"I think it has more impact if it's their returning customers that are pushing this," Geary said. "It's something that has become very prominent, that this is an issue, with the farmworkers not having proper wages for what they do."
The letters are being written in response to a call from the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) for consumers across the country to demand that McDonald's support higher wages for the people who pick the tomatoes the worldwide restaurant chain uses on its hamburgers.
Florida-based CIW, a farmworker organization that represents many of the tomato pickers, also wants to work with McDonald's to establish an enforceable code of conduct to ensure fair and safe working conditions in Florida's fields.
"We're doing this as another way of communicating our message to McDonald's," said CIW spokesperson Julia Perkins. "It's time for them to work together with the Coalition to make sure that any kind of reform in the agricultural industry and the suppliers they deal with involve worker participation at the very root of the solution."
The CIW launched the "manager's letter" campaign on Feb. 1 to coincide with the anniversary of the signing of the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery. The idea is to emphasize that modern-day slavery still exists in the farm fields of Florida.
The CIW has worked with the U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation to investigate and prosecute five cases of slavery in recent years.
Other CIW letter-writing initiatives were launched last April and November.
Other groups that have written letters to McDonald's as part of the campaign include the United Church of Christ (UCC), the National Council of Churches (NCC) and the AFL-CIO.
A letter the CIW wants supporters to pass on to the fast-food giant says: "High-volume, low-cost purchasing practices have made it possible for McDonald's to extract extremely low tomato prices from its suppliers, but these cheap tomatoes come at a high cost: farmworker poverty and exploitation."
Members of Vanderbilt Presbyterian Church in Naples, FL, which is near the Immokalee area where McDonald's tomatoes are grown, have staged their own letter-writing campaign.
Last December, the church placed letters in its fellowship hall for parishioners to sign after worship, calling on McDonald's to help improve conditions for farmworkers.
About 200 letters were signed and mailed to McDonald's corporate headquarters, according to Elder Valerie Tomsic, who serves on Vanderbilt's Christian Witness in Public Life committee.
"I absolutely believe it's an issue of faith," she said. "We're our brother's keepers, and to me, you're really not thankful for your food if you don't care about the wage that person is earning to grow the food and harvest the food."
The CIW started pressuring McDonald's shortly after the coalition reached a groundbreaking agreement with Taco Bell's parent company, Louisville-based YUM! Brands Inc.
That pact, announced on March 8, 2005, requires the company to pay a penny more per pound of tomatoes - and pass the increase directly to the workers.
The Taco Bell agreement followed the CIW's nearly four-year national boycott of the Mexican-style restaurant chain, which also invited farmworkers to help develop a code of conduct for its tomato suppliers that allows the company to cut ties with suppliers that violate workers' rights.
As a result of the agreement, the CIW says Taco Bell's supply chain for Florida tomatoes is now fully transparent, allowing workers to track the company's purchases and making enforcement of these new standards possible.
The 214th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in 2002 voted to support the Taco Bell Boycott, and called for discussions involving the restaurant chain, its tomato suppliers and representatives of the CIW.
The PC(USA) stood with the farmworkers during the boycott, helping to arrange meetings between Yum! executives and members of the coalition. An eight-mile protest march to Yum! headquarters in February 2004 started at the Presbyterian Center in Louisville.
Presbyterians and other supporters are continuing to work with the CIW to ensure that the gains achieved through the Taco Bell Boycott are advanced throughout the fast-food industry, said the Rev. Noelle Damico, who represents the PC(USA)'s Office of the General Assembly in issues regarding fair food.
"It's beyond time for other fast-food companies to step forward and work with the CIW to insure that there is no exploitation or slavery in their own supply chains," said Damico, a UCC minister who coordinated the national Taco Bell Boycott for the PC(USA).
The CIW says it's targeting McDonald's now because the company, the world's largest restaurant chain, has already demonstrated a commitment to improving labor conditions, in the form of a recently announced program to sell fair-trade coffee in some of its stores. Farmers who grow fair-trade coffee are paid a higher than average price for their beans.
However, Perkins said that the CIW is not calling for a boycott of McDonald's now.
"We don't want to get to that point," she said. "We want to engage the company. We have a precedent set with the agreement with Taco Bell, and we understand McDonald's can do this, because they are doing it with coffee."
The Coalition, which is led by and represents more than 3,000 mostly Mexican, Guatemalan and Haitian farmworkers throughout Florida, eventually hopes to convince all major fast-food companies to pay more for tomatoes.
"The longest journey begins with one step," said Jean Hrbek, a lifelong Presbyterian who earlier this month personally delivered two letters to a McDonald's restaurant in Northport, NY, on the north shore of Long Island.
Hrbek, 58, signed one letter herself. The other was signed by about 20 members of a senior citizens fellowship called the Pioneers of First Presbyterian Church in Northport, where Hrbek has worshipped since 1979.
"We began our journey by delivering two letters," said Hrbek, the coordinator of the Pioneers group. "If everybody else starts delivering letters, maybe McDonald's will get the message and know that CIW has a lot of support throughout the country and through the churches."
Both pieces of correspondence, which Hrbek presented to the store manager, were copies of the sample CIW letter posted on the group's Web site: http://www.ciw-online.org/mcd_manager_letter.pdf.
The CIW said that, after several talks with McDonald's officials, they have made little headway. Company representatives did not return calls from the Presbyterian News Service, but issued a statement by email saying that it had joined an initiative called the Socially Accountable Farm Employer (SAFE) voluntary certification program.
The initiative purports to certify producers that have "complied with all applicable laws and regulations governing employment" and foster a work environment "free of hazard, intimidation, violence and harassment."
SAFE, announced in November, is run by board members of two organizations: the Florida Fruit and Vegetable Association, a growers' lobby, and the Redlands Christian Migrant Association, a non-profit that provides care to the children of migrant workers.
"As a result of this action, McDonald's suppliers will buy products from growers that participate in this program," company spokesperson Lisa Howard said.
She said the program assures fair wages and workplace safety.
However, the CIW charges that the fast-food chain has tried to circumvent its campaign, instead signing a "corporate responsibility pledge" that critics suspect was devised by companies working to maintain the dismal status quo of laborers in American tomato fields.
"The main goal behind having allies bring letters to McDonald's is just another way to communicate with them that what they've proposed with SAFE is not enough," Perkins said, noting that the CIW was not involved in the development of the code, which she said "does not include humane principles of economic relief for farmworkers."
The Rev. Clifton Kirkpatrick, stated clerk of the PC(USA)'s General Assembly, has joined other religious and human-rights leaders in publicly criticizing SAFE for not including the Immokalee workers in its development and refusing to deal with farmworkers' sub-poverty wages.
Most tomato pickers still receive roughly the same pay as in 1978 - 40 to 45 cents for every 32-pound bucket of tomatoes they pick. To earn $50 a day, considered a good haul, workers must pick about 125 buckets of tomatoes, or about two tons.
Taco Bell, which estimates that it will pay Florida tomato growers an extra $100,000 a year, has said it won't pass that cost along to its customers.
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