LOUISVILLE — The three-year Presbyterian boycott of Taco Bell has ended, after the restaurant chain’s parent corporation agreed to a deal that will increase what farm workers are paid by a penny for each pound of tomatoes they pick. That may not sound like much, but representatives of the farm workers say it can make a real difference in the amount of money those workers will earn.
Clifton Kirkpatrick, stated clerk of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), called it an historic agreement, and said its real significance is in the promise it holds on two fronts: for encouraging others in the food industry to also insist on fair wages and working conditions for farm workers; and for sending consumers a message that they should be responsible in spending their money with companies that require fair treatment for workers.
Yum! Brands Inc., Taco Bell’s parent corporation, also is challenging other companies in the restaurant and supermarket industries to consider doing the same — to step up to a new level of social responsibility, considering that farm workers in the Florida tomato fields, many of them Latino immigrants, work in difficult, degrading conditions and often don’t earn enough to clear the poverty line.
Yum! and the Coalition of Immokalee Workers — Immokalee is a town in the tomato-growing region of Florida — announced jointly at a news conference in Kentucky March 8 that they had reached an agreement and that the Immokalee workers would call off the boycott. Under that agreement, Taco Bell will pay an additional penny for each pound of tomatoes picked, and that penny will pass directly through to the workers who pick the tomatoes in the fields.
Yum! and the Coalition of Immokalee Workers also will join forces to lobby for changes in Florida’s laws to give farm workers the same rights and protections that employees in other industries enjoy, which the farm workers do not currently have but should, said Jonathan Blum, a Yum! senior vice president.
And Yum! has revised its code of conduct for its U.S. suppliers to add language forbidding indentured servitude, specifically saying that “no supplier should perform work or produce goods for Yum! using labor under any form of indentured servitude, nor shall threats of violence, physical punishment, confinement, or other form of physical, sexual, psychological, or verbal harassment or abuse be used as a method of discipline or control.”
That change gives some clues as to what working conditions for the farm workers might be like, and Blum said of indentured servitude: “We have zero tolerance for that.” The code of conduct also will allow Yum! to conduct unannounced inspections of working conditions.
The PC(USA)’s General Assembly initiated the boycott in 2002, in response to an overture from Tampa Bay presbytery. The assembly stated at the time that “Taco Bell knows about and benefits from the exploitive conditions under which tomatoes for their products are produced” and that “Taco Bell has both the power and the moral responsibility to resolve the inhumane conditions of workers . . . “
Taco Bell resisted at first, saying the tomato pickers weren’t its workers and it couldn’t get involved in what was essentially a dispute between the farm workers and the supply companies that buy tomatoes and sell them to the restaurants. That created some awkwardness in Kentucky, since both Yum! and the Presbyterians have their national offices in Louisville.
Since then, the boycott gathered momentum, with other religious groups and supporters at college campuses joining in. Among those supporting the effort were the National Council of Churches in Christ and the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Center for Human Rights. Negotiations commenced, positions started to shift. Before the boycott was called off, the Immokalee workers were in the midst of a high-publicity “Taco Bell Truth Tour,” traveling by bus and visiting churches, which was to have included a rally on March 12 outside Yum! headquarters in Louisville featuring actor Martin Sheen and Kerry Kennedy, daughter of the late Sen. Robert F. Kennedy.
With the deal, that rally was transformed into a celebration to be held March 12 at the PC(USA) headquarters along the Ohio River.
Noelle Damico, a United Church of Christ minister who’s led the denomination’s boycott effort, said she thinks the agreement should send a message to the fast food and restaurant industries about what consumers want.
“There is a large and growing industry demand for food that is fair,” Damico said during the news conference. “The fast-food industry as a whole needs to know: its customers care . . . The market is there. We believe that justice can be good business as well.”
And Kirkpatrick said: “The core concern is a belief that God intends justice in the world and alleviation of the gap between the rich and the poor.”
Lucas Benitez, a leader of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, said he wants this to be a first step — that “with this agreement, we are laying the groundwork for real change.” He said his community is one of the poorest in the country, and the sacrifices of the workers make Florida tomatoes inexpensive for people to eat all over the nation.
Blum said he hopes the changes agreed to with the Immokalee workers will spread to become industry-wide and that more tomato suppliers — the middlemen between the workers and the restaurants — will agree to pass along pay increases to the workers.
Taco Bell buys about 10 million pounds of tomatoes in Florida a year, Blum said. The workers have been paid 40 to 45 cents for a 32-pound bucket of tomatoes. Under the new arrangement, Taco Bell will pay an additional penny per pound, so the price per bucket will rise to about 77 cents with that price retroactive to January 1, 2005.
Speaking in Spanish and using a translator, Benitez said a Department of Labor study showed on average tomato pickers earn $7,000 to $7,500 a year, so the pay increase “will mean almost reaching the poverty level.”
Blum said the increase expense for wages will not be passed on to Taco Bell customers in price increases and that the company will pay the additional cost, which is expected to run $100,000 a year. Taco Bell has 6,500 restaurants and last year produced more than $9 billion in total revenues.
Yum! is considering whether to make the same arrangements with its other restaurant chains, including Kentucky Fried Chicken and A & W, Blum said. But Pizza Hut — another of its chains, which obviously uses lots of tomatoes — buys them from outside Florida, usually from the West Coast or Mexico.
So why did Yum! agree to make changes, after resisting initially?
“When the company saw in 2003 during the 10-day hunger strike that the workers were serious” and wouldn’t back down, that got the company’s attention, Damico said in an interview. Yum! also needed time to build partnerships with the tomato suppliers and its franchise holders. Yum! initially had said any pay changes would have to be adopted industry-wide, but ultimately found several suppliers willing to go along with passing the pay increase directly on to the farm workers, will start with them and try to influence others to come along. Yum! uses about 1 percent of all the tomatoes grown in Florida.
For Presbyterians, some of whom argued that boycotting Taco Bell was not what the church ought to get involved with, “there’s been a growing sense . . . that this is the right place for the church to be,” Kirkpatrick said in an interview.
“This has activated a whole new generation of Presbyterians,” Damico said, people who believe the church should “stand hand-in-hand with those who are most oppressed,” because “this is what Jesus did.”
The news conference was packed with Immokalee supporters, many who’ve been traveling cross-country with the Truth Tour. Some hugged, their eyes gleaming; some pulled out cell phones to spread the word. As they walked out of Yum! into the afternoon light, one man raised his arms up to the sky and let loose an ecstatic, “WHOOOOOA!”
