NAPLES DAILY NEWS

March 9, 2005

Taco Bell agrees to help raise farmworker pay

By JANINE ZEITLIN and MICHAEL PELTIER

Farmworker advocates on Tuesday ended a three-year boycott of Taco Bell after the fast-food giant agreed to improve working conditions and require suppliers to raise wages.

Meeting in Louisville, Ky., company officials announced they would require suppliers to increase the wages paid to tomato pickers by a penny a pound while pledging to help farmworker advocates gain similar concessions from others in the fast-food industry.

The announcement comes nearly three years after farmworker advocates led by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, a Collier County-based workers rights organization, called for a national boycott of the fast-food chain, a subsidiary of Louisville-based Yum! Brands Inc., until Yum! pressured tomato growers to provide better wages and living conditions for farmworkers. Yum also owns KFC, Pizza Hut, Long John Silver's and A&W All-American Food Restaurants.

"With this agreement, we will be the first in our industry to directly help improve farmworkers' wages," Taco Bell President Emil Brolick said in a prepared statement. "And we pledge to make this commitment real by buying only from Florida growers who pass this penny per pound payment entirely on to the farmworkers.

Coalition representatives hailed the company's decision as a significant and verifiable step in their quest to improve the working conditions for thousands of Florida farmworkers, many of whom earn less than $7,500 a year. They then called on other supporters including the National Council of Churches and Presbyterian USA and the Student Farmworker Alliance to end their boycotts.

"The food industry in this country is rooted in communities like mine, Immokalee, where every season thousands of farmworkers arrive to pick tomatoes that end up, just a few days later, on tables across the country," said Lucas Benitez, a coalition member in a statement read in Louisville Tuesday.

"It is that connection, from the field to the table, that makes us members of the same industry, and that is the connection that is, finally, recognized in this agreement today," he added.

After three years of pickets, national tours and repeated frustrations, Benitez said that the campaign's success is a bit overwhelming.

"You feel a kind of energy you've never felt before because you actually can win and that the truth of our exploitation would be enough to convince others," Benitez said by phone from Louisville.

"Now we see that it really does work," he added. "We see that even corporations, eventually, will be moved if you have truth on your side."

So far, U.S. universities including UCLA and Notre Dame have ended franchise agreements with the company. Company officials said only UCLA's decision was in response the "Boot the Bell" national boycott. The others were business decisions.

Details are still being worked out over how suppliers will be monitored, Taco Bell spokeswoman Laurie Schalow said. Any monitoring efforts, however, would be agreeable to both company officials and coalition leaders.

Along with prices, company officials have pledged to work toward improving working conditions and seeking industry support for broader based reforms. The agreement affects only Florida workers and will be made retroactive to Jan. 1, 2005.

"We're pleased to be the first to lend out support to the coalition to help improve working conditions," Schalow said. "We're encouraging others to follow our lead."

Based in Irvine, Calif., Taco Bell operates more than 6,500 restaurants in the United States. Last year, Taco Bell purchased 11 million pounds of Florida-grown tomatoes, about 1 percent of the state crop.

That figure pales in comparison with the 1.5 billion tomatoes — almost half of which got funneled to retail and grocery stores — sold in 2004, said Rob Williams, the executive director of the Farmworker Justice Project. The nonprofit advocacy group is under Florida Legal Services' wing.

"Taco Bell doesn't seem to be a big part of the tomato industry, much less an industry leader," said Williams, who has worked on farmworker issues three decades, including more than a dozen years in Immokalee.

"Taco Bell doesn't control things in Immokalee. It seems to me a little bit of a stretch to say the Yum! corporation is responsible because they buy some tomatoes," he said. "I'm glad they have had a victory but I have difficulty seeing how this leads to much change on the ground for tomato workers in Immokalee."

He said eight big companies make up Florida's tomato industry — including Six Ls Packing Co. in Collier County. The coalition asked Taco Bell to intercede with Six Ls at the start of its boycott. An attempt to reach company officials was unsuccessful.

Immokalee tomato pickers pull down $8 to $10 an hour for their actual harvesting time, not including their travel time and wait at the fields, according to University of Florida statistics.

By law, farmworkers should be paid at least the minimum wage for their time.

More than 10,000 vegetable workers, mainly in tomato fields, labor in Immokalee, per rough university estimates.

Fritz Roka, an Immokalee-based University of Florida associate professor of agriculture economics, said consumer response to the penny-per-pound increase likely will dictate if it catches on throughout the industry.

"If Taco Bell can market this to consumers, as they hope, and if the consuming public flocks to Taco Bell and says, 'Hey I want your product,' the whole system can cascade upward," Roka said. "If on the other hand the public simply doesn't care, then Taco Bell is basically losing money."

The size of a farmworker's paycheck is swayed more by hours worked than the hourly wage, he said.

Back-to-back harvesting seasons last from about December through April. This year, workers' hours were slashed when some growers opted not to harvest because they wouldn't reap the profit to make it worthwhile, he said.

"If farms decide we can't compete anymore, then there's no need for tomato harvesters whether they get a penny or dime more," Roka said.

Mexican tomatoes are Florida growers' prime competitor during winter months and are currently a close second to Florida in terms of production, growers said, pointing out that labor gets paid far less there. U.S. companies looking to keep costs down may opt to buy from Mexico instead, they said.

"They want to talk about an imbalance in wages? Go to the Mexican industry. Farmworkers make $5 to $6 a day," said Tony DiMare, vice president of DiMare and Co., which grows tomatoes in Immokalee, Homestead and Palmetto/Ruskin.

DiMare doesn't supply Taco Bell with tomatoes, he said, adding that he knew of no growers affected by the coalition's boycott.

"I don't know anybody that's been impacted by the strikes and boycotts during all the years it's been going on," he said. "Why was Taco (Bell) singled out anyhow? If you ask me, realistically I don't think it will have an impact."

Replacing farmworker housing after this season's hurricanes is more crucial than a penny more for workers, he said, noting $75,000 was raised at a Florida Fruit & Vegetable Association silent auction for farmworker housing.

Ray Gilmer, Florida Fruit & Vegetable Association spokesman, said he hadn't heard of any of his 500 member growers signing on to the agreement.

The increase could pose a logistical glitch for the industry. Most tomatoes are repackaged for individual buyers so Taco Bell tomatoes will have to be tracked, he said.

Gilmer said the tomato prices are constantly in flux with changing weather and demands. He said the agreement excludes farmworkers in the rest of the country.

"How do you arbitrarily raise the price for something based on your labor practices in a very competitive and dynamic marketplace?" he said. "To isolate one production area as a target for this kind of wage increase is counter to the economics of the business. Florida's production costs are going to be higher by a penny per pound all over the country. It's going to be an interesting thing to see unfold."

While enjoying Tuesday's success, coalition member Greg Asbed said the group's next challenge is to extend the gains made with Taco Bell in Florida to other states and other companies.

"The next step is to (be) working with allies and keeping the national network, which has been so been so incredibly strong, moving in the right direction and making the changes they can make," Asbed said.