Several denominations, along with the National Council of Churches, have endorsed a boycott of Taco Bell because of concerns over how farm workers used by the company’s parent company, YUM! Brands, Inc, are treated. The farm workers state on their web site that:
More and more every day, the tomatoes we produce in Immokalee go to supply major, multi-national corporations. Long gone are the days when small, family farmers supplied area stores and chains with locally-grown tomatoes in season. Today, huge corporate growers with multi-state operations sell tomatoes year round to even bigger corporate buyers, including fast food mega-chains like Taco Bell and Burger King. Those fast food giants receive cheap, high-quality US tomatoes, thanks to the sacrifices of thousands of hard-working Florida farmworkers who pick tomatoes at a piece rate that has remained virtually unchanged for over two decades.We believe that the large corporations that buy Florida tomatoes must step up to their responsibility by demanding, and obtaining, changes in the shameful pay and working conditions suffered by the men and women who pick their tomatoes.
Click here to read their full statement and list of concerns regarding Taco Bell.
President Jimmy Carter has offered the Carter Center as a resource in the talks between YUM! Brands, Inc. and the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW). He recently released the following statement on the talks:
ATLANTA.... I have followed with concern for a number of years the appalling working conditions in the Florida-based tomato industry. While production costs in the industry have increased over the last 25 years, wages have been effectively stagnant, as giant cooperative buying mechanisms hold prices down. Conditions are so bad in parts of the industry that there have been two separate prosecutions for slavery in recent years.In recent years, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) has been publicly campaigning to bring attention to these abuses of human rights and for industry-wide change. In particular, CIW has led a campaign to ask Taco Bell, a subsidiary of YUM! Brands, Inc., the world's largest restaurant company, to accept responsibility for ensuring that its profits are not derived from the abuses of workers in its supply chain.
Recently, YUM! and CIW have been in private talks, convened by the Presbyterian Church (USA), to try to identify tangible ways to resolve the problems in the tomato industry. Regrettably, the latest round, which included talks held at The Carter Center, was not successful. On May 20, Taco Bell issued a statement that YUM! CEO David Novak has called a "proposed solution." Mr. Novak's proposal involves, first, the CIW calling off its boycott and, second, a statement that Taco Bell would be willing to work toward an industry-wide solution to pay and conditions. While YUM!'s belated acknowledgement of the need for improved pay and conditions is welcome, this cannot be considered a serious proposal. YUM! is saying that only if the CIW ends its boycott will it be willing to support efforts to improve wages, and only if the rest of the industry does. This is a lost opportunity for the head of the world's largest restaurant company to take the lead in eliminating human rights abuses that he knows exist within his supply chain.
(Photos from http://www.ciw-online.org/.)
