May 27, 2008

Burger King Caves!

Posted by Suemedha Sood at 3:31PM

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After years of resistance, Burger King finally joined fellow fast food giants McDonalds and Yum! Brands in meeting farm worker demands for decent wages and working conditions. The Coalition of Immokalee Workers and Burger King announced on Friday that the fast food chain will begin paying a penny more per pound of Florida tomatoes in order to boost wages for tomato harvesters. A penny more per pound actually raises wages by 75 percent, if you can believe that. Until now, the standard rate has been about 45 cents for a 32-pound bucket.

As The Nation's Katrina vanden Heuvel points out, the victory is "testament to the tenacity and discipline of the Coalition, a community-based worker organization, which has exposed a half-dozen slavery cases that helped trigger the freeing of more than 1000 workers." The students who have continued to fight hard for this cause also helped pave the way for Friday's announcement.

In her piece, vanden Heuvel mentioned a Senate Labor Committee hearing on harsh working conditions for South Florida farm workers. At the hearing, Fast Food Nation author Eric Schlosser said simply of the Florida tomato harvesters:

"The exploitation of farm workers should not be tolerated in Florida. It should not be tolerated anywhere in the United States. There are many social problems that are extremely difficult to solve. This is not one of them."

It's especially not difficult for Burger King, who will only lose less than $300,000 a year -- that's nothing when BK made $2.23 billion last year.

A good bit of news for once for immigrant farm workers.