February 2005

Views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily of the AFSC.

Supporting Florida Farmworkers: Boycotting Taco Bell

Information from the web site of the Coalition for Immokalee Workers, www.ciw-online.org. The CIW is a community-based worker organization whose members are largely Latino, Haitian, and Mayan Indian immigrants working in low-wage jobs throughout the state of Florida. CIW, PO Box 603, Immokalee, FL, 34143, 239/657-8311.

Why Boycott Taco Bell?

Taco Bell directly profits from farmworkers' sub-poverty wages and substandard working conditions -- including sub-poverty annual wages, no right to overtime, no right to organize, a per bucket piece rate that hasn't changed significantly since 1978, no sick leave, no health insurance, and no benefits whatsoever. Taco Bell pays artificially low prices for the tomatoes Immokalee farmworkers pick, and the extreme exploitation of farm labor in the production chain keeps these prices low.

Bucket pyramid constructed by farmworkers to illustrate the number of buckets of tomatoes a worker must fill to earn $50 per day. Photo © Jacques-Jean Tiziou, www.jjtiziou.net

Taco Bell and its parent company, Yum! Brands, have a hand in keeping those prices low, and therefore bear a significant degree of responsibility for the inhumane working conditions of the men and women who pick their tomatoes. Yum is the world's largest restaurant company -- larger than McDonald's -- and is made up of Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, KFC, Long John Silvers, and A&W Restaurants. Through the unparalleled impact of the Unified Foodservice Purchasing Co-op (UFPC), the corporation that pools the buying power of Yum's five major brands and leverages that power to obtain the lowest prices possible for its client chains, Taco Bell and Yum exert a strong downward pressure on their suppliers' prices. In agriculture, this translates directly into a downward pressure on wages and working conditions for farmworkers.

A study released by Oxfam America in March 2004, "Like Machines in the Fields: Workers without Rights in American Agriculture," goes into even more detail on the power that corporate giants like Yum hold over the agricultural industry (www.oxfamamerica.org/pdfs/labor_report_04.pdf). The study cites a significant shift in the disparity between the price a consumer pays for a product and the price received by the grower, as concrete evidence of the growing power of major corporate buyers like Yum over prices at the farm level. "Whereas in 1990 grower-shippers received 41% of the retail price of tomatoes, by 2000 they were receiving barely one quarter (25%)."

Major corporate buyers -- companies like WalMart, McDonald's, and Yum, whose sheer economic muscle is unprecedented -- have increasingly used their buying power to drive down their costs, squeezing their suppliers for the deepest possible discounts on produce. In turn, growers have sought to maintain their margins by squeezing their suppliers, and in particular the one supplier with the least power to negotiate its price, labor. While growers cannot demand cheaper tractors from John Deere, cheaper chemicals from Monsanto, or a break on the interest rate from their bank, they can hold wages stagnant, or even cut the piece rate, and still obtain desperately poor workers to pick their crops. The Oxfam study concludes: "Squeezed by the buyers of their produce, growers pass on the costs and risks imposed on them to those on the lowest rung of the supply chain: the farmworkers they employ."

There is factual information linking Taco Bell directly with at least one large Florida-based tomato grower. In the agricultural industry, as in other industries where sub-contracting is prevalent (such as the apparel industry), supplier information is regarded as confidential, competitive information. It is not readily available to the public. However, in an article on the emerging phenomenon of contract pricing in the produce industry, the industry journal "The Packer" confirmed the existence of a long-term contractual relationship between Taco Bell and the Six L's Packing Company, one of its Immokalee-based suppliers and one of the biggest producers of fresh tomatoes in the country ("Shipper takes non-conformist approach," Tracy Roselle, December, 1999).

Are Farmworkers Really Poor?

The US Department of Labor's National Agricultural Workers Survey (January, 2000) reported that farmworkers' median annual income is roughly $7,500, an amount far below the national poverty level. That same report goes on to conclude that farmworkers' "low wages, sub-poverty annual earnings, significant periods of un- and underemployment… all add up to a labor force in significant economic distress."

In-depth investigations by two of Florida's leading newspapers -- the Miami Herald and the Palm Beach Post -- published during the past year confirm these findings, not only reporting widespread poverty, sub-standard housing, and inhumane working conditions, but actually uncovering new cases of involuntary servitude (Miami Herald, "Florida's Fields of Despair: Destitute Farmworkers Exploited," 9/03; Palm Beach Post, "Modern-day Slavery: Still Harvesting Shame," 12/03).

In light of the Department of Labor's findings and the abundance of credible press investigations into farmworker poverty, to question whether US farmworkers are indeed poor seems somewhat absurd. Yet Taco Bell does just that in its own defense. Taco Bell has repeatedly claimed that one of its suppliers in Immokalee says it pays its workers $9 per hour (though Taco Bell admits that the supplier in question refuses to open its books -- even to Taco Bell -- to substantiate its claim).

The Coalition for Immokalee Workers has provided Taco Bell with ample information about the pay rate and pay system used in the tomato industry. In brief, farmworkers in the tomato harvest are paid by an antiquated piece rate system -- 40-50 cents for every 32-lb. bucket of produce they pick. This rate has not changed significantly in over 25 years. There are so many variables that affect what any individual farmworker may earn at any given moment that an hourly, daily, or weekly measure of pay is effectively meaningless. The only truly useful measure of farmworker earnings is the average yearly income ($7,500/year), as it is taken over a long enough period to obviate most of the factors that cause measures taken over a shorter time to vary so widely.

Farmworkers are not covered by the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), so the growers who employ them are under no obligation to dialogue with worker representatives. And workers have no recourse to the National Labor Relations Board if they are fired or discriminated against for raising issues with their employers.

Farmworkers are partially covered by the Fair Labor Standards Act, but are excluded from its overtime provisions. This means that unlike almost all other workers in this country, farmworkers do not have the right to overtime pay after working more than 40 hours in a week. The Fair Labor Standards Act does not limit either the number of hours in a day or the number of days in a week that an employer may require an employee to work, as long as the employee is at least 16 years old.

What is Taco Bell's Responsibility?

Companies like Taco Bell who purchase the produce and benefit from sub-poverty wages should not hide behind the lack of accountability and transparency in agriculture. Rather, as direct beneficiaries of the exploitative practices of agriculture, they need to take proactive steps to modernize the industry.

To our knowledge, Taco Bell has no system in place to investigate or verify compliance with any basic labor standards, nor do they have any files or records of past investigations on labor conditions in their supply chain.

In the words of the Honorable Mary Robinson, former United Nations Commissioner on Human Rights, "You can't pass the buck. You are profiting by exploitation and have the power to change what is happening in the fields. So, pay this penny a pound more for workers rights, and assume your fair share of responsibility."

Like Taco Bell, Starbucks has also been the target of consumer campaigns questioning unfair labor practices in its supply chain. Like Taco Bell, Starbucks initially defended itself by claiming it had neither the ability nor responsibility to address these problems. Starbucks, for example, does not grow coffee, nor does it directly employ workers who pick their coffee in plantations around the world. And, as Starbucks frequently asserted in its defense, the company is not a major player in the coffee market, accounting for less than 2% of overall world demand.

Yet through the actions of informed consumers, Starbucks has been obliged to recognize the principle of "Fair Trade Coffee" and to take the first steps toward providing the option to buy fairly traded coffee in their 8,000 stores. Although much more progress is needed, Starbucks is now beginning to leverage its tremendous market presence to spread the concept of fairly traded coffee to consumers throughout the world.

The Boycott is Working

Yum Brands is Taco Bell's parent company, but Taco Bell is the sole focus of the boycott at this time. However, the Center for Reflection, Education and Action (CREA) and several other institutional shareholders filed a shareholder resolution calling on Yum to provide detailed reporting on the environmental and labor rights impact of its supply chain. The resolution was first filed in 2003 and was taken up at the company's annual meeting on May 20, 2004 for the second time. The most recent numbers released by Yum indicate that 33% of Yum shareholders voted in favor of this resolution, well beyond the numbers needed to bring it back to a vote next year. For more details of the resolution, please see www.pcusa.org/boycott.

The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is also protesting Yum Brands. PETA is urging a boycott of KFC because of cruelty to chickens. PETA spokesperson, Bruce Friedrich, said, "We fully support the CIW boycott, too."

The Taco Bell boycott is one of the fastest-growing movements for economic justice on campuses today (see www.sfalliance.org). The "Boot the Bell" campaign seeks to remove Taco Bell restaraunts and products from schools nationwide.

Since 2002, students at 21 schools and universities have moved their administrations to prevent or cut Taco Bell contracts. In 2004, hundreds of students from six universities fasted for up to one week to push their administrations to cut commercial ties with Taco Bell.

In December, 2004, Cal State Bernadino became the most recent college to vote to remove Taco Bell from campus. As the San Bernadino Sun reported, "Students have taken a bite out of Taco Bell, and not the kind the fast-food giant wants."

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