December 5, 2007
by Evan Silverstein

LOUISVILLE – Presbyterians from across the country joined more than 1,500 church-backed farmworkers and their supporters, many chanting and waving signs, in a peaceful protest outside Burger King's Miami corporate headquarters on Friday (Nov. 30).

The fast-food giant is the latest target in an ongoing campaign by the Florida-based Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), an farmworkers organization that receives support from the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and other religious organizations.

The CIW's goal is to get Burger King to follow McDonald's and Taco Bell parent Yum! Brands, Inc., who have agreed to pay an additional penny-per-pound for tomatoes picked by Florida farmworkers.

Burger King and the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange (FTGE) argue those agreements violate federal anti-trust and labor laws, though they declined to explain how.

"Thanks to this big giant, all of us are here today to demand change," Lucas Benitez, CIW co-founder, told the crowd outside Burger King's suburban headquarters during the protest. "This is a big giant, but the bigger they are the harder they fall."

The CIW also wants Burger King to establish a code of conduct for Florida tomato growers supplying the company, and ensure farmworker participation in designing the code and monitoring its suppliers' compliance.

Organizers said the more than 1,500 workers and supporters joined a winding nine-mile march through the streets of Miami on their way to the hamburger company's offices.

The march kicked off outside the downtown Miami headquarters of Goldman Sachs, one of the private equity firms that own a significant stake in Burger King.

The Rev. Kennedy McGowan, pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Hollywood, FL, speaking at the rally on behalf of Tropical Florida Presbytery, said Burger King needed a reminder to have it "God's way, which is the way of justice!"

In addition to Presbyterians and other faith followers, the event brought together union members, student activists, migrant workers and others who came to Miami to join the CIW's protest against Burger King.

Some carried signs with messages like "End sweatshops in the field," they chanted "Un centavo mas" ("one penny more") and "Stop the lies," according to The Miami Herald.

Reuters news service reported that protest leaders climbed onto a flatbed truck to exhort protesters, whose T-shirts bore a modified Burger King logo that read "Exploitation King." Others wore T-shirts reading "Burger King exploits farmworkers."

According to The Miami Herald, migrant workers who couldn't come to Miami for the protest sent their worn shoes, which lined the median across from Burger King's headquarters next to a sign, "Doubt our poverty. Walk in Our Shoes." Police allowed three farmworkers to walk to Burger King's headquarters and present the shoes to a company representative during the rally.

"It's absurd that we have to go to these extremes to convince Burger King," Arlene Holt Baker, executive vice president of the AFL-CIO, told the crowd, according to the Miami newspaper. "A penny-per-pound is more than a moral imperative. It's a business bargain."

The Rev. Noelle Damico, national coordinator of the PC(USA)'s Campaign for Fair Food, also addressed demonstrators. She conveyed the strongly-worded message of an open letter sent that day to Burger King and the FTGE by the Rev. Clifton Kirkpatrick, stated clerk of the PC(USA)'s General Assembly.

In the letter, Kirkpatrick denounced the efforts of Burger King and the FTGE to end the Yum! Brands and McDonald's pacts, and demanded they stop.

The stated clerk charged that the two "are using their power to try and turn back the inevitable progress of human rights for farmworkers. And their coordinated tactics, which squarely target some of the poorest, most vulnerable members of our society, are as morally repugnant as they are in vain."

Kirkpatrick's letter was sent to Burger King Chief Executive John Chidsey and Reggie Brown, executive vice president of the FTGE, an agricultural cooperative representing more than 90 percent of the tomato growers in Florida.

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter also spoke out against reported efforts by Burger King and the FTGE to undermine the coalition's agreements with Yum! Brands and McDonald's, the world's largest fast-food chain.

As marchers made their way to Burger King's headquarters, Carter released a letter addressed to Brown at the FTGE that said the fast-food chain and other corporations are continuing to "stand silently as modest gains (for farmworkers) are deliberately rolled back."

In April, the Carter Center, founded by the former U.S. president, helped broker the deal between the CIW and McDonald's, in which the fast-food giant agreed to pay the additional penny per pound for Florida tomatoes.

"It is time to take a fresh look at the problem in order to restore the dignity of the Florida tomato industry," Carter said in his Nov. 30 letter to the FTGE.

At the time of the McDonald's deal, the CIW said the extra penny would raise pickers' wages to 77 cents for each 32-pound bucket of tomatoes they picked, effectively a 71 percent wage hike.

Florida is the source of more than 90 percent of the fresh winter tomatoes produced in the United States.

Also during the demonstration, according to Damico, Amy Robinson of Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary announced the seminary was standing with the CIW and had joined the Alliance for Fair Food, co-founded by the PC(USA) to advance farmworkers' human rights by promoting socially responsible purchasing practices among major retail food corporations.

Damico said that James E. McDonald, education director at Vanderbilt Presbyterian Church in Naples, FL, drove the church's bus at the end of the march providing relief to tired or sick marchers.

Damico said the Rev. Miguel Fernando Estrada Salvador of Beth-El Farmworker Ministry, a Reformed spiritual presence in Immokalee, FL, supported by the Peace River and Tampa Bay presbyteries, led marchers in fervent prayer during the concluding candlelight vigil for farmworkers' human rights.

Liz Theoharis, a Presbyterian doctoral student at the inter-denominational Union Theological Seminary in New York City, brought a delegation of students to march, according to Damico.

The Miami Herald reported that a group of south Florida religious leaders went across to Burger King's headquarters and delivered a letter to Chidsey calling on the fast-food chain to approve the penny-per-pound deal.

"It's an issue of justice and quality of life," said Marta Burke, minister with the Fulford United Methodist Church in North Miami Beach. "Our members are suffering."

But Burger King says it has no intention of signing onto a deal with the coalition.

In a written statement, Burger King called the CIW's penny-per-pound slogan a catch phrase that "failed to provide any solutions for the real issues facing farmworkers" and said the group had not explained how the additional pay, spread over thousands of workers, would meaningfully increase wages.

"Burger King does not tolerate worker exploitation anywhere in its supply chain," the company said.

Damico dismissed the notion that agreements the CIW struck with Yum! Brands and McDonald's violate federal anti-trust and labor laws.

"For two years Yum! Brands has been paying a penny-per-pound directly to farmworkers harvesting tomatoes for their Florida-based suppliers and the farmworkers' paychecks reflected the almost two-fold increase," Damico said. "This wage increase, given to workers making around $10,000 a year according to the U.S. Department of Labor, was a concrete, working solution until the FTGE and Burger King combined forces to halt it this November."

Several antitrust experts say the FTGE may be the one violating antitrust laws by banning its members' participation, according to a recent Associated Press article.

According to the St. Petersburg Times, "both Yum! Brands and McDonald's say they are committed to their agreement with the coalition. It appears that for now, however, things are on hold until the coalition and these companies can figure out a way around the intransigence of the [tomato growers] exchange."

The CIW, which came to prominence in the 1990s by exposing a series of farmworker abuses and human trafficking cases, won a penny-per-pound agreement with Yum! Brands in March 2005, following a nearly four-year national consumer boycott of Taco Bell.

In November, the CIW was honored with Anti-Slavery International's 2007 Anti-Slavery Awardfor their exceptional contribution toward tackling modern-day slavery in the United States' agricultural industry. Founded in 1839, the London-based ASI is the oldest human rights organization in the world.

The PC(USA) was among the first of many national U.S. religious institutions to support the Taco Bell boycott – the denomination's 2002 General Assembly endorsed it – and the celebration of the settlement between Yum! Brands and the CIW was held at the Presbyterian Center here.

"The CIW's agreements with Yum! Brands and McDonald's remind us that with God, all things are possible," Damico said. "Especially now in this season of Advent, we remain hopeful and expectant that God's reign of justice and peace is drawing nigh."

For more information about the PC(USA)'s Campaign for Fair Food go to the Fair Food Web site. Read Kirkpatrick's open letter to Burger King and the FTGE. View Carter's letter to the FTGE.

Presbyterian News Service