Migrant farmworkers have long been among the poorest workers in the
United States. The typical migrant is a 29-year-old Mexican-born male
whose annual income is less than $7,500. He is likely to be here
illegally, especially if he is among the poorest of the poor, those who
pick fruits and vegetables by hand. And he is ripe for exploitation.
In California — where over the last two decades some farm wages,
adjusted for inflation, have declined by about 50% — this is a familiar
tale. But in the fields of Florida, wages and working conditions are
even worse.
To earn the federal minimum wage picking tomatoes
in southern Florida, a migrant has to pick more than 320 pounds an
hour. That's more than a ton in an eight-hour day. In the fields near
Immokalee, Fla., where much of the state's tomato industry is situated,
a new form of indentured servitude flourishes. Illegal immigrants have
been forced to work for below minimum wage to pay off their debts to
people-smugglers and labor contractors. Since the mid-1990s the Justice
Department has successfully prosecuted five cases of slavery in the
region. The close relationship between Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and that
state's agricultural interests guarantees that little will be done at
the state level to remedy the situation. And that is why a growing
national movement insists that the multinational corporations that buy
Florida's produce must take responsibility for how migrant workers are
being treated.
In 1999, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers,
an organization devoted to helping migrants, learned that Taco Bell,
headquartered in Irvine, Calif., was a major purchaser of tomatoes from
Florida growers. The coalition asked the fast-food company to pressure
its suppliers to raise wages and protect farmworkers from abuse. When
Taco Bell failed to respond, the coalition launched a nationwide
boycott of the chain in April 2001. Can Taco Bell guarantee, the group
asks, that its tomatoes are not being harvested with slave labor? That
question has yet to be answered.
Taco Bell is not the only
corporation buying tomatoes from Immokalee growers. But it deserves to
be a focus of attention when it comes to labor policies. In Oregon,
Washington and California, Taco Bell has paid more than $17 million to
settle lawsuits charging systematic violations of federal labor law.
Moreover, its parent company, Yum Brands, which also owns Pizza Hut and
KFC, operates more than 30,000 restaurants controlling a centralized
purchasing system that has enormous power over food suppliers. And Taco
Bell sells more Mexican food than any other company in the United
States. It shouldn't profit from the exploitation of poor Mexican
farmworkers.
After years of denying responsibility for the
employment practices of its suppliers, Taco Bell recently posted a code
of conduct on its website, stressing that all of the chain's suppliers
should obey the nation's labor laws and that none should "produce goods
… using labor under any form of indentured servitude."
The vow
is admirable. But Taco Bell has not created a mechanism for monitoring
or enforcing the new rule. Its suppliers audit themselves. Compare that
to Taco Bell's animal welfare policy: "We are monitoring our suppliers
on an ongoing basis to determine whether our suppliers are using humane
procedures for caring for and handling animals they supply to us."
Suppliers that mistreat animals can't do business with Taco Bell. The
company must now show the same level of concern for the humane
treatment of human beings.
The goal of the boycott is a wage
increase of one penny for every pound that a migrant picks. That would
leave wages lower than they were 25 years ago but would help
farmworkers enormously. It would scarcely affect the price of a burrito.
And despite the protests of Florida growers, it wouldn't lower their
profits much either. In 2002, the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange
imposed a one-penny-per-pound surcharge to cover the rising cost of a
soil fumigant, an increase that had little effect on tomato sales. "I
guess [buyers] knew they didn't have much choice anyway," one grower
told an industry trade journal.
Today, a rally on behalf of the
boycott will be held at noon in front of Taco Bell's corporate
headquarters in Irvine, to deliver a clear message that until the
company pressures its suppliers to treat migrants decently, nobody
should buy a meal at Taco Bell.
The boycott has been endorsed
by student groups, organized labor and the National Council of
Churches. In November 2003, three members of the coalition received the
Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award, the first time it has been given
to people fighting human rights abuses within the United States.
The campaign against Taco Bell is just the beginning. When the company
finally does the right thing, it will be time to focus on the labor
policies of the other major fast-food chains. Until then a great deal
of pointless misery will go into the making of your Happy Meals and
Gordita Supremes.
*
Eric Schlosser
is the author of "Fast Food Nation" (Houghton Mifflin, 2001) and the
collection "Reefer Madness" (Mariner, 2004), which includes an
investigation of California migrant labor.