Perspective

Growers callously pinching pennies

The farmworkers couldn't really afford to miss a day of pay in Florida's tomato fields, but they showed up anyway. On Friday, hundreds of farmworkers and their supporters marched to Burger King headquarters in Miami to pressure the fast-food giant to pay them an extra penny for each pound of tomatoes they picked.

You wouldn't think a penny is too much to ask, especially since it would nearly double the wages of farmworkers who make on average $10,000 to $12,500 a year. Yet Burger King has so far refused to join McDonald's Corp. and Yum Brands Inc., the parent of Taco Bell, in agreeing to the additional penny. The company says the tomato growers have a right to run their own businesses and that the penny agreement would be legally suspect.

These are the same lame excuses made by the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange, an agricultural cooperative that for years stubbornly has refused to discuss wages or working conditions with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, a farmworker rights group.

After the growers turned their backs, the coalition went straight to the big fast-food restaurants asking them to pay the penny-per-pound. Yum Brands and McDonalds signed on, agreeing to use a third-party firm to make the additional payments to workers. But the program is now on hold due to the intransigence of the exchange. Reportedly, it is threatening huge fines on any tomato grower in the state who participates - despite the fact that the fast-food companies would be paying the fare, not the growers.

Florida tomato pickers receive on average 45 cents for every 32-pound bucket of tomatoes picked. It's a rate that has remained virtually unchanged since 1980. When farmers complain that they can't find American workers to harvest their fields, now you know one reason why.

The exchange refuses to detail the legal constraints they claim exist on the penny-per-pound program. Over the last two harvesting seasons during which Taco Bell participated, no apparent legal problems arose. The legal issues appear to be a red herring, and the real objection is that farmworkers might succeed in their collective action for better treatment. Who knows what the farmworkers will want next - decent living conditions?

It is a moral disgrace that the exchange is standing in the way of the penny-per-pound agreements that already have been signed. This is an arrangement that should be expanded, not choked to death at the expense of farmworkers who took the initiative to better their lives.

[Last modified December 3, 2007, 09:02:31]