Burger King deal

Our national and local churches have backed the Committee of Immokalee Workers - representing South Florida tomato pickers, whose situations I described in my book (I drove through/around Immokalee when I was doing research for my book and interviewed a farmworker organizer in Central Florida, and whose ranks no doubt included family members of some of Stephanie's students in Bradenton - in their efforts to improve industry-wide wages and working conditions by employing corporate campaigns against fast food giants that use tomatoes. (The national church has a full-time person working mainly on this.) The first giant to make a deal with the coalition with our own local Yum! Brands, the locally based conglomerate - which Stephanie and I occasionally do taste tests - that includes Taco Bell and Pizza Hut among their restaurants. I didn't always get Stephanie and Vincent to follow the Taco Bell boycott during its several years, but they sometimes did and I did. Next was Illinois-based McDonald's. No formal boycott was ever called, but we protested with others at the McDonald's near Vincent's school. During that time my church also hosted coalition activists on their way to protest in Illinois. In recent months, however, Miami-based Burger King has been extremely recalcitrant, questioning the coalition's motives and the structure of the earlier deals (which are somewhat on hold) and rebuffing any negotiations. Earlier today the company changed its tune and agreed to an even more far-reaching deal with the coalition. We hope that this will push the other deals back into gear and push the industry as a whole (including the tomato growers - critical to actually making the deal work - who have been declining to cooperate) into compliance - including with the extra penny per pound for workers picking tomatoes. It's hard to know what it's in the future for these deals and the food industry as a whole - as rising food prices are putting pressure on consumers. But this is some progress on a front that I worked on in college, when I worked with the Farm Labor Organizing Committee. Ironically, this is the weekend that food organizers have called for a three-day fast to call attention to issues in the whole food chain, including lower returns for farmers and farm workers at the same time as rising food prices for consumers. Good work, Committee of Immokalee Workers and Burger King! (Protest at the local Burger King - before this week's deal - pictured above.)