Whoa, get this! Burger King's been SPYING on student activists. The reason? They don't want to pay workers an extra PENNY per pound of tomatoes. Lame. And not just a little bit sick.
This issue's been floating around for a while. Apparently the migrant workers in Florida pick tomatoes in horrible poverty and the extra penny per pound would make a difference in their well-being. The campaign also involves securing less abusive working conditions for these workers, in addition to the penny raise. (Note: You can sign a petition here).
McDonald's and Taco Bell/Pizza Hut/KFC (Yum! brands) already agreed to the requests of the activists - a student group and a related nonprofit, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers. Burger King's been holding out - and apparently spying.
Here's how Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation, summarizes the story to this point:
The Student/Farmworker Alliance and an affiliated nonprofit, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, have for years been urging the fast-food industry to accept some responsibility for the plight of Florida migrants who harvest the tomatoes for its hamburgers and tacos. I am a longtime supporter of their work. The wages of these farm workers, adjusted for inflation, have declined by as much as 70 percent since the late 1970s. And hundreds, perhaps thousands, of migrants have been enslaved by labor contractors and forced to work without pay. The McDonald’s Corporation and Yum Brands (which owns Taco Bell, Pizza Hut and KFC) have agreed to subsidize a modest pay raise for their tomato pickers and work closely with the coalition to eliminate slavery from the fields. (Emphasis added by diarist)
The petition gives a similar story, describing the working conditions as follows:
- poverty wages, rooted in an antiquated piece-rate pay system that hasn’t changed significantly in nearly 30 years;
- long hours without overtime pay when work is available, unemployment and transience when it is not;
- physical abuse and wage fraud by crewleaders, supervisors, and growers;
- damage to body and soul from back-breaking labor, with no employment benefits such as sick days, paid leave, health insurance, or pensions;
- retaliation against workers who protest or organize to alleviate these inhuman conditions;
- and, most shamefully, modern-day slavery, with six successful federal prosecutions of farm labor operations for servitude in Florida over the past decade, and a seventh just initiated, involving well over 1,000 workers and more than a dozen farm employers
Apparently, Burger King hired a company called Diplomatic Tactical Services, owned by a 25-year-old woman named Cara Schaffer, to spy on the students. She contacted the student group, posing as a student at Broward Community College, and asked to get involved.
Unfortunately for Ms. Schaffer (and Burger King), the students were knowledgeable about using the Google. It wasn't too hard for them to figure out that she wasn't a college student after all.
Burger King's comment?
"It is both the corporation’s right and duty . . . to protect its employees and assets from potential harm."
Riiiight.