Boycott Taco Bell:
Presbyterian Church, USA, United Church of
Christ and National Farm Worker Ministry Support Tomato Pickers from the Coalition of
Immokalee Workers
Who picked the tomato that ended
up in your chalupa? If you’re eating at Taco Bell you may be dining on
exploitation. Farmworkers who pick tomatoes that go into Taco Bell products earn between
40 and 50 cents for every 32-pound bucket they pick and haul. At 40 cents, you have to
pick two tons of tomatoes to earn $50. According to the Department of Labor, these workers
are earning the same average wage they earned in 1978, over 20 years ago. If their wages
had simply kept pace with inflation, they would be earning about 75 cents per bucket.
Instead workers – predominantly Mexican, Guatemalan and Haitian men who are in the
U.S. without their families – earn between $6,500 and $8,000 a year and live in
dismal conditions. Members of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and the United Church of
Christ as well as the National Farm Worker Ministry have said to Taco Bell that they want
the company to take responsibility for the sweatshop conditions in the southwest Florida
fields where their tomatoes are harvested.
In February of 2001, the
Coalition of Immokalee Workers called for a consumer boycott of Taco Bell
restaurants and products. This boycott is an effort to establish three-way negotiations
between Taco Bell, Florida tomato growers and farm workers in regard to wages, and working
and living conditions. It’s premised on the fact that Taco Bell is a major buyer of
southwest Florida tomatoes and has the power to bring growers to the table. The boycott
has been endorsed by the National Farm Worker Ministry, the General Assembly of the
Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and the General Synod of the United Church of Christ.
You may know that farmworkers who pick tomatoes in Florida
-- Agricultural workers -- are explicitly excluded from the National Labor Relations Act
so growers are under no obligation to dialogue with the workers about wages or working
conditions and can fire them for organizing. Despite these conditions, the workers have
organized themselves into a community-based group called the Coalition of Immokalee
Workers (CIW) to work together to defend the labor rights of farmworkers in Immokalee. The
workers have tried for more than six years to get growers to sit down with them and
dialogue about wages with little result, despite work stoppages, marches, and a 30-day
hunger strike. After learning that Taco Bell had a contract with one of the lowest paying
growers, the CIW contacted Taco Bell through letters asking the company to intervene and
sit down with the growers and CIW. The company responded with silence, even after multiple
requests. So in 2001 the CIW called for a national consumer boycott.
But church support began long before the boycott. While
many congregations had helped farm workers by building habitat houses and donating
clothes, workers said that what they needed was the churches’ help in getting better
wages so that they could obtain all of these things for themselves. The role of the church
is that of accompanying the workers as they struggle for dignity and a fair wage.
Back when the CIW was officially formed in 1996 it first
met in a nearby Roman Catholic church and a Presbyterian church before obtaining its own
office. Regional bodies of the UCC and PC(U.S.A.), local congregations, and the National
Farm Worker Ministry, all provided resources and support to the workers in their efforts
to dialogue with their employers about wages and working conditions. Members joined
workers on the 230 mile march, prayed with workers during fasts, and helped to raise the
level of public awareness about the farm worker’s struggle.
Gerardo Reyes Chavez, a CIW member sums up this exciting
and effective partnership, “The workers are doing something that is going to take
time to get done. We need the churches to go together with us as a community if we’re
to be successful. We workers know that we’re a part of the same dance with the church
even though we’re working from different locations. Most of all, we know that we are
connected to you because we are all sons and daughters of God.”
--Written by Noelle Damico
What You Can Do
Boycott Taco Bell restaurants and products AND write to the company’s
president, Emil Brolick. Mr. Emil Brolick, President, Taco Bell Corporation, 17901 Von
Karman, Irvine, CA 92614.
Pray for the workers and for the transformation of the fast food and
agricultural industries.
Learn more and spread the word about the boycott.
Contact points:
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