[lbo-talk] Burger King plays scrooge bastard for the holidays

Michael Pollak mpollak at panix.com
Wed Nov 28 21:51:12 PST 2007


[This should be fun to leaflet at Christmastime]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/29/opinion/29schlosser.html

The New York Times

November 29, 2007

Op-Ed Contributor

Penny Foolish

By ERIC SCHLOSSER

THE migrant farm workers who harvest tomatoes in South Florida have

one of the nations most backbreaking jobs. For 10 to 12 hours a day,

they pick tomatoes by hand, earning a piece-rate of about 45 cents

for every 32-pound bucket. During a typical day each migrant picks,

carries and unloads two tons of tomatoes. For their efforts, this

holiday season many of them are about to get a 40 percent pay cut.

Floridas tomato growers have long faced pressure to reduce operating

costs; one way to do that is to keep migrant wages as low as

possible. Although some of the pressure has come from increased

competition with Mexican growers, most of it has been forcefully

applied by the largest purchaser of Florida tomatoes: American fast

food chains that want millions of pounds of cheap tomatoes as a

garnish for their hamburgers, tacos and salads.

In 2005, Florida tomato pickers gained their first significant pay

raise since the late 1970s when Taco Bell ended a consumer boycott

by agreeing to pay an extra penny per pound for its tomatoes, with

the extra cent going directly to the farm workers. Last April,

McDonalds agreed to a similar arrangement, increasing the wages of

its tomato pickers to about 77 cents per bucket. But Burger King,

whose headquarters are in Florida, has adamantly refused to pay the

extra penny and its refusal has encouraged tomato growers to cancel

the deals already struck with Taco Bell and McDonalds.

This month the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange, representing 90

percent of the states growers, announced that it will not allow any

of its members to collect the extra penny for farm workers. Reggie

Brown, the executive vice president of the group, described the

surcharge for poor migrants as pretty much near un-American.

Migrant farm laborers have long been among Americas most

impoverished workers. Perhaps 80 percent of the migrants in Florida

are illegal immigrants and thus especially vulnerable to abuse.

During the past decade, the United States Justice Department has

prosecuted half a dozen cases of slavery among farm workers in

Florida. Migrants have been driven into debt, forced to work for

nothing and kept in chained trailers at night. The Coalition of

Immokalee Workers a farm worker alliance based in Immokalee, Fla.

has done a heroic job improving the lives of migrants in the state,

investigating slavery cases and negotiating the penny-per-pound

surcharge with fast food chains.

Now the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange has threatened a fine of

$100,000 for any grower who accepts an extra penny per pound for

migrant wages. The organization claims that such a surcharge would

violate federal and state laws related to antitrust, labor and

racketeering. It has not explained how that extra penny would break

those laws; nor has it explained why other surcharges routinely

imposed by the growers (for things like higher fuel costs) are

perfectly legal.

The prominent role that Burger King has played in rescinding the pay

raise offers a spectacle of yuletide greed worthy of Charles

Dickens. Burger King has justified its behavior by claiming that it

has no control over the labor practices of its suppliers. Florida

growers have a right to run their businesses how they see fit, a

Burger King spokesman told The St. Petersburg Times.

Yet the company has adopted a far more activist approach when the

issue is the well-being of livestock. In March, Burger King

announced strict new rules on how its meatpacking suppliers should

treat chickens and hogs. As for human rights abuses, Burger King has

suggested that if the poor farm workers of southern Florida need

more money, they should apply for jobs at its restaurants.

Three private equity firms Bain Capital, the Texas Pacific Group and

Goldman Sachs Capital Partners control most of Burger Kings stock.

Last year, the chief executive of Goldman Sachs, Lloyd C. Blankfein,

earned the largest annual bonus in Wall Street history, and this

year he stands to receive an even larger one. Goldman Sachs has

served its investors well lately, avoiding the subprime mortgage

meltdown and, according to Business Week, doubling the value of its

Burger King investment within three years.

Telling Burger King to pay an extra penny for tomatoes and provide a

decent wage to migrant workers would hardly bankrupt the company.

Indeed, it would cost Burger King only $250,000 a year. At Goldman

Sachs, that sort of money shouldnt be too hard to find. In 2006, the

bonuses of the top 12 Goldman Sachs executives exceeded $200 million

more than twice as much money as all of the roughly 10,000 tomato

pickers in southern Florida earned that year. Now Mr. Blankfein

should find a way to share some of his companys good fortune with

the workers at the bottom of the food chain.

Eric Schlosser is the author of Fast Food Nation and Reefer Madness.



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