[Peace-discuss] Florida tomato pickers kick double butt

Sun Jun 1 10:35:13 CDT 2008

Ricky,
  Didn't realize this was going to the whole list, sorry. News to me about machines picking tomatoes for sauce, ketchup, etc... Also specifics re how many lbs (tons) of tomatoes the extremely hard-working workers actually pick... But nothing new about anti-union mentality and behavior of companies, corporations, and school systems (which I have lifetime personal knowledge concerning). That's why I said, it was the "uh, principle" of the thing (meaning that companies, corporations, school boards are UNprincipled).
   --Jenifer

Ricky Baldwin <baldwinricky at yahoo.com> wrote:
  They DO work their butts off - that's really been part of the message,
folks! Each tomato picker has to pick about 2-1/2 TONS of tomatoes BY
HAND each day to make the poverty line ...

But this campaign isn't just about these particular workers, of course.
And 30k bucks isn't the reason BK fought it so hard - any more than
the $150,000 is the reason Taco Bell fought so hard, etc - it's the
PRINCIPLE. Yes, the principle. We cynics on the left sometimes forget
that they matter at all in the nasty dog-eat-dog world of capitalism. 
We forget, that is, that principles matter to capitalists. They don't
often show it, you might say. But in fact, thi kind of thing is
EXACTLY where they show that it principles DO matter to them. How many
union campaigns face bosses willing to spend twice or ten times as much
money fighting against the union than they would have spent just
agreeing to all the union's demands? Almost every one I've ever seen.

And, just because you asked, Jenifer, tomatoes for tomato sauce and
such aren't generally picked by hand in Florida, as the slicing
tomatoes are. They usually come from California (for the time being)
and machines pick them (not requiring the human touch, as they'll only
get squashed up anyway).

Thanks for your interest!
Ricky
--- "John W." wrote:

> On Sun, May 25, 2008 at 10:38 AM, Jenifer Cartwright
> 
> wrote:
> 
> How many tomatoes does BK actually use? It's not like they're making
> pizza
> > sauce or chili, right? Does CU even have any BKs these days, even
> one?? So
> > fewer places overall. Yeah, 35 workers could do it. (It was
> probably the,
> > uh, principle of the thing.)
> > --Jenifer
> >
> 
> Well, they put a tomato slice on every Whopper, and probably on most
> of
> their other burgers. And they sell literally millions of Whoppers. 
> Those
> 35 workers must really be working their butts off.
> 
> 
> 
> > *"John W." * wrote:
> >
> > On Sat, May 24, 2008 at 12:43 PM, Ricky Baldwin
> 
> > wrote:
> >
> > The message here, folks, is keep slogging on! Just when it looked
> like
> >> jackbooted capitalism was going to undo all the gains the
> farmworkers
> >> had won, capital caves! No more spying, no more threats, and
> Burger
> >> King is paying extra! (You can bet big money hasn't given up, by
> a
> >> long shot - they'll lick their wounds awhile and come back, maybe
> with
> >> the hotshot corporate lawyers like Hillary Clinton et al, but
> that's
> >> another day. For now, the farmworkers and the peopl have won a
> round -
> >> on to the next! - RB)
> >
> >
> > Can that be right? That's not a misprint?? This wage increase
> will cost
> > Burger King only $300,000 a year, and they've been fighting it
> tooth and
> > toenail all these years????? Shit, that's probably like a month's
> salary
> > for the CEO of Burger King.
> >
> > Nah, that can't be right. At the figures quoted, $300,000 would
> cover the
> > wage increase for only about 35 tomato pickers. You reckon 35
> workers can
> > pick an entire year's worth of Burger King tomatoes?
> >
> > John Wason
> >
> >
> >
> >> May 24, 2008
> >> Burger King Grants Raise to Pickers
> >> By ANDREW MARTIN, New York Times
> >>
> >> After a contentious battle that included allegations of spying,
> Burger
> >> King announced on Friday that it had reached an agreement to
> improve
> >> the wages and working conditions of tomato pickers in Florida.
> >>
> >> At a news conference on Capitol Hill, the hamburger chain, based
> in
> >> Miami, said it would pay tomato prices adequate to give workers a
> wage
> >> increase of 1.5 cents a pound. A penny a pound will go into the
> >> workers' pockets. The extra half-cent is intended to cover
> additional
> >> payroll taxes and administrative costs for tomato growers.
> >>
> >> The 1-cent increase means that for every 32-pound bucket of
> tomatoes
> >> they pick, the workers will earn 77 cents, instead of 45 cents.
> That is
> >> a 71 percent increase, the first substantial one in decades for
> the
> >> workers. At the old wage, a farm workers' group said, the pickers
> >> typically earned $10,000 to $12,000 a year.
> >>
> >> "If the Florida tomato industry is to be sustainable long term, it
> must
> >> become more socially responsible," said Amy Wagner, a senior vice
> >> president at Burger King. She estimated that the wage boost would
> cost
> >> Burger King about $300,000 a year.
> >
> >
> > *snip*
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
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