[Peace-discuss] Florida tomato pickers kick double butt

[John W.]

On Sat, May 24, 2008 at 12:43 PM, Ricky Baldwin <baldwinricky at yahoo.com>
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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