[Peace-discuss] Florida tomato pickers kick double butt

[John W.]

On Sun, May 25, 2008 at 10:38 AM, Jenifer Cartwright <jencart13 at yahoo.com>
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." <jbw292002 at gmail.com>* wrote:
>
> 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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