04118
March 2, 2004

Walking the walk

Presbyterians join tomato pickers in 8-mile protest march

by Evan Silverstein

LOUISVILLE — More than 150 farm workers and supporters donned walking shoes on Feb. 27 and marched eight miles through Louisville, from the national offices of the Presbyterian Church (USA) to the headquarters of a fast-food company they blame for the unfair labor practices of a subsidiary.

The Florida-based Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) organized the march, part of a

The Coalition of Immokalee Workers and their supporters want Yum! Brands to help force tomato buyers to improve the wages and working conditions of farm workers. Photos by Evan Silverstein

The predominantly Mexican, Guatemalan and Haitian farm workers are demanding higher wages and better working conditions in the fields where they pick tomatoes for the Mexican-style restaurant chain.

"Maybe, if you’ve done pretty well that day you might come back to your house with $50,” said march leader Lucas Benitez. “But you would have picked two tons of tomatoes to get that $50. If you get sick and you don’t have health insurance, you’d have to go and pay that out of your own pocket. Even if you work overtime, you don’t have the right to overtime pay. Those are some of the reasons we are here today.”

The pickers currently earn 40 to 45 cents per 32-pound bucket, a rate that hasn’t changed appreciably in more than 20 years. Meanwhile, the average retail price of tomatoes has risen from 67 cents per pound in 1980 to $1.32 in 2002, according to U.S. government figures.

The coalition wants Taco Bell to urge its distributors to give the farm workers a one-cent-per-pound raise.

Many of Immokalee’s farm workers pick for such companies as Six L’s Packing Co., a distributor that sells tomatoes to Taco Bell. The coalition contends that a one-cent increase would enable workers to earn 72 cents a bucket, and a better living.

“It would increase it to something livable,” farm worker Jose Antonio Martinez said. “Not really very high, but at least it’s acceptable.”

Outside Yum! headquarters in Louisville, protesters built a towering pyramid of about 120 buckets to show how much a farm worker must pick to earn $50 in a day.

Outside Yum! headquarters, workers built a towering pyramid out of some 120 buckets to show how much one has to pick to earn $50 dollars in a day.

"The pyramid of buckets is to celebrate the strength and the labor of the farm workers you have produced the wealth (of Yum!),” said Presbyterian Stephen Bartlett, a member of the local planning committee for the march.

Dozens of sympathetic Presbyterians participated in the event, and several Louisville congregations helped house, equip and feed the workers, who had made their way to Kentucky from Florida and planned to go on to California for a March 5 demonstration at Taco Bell’s headquarters in Irvine.

“I think it’s important to support the farm workers,” said Myrtle Bingham, a participant who is an elder at Central Presbyterian Church in Louisville. “They’re still working for wages that they were making 20 years ago. It’s hard labor, and they’re living in poverty conditions, and that’s not acceptable in this country.”

The demonstrators included members of numerous local churches, several national staff members and other church leaders, students, union members, farmers and other Christians from around the nation.

“Taco Bell is being unfair,” said Aramie Bloom a 23-year-old business major at the University of Louisville, who was carrying a sign that said, “One More Penny.”

“They’re not taking responsibility for who is providing their product and we just want to ask them to change. They have a responsibility socially to these workers and to their families and that’s why we’re here.”

Taco Bell is a major buyer of Florida tomatoes, and the workers want the fast-food chain and its parent to pressure growers to improve conditions in the remote agricultural area around Immokalee, FL, about 120 miles northwest of Miami.

“In Immokalee, it’s so sad,” said Omar Pinto, 21, a farm worker from Chiapas, Mexico. “Even worse, because you’re treated almost as a slave, where you can’t even earn a wage to pay your rent and utilities.”

Pinto said the coalition was pressing its case against Taco Bell and Yum! because “Jesus Christ died for the truth” and “the poverty that we live in is the truth.”

The Presbyterian Center was chosen as the starting point because the Presbyterian Church (USA) has been a strong supporter of the CIW and its nearly three-year-long national boycott.

The 213th General Assembly of the PC(USA), in 2002, endorsed the boycott and called for good-faith dialogue between Taco Bell’s tomato supplier and representatives of the workers’ coalition.

Workers also want Taco Bell to develop and monitor a code of conduct for growers and packers, and they want Yum! Brands to acknowledge the harsh living conditions and sub-poverty wages of the farm workers who supply the tomatoes used in Taco Bell’s chalupas and quesadillas.

“You have like a hole in the ground (to live in) sometimes when you go to some of these camps, where farmers expect you to work and pay for your rent as well,” said Candelario Vazquez, 21, a former farm worker who now attends Florida State University in Tallahassee. “It’s so unequal, because you have such a low wage and then such a high rent to pay. So it’s just a vicious cycle where you can never get any money, can never get anywhere.”

Protesters brought their national “Truth Tour” to the doorstep of a Taco Bell restaurant in downtown Louisville.

“We share at the very deepest level a common commitment to the Coalition of Immokalee Workers for justice for the farm workers, for God’s peace and justice in the world,” said Kirkpatrick, who has visited Immokalee and seen the workers living and working conditions. “We are grateful to God that you are beginning this Truth Tour here in Louisville at the Presbyterian Center, where we share so deeply with you in these common values.”

The Rev. Marian McClure, director of the PC(USA)’s Worldwide Ministries Division, said that the farm workers’ situation exemplifies a Biblical vision: “It is a vision in which everyone has enough and in which no one is exploited,” she said. “So we thank you for reminding us of that vision, a vision in which Jesus told us that the way we treat each other is the way we treat him.”

McClure also had a message for Yum! Brands, which has more than 33,000 restaurants in more than 100 countries and territories.

“What would really be yummy,” she said, “would be a meal to celebrate that Yum! has agreed to come to the table with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers,” she said, referring to the Louisville-based company that also owns KFC, Pizza Hut, A&W and Long John Silver’s. “That Yum! has agreed to ... sit down and work out a more just living for the tomato workers and everyone who is part of the coalition.”

Lucas Benitez

Benitez called the PC(USA) “a pillar of support” for the workers.

“It’s time for us as farm workers to stop being second-class citizens,” the farm worker said before the march began. “It’s time for us as farm workers to be seen as first-class citizens who put the food that we eat on the tables of this nation. Today we are going to Yum! Brands, not to ask, but to demand what belongs to us. To have a place at this table.”

Benitez, who has participated in investigations of several recent slavery cases in Immokalee, said holding the Truth Tour during Lent was appropriate because it presented a “moment for us to remember Jesus, who as a pilgrim made his pilgrimage, and we now are walking in a similar manner seeking truth and justice.”

Marching behind Latin rhythms and rock tunes belted from a sound system on a flatbed truck, the demonstrators chanted and waved signs or carried oversized props representing corporate fat cats or the faces of migrant workers. Signs displayed such messages as “One More Penny”, “Taco Bell Exploits Farm Workers” and “Stop Sweat Shops Now!”

Some demonstrators chanted “Boycott Taco Bell”; others yelled “End Slavery Now.” Many wore buttons bearing a picture of a small dog used in Taco Bell’s chalupa ads with a line drawn through it.

Eighteen-year-old David Wigger, a high school senior and member of Crescent Hill Presbyterian Church in Louisville, said it was hearing about the workers’ sub-poverty wages and poor working conditions that prompted him to join in the daylong event. “I feel that I should try to do something, even if it’s something small, to help them out,” he said.

Some motorists passing by honked their car horns in support. Others emerged from stores and restaurants along the parade route to raise fists in support of the tomato pickers.

At Yum! headquarters, the protesters found the stately white building temporarily barricaded and enclosed by a chain-link fence. The farm workers draped their sweat-stained work clothes over the fence.

“They’re leaving it on the barrier-fence that has been erected at Yum to show the dirty laundry of that cooperation,” said Bartlett, who serves on the National Council of Churches’ Agricultural Missions office.”

A Yum! official contended that the matter is a labor dispute between the farm workers and their direct employer, and Yum! is in no position to negotiate. However, officials have said they will meet with the workers in April.

“They’re asking us to put pressure on Six L’s, but we buy so few tomatoes from them that we’re not in a position to influence their decision,” said Jonathan Blum, a senior vice president. “We understand from the Six L’s that their employees earn $9 per hour, and we continue to urge them to resolve their labor differences.”

Boycott supporters denied that any ICW workers earn as much as $9 an hour, and say that Yum!, as a major buyer of Florida tomatoes, is influential.

Presbyterian congregations nationwide are backing the coalition, according to the Rev. Noelle Damico, a United Church of Christ minister who is the national boycott coordinator for the PC(USA).

Damico said Vanderbilt Presbyterian Church in Naples, FL, the closest PC(USA) congregation to Immokalee, purchased new shoes for the workers for the march. She said St. Mark Presbyterian Church in Newport Beach, CA, will house the workers overnight after the March 5 rally and provide breakfast.

For more information about the boycott, visit the Web sites of the workers’ coalition, the PC(USA) and the National Farm Worker Ministry.