07626
October 2, 2007
Kirkpatrick to Burger King: retract ‘false’ statements
BK exec’s remarks called a ‘disservice’
The Rev. Clifton Kirkpatrick LOUISVILLE — The Rev. Clifton Kirkpatrick, stated clerk of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) General Assembly, is publically calling on a Burger King executive to retract comments he made recently about the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), a group of church-backed farm workers who pick tomatoes in Florida used by the fast-food giant.
Steven Grover, Burger King’s vice president of food safety, quality assurance and regulatory compliance, inflamed Kirkpatrick last month when he raised concerns in two Florida newspapers about a CIW proposal for improving farmworker wages and working conditions.
Kirkpatrick said Grover inaccurately portrayed the Florida-based CIW as receiving payments directly from McDonald’s Corp. and Taco Bell, payments that are earmarked for farm workers harvesting for these companies. He also asserted that the CIW asked Burger King to sign a check to them and sought to benefit monetarily from a “secret agreement.”
“These claims are false and not only do a disservice to CIW, but to Burger King as well,” Kirkpatrick wrote in a Sept. 21 letter to Grover. “I respectfully ask you to swiftly and publicly retract these statements . . . ”
Kirkpatrick, who participated in meetings that led to the agreements with Taco Bell parent Yum! Brands, Inc. and had also engaged McDonald’s on these issues, told Grover in his letter that the Coalition specifically “rejected any and all proposals” that might direct a corporation’s increased payment to farm workers through the CIW.
“The central provision of the CIW’s campaign is that fast-food corporations change their purchasing practices so that they ensure workers’ human rights, rather than create conditions where human rights abuses flourish,” Kirkpatrick wrote in his letter, which he copied to Burger King’s board of directors. “If this is to be accomplished, it is the corporation’s own supply chain that must itself route the payment to the workers.”
However, Grover told the Presbyterian News Service on Sept. 26 that he had no intention of retracting remarks he made to The Palm Beach Post and the Naples Daily News on Sept. 17 and 18.
“I don’t think that I’ve made anything at this point that’s not of a questioning nature,” Grover said by phone when asked about issuing a retraction.
Grover, whose job includes overseeing Burger King’s supply chain, participated in talks between the company and the CIW, a worker-based organization. He confirmed receiving Kirkpatrick’s letter but said he saw no reason to contact the stated clerk to discuss the matter.
After failing to hear back from Grover, Kirkpatrick is now calling publicly on Burger King to retract its claims, according to the PC(USA)’s Office of the General Assembly.
Two years ago the Coalition, which works in partnership with the PC(USA) and other faith groups, reached an agreement with Yum! Brands to improve wages and working conditions for Florida farmworkers picking its tomatoes. And earlier this year, an agreement also was reached with McDonald’s.
The CIW wants Burger King to agree to similar principles: guarantee that it will pay a penny more per pound to farmworkers harvesting its tomatoes, establish a code of conduct for Florida tomato growers supplying Burger King, and ensure farm worker participation in designing the code and monitoring its suppliers’ compliance.
Burger King announced in February that it would not agree to the penny-per-pound increase that has already been adopted by McDonald’s and all Yum! Brands companies: Taco Bell, KFC, Pizza Hut, Long John Silver’s and A&W Restaurants.
Grover told PNS that the Coalition has never made it clear how the penny-per-pound arrangement would work.
“They are demanding payment from us in the form of a penny-a-pound for the tomatoes we use to be passed on to the workers with some method that we can’t figure out,” Grover said.
However, CIW officials said that Grover and executives from Burger King’s supply chain management company were briefed last year about the penny-per-pound arrangement by Yum! personnel in charge of their penny-per-pound program.
Grover acknowledged the company was briefed on the progress of the program but not provided with any details despite requesting specifics.
“As far as this goes I have never ever at any point in time, no one at Burger King has ever been briefed on the details of the penny-per-pound program,” Grover said. “Like who does it? How does the money get passed? All I’m told is that the money passes from a third party to the workers. We’ve never been given the name of the third party. We’ve never been shown how this works.”
Lucas Benitez, one of CIW’s leaders and a farm worker himself, countered: “That’s simply not the case. The CIW arranged an extraordinary conference call bringing together the Yum! Brands representative who oversees the Taco Bell payment program, three members of Burger King’s purchasing agency, Restaurant Services Inc. (RSI), Mr. Grover himself, and a representative from the CIW precisely to answer Burger King’s questions on the payment mechanism. The call was set up to put the supply chain people in direct contact because Mr. Grover, who was leading the talks for Burger King, was not a supply chain person and did not understand the details.”
Benitez said RSI officials quizzed Yum! representatives on detail after detail, having him describe how workers receive payments in individual checks through a third party accounting firm. The Yum! representative also disclosed where the firm was located and offered to put Burger King in contact with it.
Meanwhile, Grover said strict confidentiality surrounding the details of Taco Bell’s and McDonald’s payments to the Coalition makes it impossible to determine who is benefiting from the payments.
“The agreements with Taco Bell, Yum!, the agreement with McDonald’s are completely confidential,” Grover told PNS. “In other words, none of us know how the payments are being made or how the payments are being passed to the workers.”
However, the Rev. Noelle Damico, national coordinator of the PC(USA)’s Campaign for Fair Food, countered by saying that confidential agreements are normal business practice.
“The CIW’s agreements with McDonald’s and Yum! Brands are business agreements and like any others they are confidential,” she said. “The only farmworkers Burger King needs to worry about paying are those harvesting tomatoes for its own suppliers.”
Grover’s comments in the newspapers prompted Kirkpatrick to urge him to issue a retraction “in order to repair any damage done to the good name of the CIW and to set Burger King on the right footing for a productive dialogue” with the Coalition.
“I respectfully ask you to swiftly and publicly retract these statements by 12:00 noon on Monday, September 24th,” Kirkpatrick wrote to Grover. “Otherwise for the sake of truth and integrity, I will make my call for retraction public.”
Most tomato pickers still receive roughly the same pay as in 1978 — 40 to 50 cents for every 32-pound bucket of tomatoes they pick. To earn $50 a day, considered a good haul, workers must pick about 125 buckets of tomatoes, or about two tons.
A penny more per pound, for each 32 pound bucket of tomatoes would provide the workers a 71-percent increase in wages.
Grover told the Presbyterian News Service that Burger King is open to negotiating and wants to make sure there are no worker abuses by any of its suppliers. To that end, he said Burger King is working with growers and others in the region.
“We will not tolerate abuse in our supply chain,” Grover told PNS. “We will not tolerate violations of the law, which means that workers have to be paid fairly and according to law. And we agreed to put pressure on the growers. We are already doing that without the CIW.”
When asked about why he was seeking a retraction, Kirkpatrick said: “The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) is active in this work because our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ proclaimed good news to the poor and freedom for the oppressed as a central part of the gospel message. We seek to bear witness to that gospel with truth and integrity.
“We hope that Burger King will immediately change course and begin to work productively with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers to address the urgent human rights abuses in the fields of its Florida-based tomato suppliers,” Kirkpatrick continued.
The stated clerk’s call for a public retraction came as the CIW was preparing to embark on a nine-day “Florida State-wide Truth Tour” Sept. 29 as part of its push to convince Burger King to meet its demands.
The group is visiting cities across Florida, holding workshops, worshipping with congregations and leading protests along the way, laying the groundwork for a national mobilization at Burger King corporate headquarters in Miami, set for Nov. 30.
To read the full text of Kirkpatrick’s letter. For additional information about the PC(USA)’s Campaign for Fair Food. |
