08187
March 10, 2008

Petition drive to end ‘modern-day slavery’ launched by church-backed farmworkers

Campaign threatens boycott of Burger King

by Evan Silverstein
Presbyterian News Service

GAC Executive Director Linda Valentine (left) and General Assembly Stated Clerk Clifton Kirkpatrick sign the anti-slavery petition circulated by the PC(USA)-backed Coalition of Immokalee Workers. Photo by Jerry Van Marter

LOUISVILLE — The church-backed Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) has launched a national petition drive to pressure Burger King and other food industry leaders to pay a penny more a pound for tomatoes and put a stop to “exploitation” and “modern-day slavery” in Florida’s fields.

Members of the Florida-based group of farmworkers, which receives support from the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and other faith groups, have been fanning out across the country this month to gather support for the initiative.

The petition states that signatories are “prepared to stop patronizing Burger King now, and other food industry leaders in the future” if the Coalition’s demands aren’t met.

Among notable Presbyterians that have already signed the petition are the Rev. Clifton Kirkpatrick, stated clerk of the PC(USA)’s General Assembly and Linda Bryant Valentine, executive director of the PC(USA)’s General Assembly Council. 

“It is my sincere hope that by my signing this petition other people of faith and conscience will be inspired to make this commitment to advance human rights as well,” Kirkpatrick said. 

“And that Burger King, which has worked so assiduously to avoid responsibility for shameful conditions in the tomato fields of its suppliers, would change course now and work with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers.”

The CIW’s campaign is tied to the 200th anniversary of the U.S. ban on the importation of slaves and echoes key strategies of the early abolitionist movement that helped hasten the end of slavery in the 19th century.

The effort also comes on the heels of a federal indictment in January involving the seventh case of modern-day slavery to emerge from Florida’s fields in the last 10 years. 

Students and faculty at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary have collected more than 250 signatures from seminary alums and various members of the community as part of an on-campus petition drive. Photo by Brad Wigger

“I add my name and voice to those of countless consumers calling upon Burger King and other food industry leaders to immediately join with the CIW in efforts to end exploitation in the fields and modern-day slavery in the 21st century,” the petition says.

The CIW is asking supporters to sign a petition demanding that Burger King and others in the food industry:

• “Pay a penny more per pound for tomatoes and ensure that the increase is passed on to tomato pickers in the form of increased wages; and
• “Work with the CIW to establish and enforce a human rights-based code of conduct, including zero tolerance for forced labor, to ensure fair and safe working conditions.”

So far, the petition is being well received throughout the country, CIW staff person Julia Perkins said. She said the Coalition plans to deliver the signed documents to Burger King during a peaceful rally outside the company’s Miami headquarters in the spring.

The CIW has not called for a boycott of Burger King at this time, Perkins said, and would instead prefer to negotiate with the hamburger-giant to reach an agreement.

She said the petition campaign represents the next step in trying to bring about meaningful talks with Burger King.

“Unfortunately Burger King hasn’t responded adequately to the demands that the Coalition has put forward and other consumers have put forward,” Perkins said. “There have been enumerable attempts to get Burger King to come sit with us at the table, to meet with us to talk about how they can participate in improving farmworkers’ wages and farmworkers’ lives. But to date they’ve just been resistant to that.”

In the meantime, Perkins said the CIW is working to organize a signing ceremony on Thursday (March 13) in Washington, DC with members of Congress, leaders from the religious, human rights and student communities, and other allies to generate support for the petition drive.

Presbyterians around the country have plans to collect signatures in “creative ways” for the campaign.

Starting around Easter, First Presbyterian Church in Hollywood, FL, plans to collect signatures on petitions designed as tomatoes, then assemble them into a plant to present during the spring rally at Burger King’s headquarters in nearby Miami, according to the Rev. Kennedy McGowan, pastor of First church. 

“We want to see the corporations based in south Florida be good corporate citizens,” McGowan told the Presbyterian News Service. “So we have an investment in doing whatever we can to encourage locally-based corporations to do what’s right when it comes to these issues.”

He said the goal at 220-member First church is to collect at least 2,000 signatures and encourage other Presbyterian churches in Tropical Florida Presbytery to join the petition drive and get more people to sign. Burger King’s Miami-based headquarters is located in Tropical Florida Presbytery.

McGowan and about 10 others from First Presbyterian recently traveled to Immokalee to view working and living conditions of the farmworkers, which the pastor described as harsh. 

“The sense for us is just a matter of what’s right, of what’s fair,” McGowan said. “To us it seems a way to stand with people who are seeking to change their conditions in pro-active ways.”

In Kentucky, students and faculty at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary have already collected more than 250 signatures from seminary alums and various members of the community as part of an on-campus petition drive, according to the Rev. Johnny Hill, a professor at the seminary who is helping to coordinate the effort there. Among the signatories is the Rev. Jean Marie Peacock, vice-moderator of the 216th General Assembly in 2004.

In addition to the on-campus petition drive, in late April he’s helping organize a march from the campus to a slavery monument in Louisville.

“Louisville has a history of being involved with the slave trade,” Hill told PNS. “It was a major sort of distribution center in the late 18th and early 19th century as slaves moved into the south and the west. So what we’re interested in doing is raising consciousness in the Louisville area about the issue of slavery in general, present-day forms of slavery, but particularly expressing our solidarity with the CIW and we hope to continue that way beyond this particular initiative.”  

In 2005 the CIW reached an agreement with Taco Bell parent Yum! Brands Inc., following a nearly four-year boycott of Taco Bell by the group and its consumer allies, and McDonald’s signed on this past April.

Since March 2005, farmworkers had received checks with from Yum! Brands paying them an additional penny per pound for tomatoes harvested for Taco Bell. In May 2007, Yum! voluntarily extended the CIW agreement to cover the rest of its brands: KFC, Pizza Hut, Long John Silvers’ and A&W Restaurants. Penny per pound payments from McDonald’s and all of Yum!’s companies were set to initiate with the fall 2007 harvest season.

Burger King announced in February 2007 that it would not agree to the penny-per-pound increase because the company says it doesn’t employ the workers directly and couldn’t increase their pay or withhold taxes. Throughout 2007 Burger King also joined together with the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange (FTGE) in casting doubts upon the agreements and asserting that farmworkers were not poor. 

Then this past fall the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange effectively halted the penny per pound payments to farmworkers by threatening any of its grower-members that participated in the agreements with a $100,000 fine. McDonald’s and Yum! Brands have nonetheless remained committed to the agreements and have continued to pay the penny per pound increase into an escrow account. Meanwhile, poor farmworkers have already seen their income cut as a result of the threatened fines.

Kirkpatrick and the Carter Center publicly called upon Burger King and the FTGE to reverse course and to work with the CIW to improve human rights for farmworkers. 

Nevertheless, Burger King says it supports the petition campaign, according to Keva Silversmith, the company’s director of external communications.

“We’ve reviewed the document and hope to have the opportunity to sign it ourselves,” he said in a statement emailed to PNS. “We feel strongly that the tomato harvesters deserve higher wages as well as fair and safe working conditions. Our door remains open to the CIW and we call on the CIW to sit down with us and work out something meaningful on behalf of the farmworkers.”

Burger King’s refusal to agree to the penny a pound raise, prompted Senate labor committee member Bernie Sanders, I-VT, to call for Senate hearings on farm conditions, tentatively scheduled for next month in Washington, DC.

The senator recently visited the CIW in Immokalee, FL, calling their living conditions “among the worst in the agriculture industry.” His Jan. 18 visit came the day after a federal grand jury in Fort Myers, FL, released a 17-count indictment alleging six people enslaved undocumented farmworkers from Guatemala and Mexico by taking their identification, forcing them to work without pay, creating debts they couldn’t repay and beating them if they wanted to leave.

The PC(USA)’s 217th General Assembly in 2006 approved a resolution calling for ongoing work with the CIW in the campaign to get fast-food and grocery corporations to ensure the human rights of farmworkers harvesting their tomatoes by partnering with the CIW and advancing the precedents established in the Yum! Brands-CIW agreement.

The PC(USA)’s 214th GA in 2002 endorsed the Taco Bell boycott and called for discussions involving Taco Bell, its tomato suppliers and CIW representatives.

“Presbyterians have been really key as consumers with Taco Bell, Yum! Brands and McDonald’s in telling them that these are issues that are important to them, that they want these corporations to do the right thing,” Perkins said. “Presbyterians were absolutely key in that and can be key in getting Burger King to do the right thing.”