When you pull into the drive-through of some fast food place you rarely stop to think about where the food comes from. The who, what, when, why and where are insignificant when you are rushing through your day.
A few students in front of the Tiger Den last Friday knew the who, what, when, and where but lacked the why.
The Women’s Action Coalition (WAC) at The University of Memphis spearheaded a protest against Taco Bell last Friday. They said Taco Bell is supporting tomato growers who are violating the human rights of their employees.
“I think University of Memphis students need to band together and take a stand saying that human rights are more important than tacos,” said Kelly Smith, junior English major.
The issue is much more complicated than some may believe, with many sides to the issue.
At the center of the debate is the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) whose impact reaches beyond their Southwest Florida area to cover the whole state. Southwest Florida is the state’s most important area for agricultural production, and Immokalee is the state’s largest farm worker community.
The campaign, launched in October 1997, has brought about several historic changes for thousands of Florida farm workers.
Combining community-wide work stoppages with intense public pressure – including an unprecedented month-long hunger strike by six members in 1998 and an historic 230-mile march from Ft. Myers to Orlando in 2000 – the campaign ended over 20 years of stagnant wages in the tomato industry.
Recently the CIW has found cause to boycott Taco Bell. At the core of the dispute is Six L’s Packing Company, a tomato grower in Immokalee. CIW is representing the views of the workers of the Six L’s but not the company itself.
“We are fighting for, among other things: a fair wage for the work we do, more respect on the part of our bosses and the industries where we work, better and cheaper housing,” said Julia Perkins, spokesperson for the CIW.
According to the agricultural industry journal The Packer, Taco Bell is the major client of the Immokalee-based Six L’s Packing Co., one of the biggest tomato producers in the United States.
Taco Bell is part of Tricon Global Restaurants, Inc., together with Kentucky Fried Chicken and Pizza Hut. These three major chains control more than 30,000 restaurants around the globe forming the “world’s largest restaurant system in terms of units,” according to Tricon’s 1999 Annual Report.
According to that same report, Tricon’s system-wide sales reached nearly $22 billion in 1999, with Taco Bell alone reporting more than $5.2 billion in system wide sales that year. Tricon reported more than $1.2 billion dollars in operating profit in 1999.
In a December 2000 U.S. Department of Labor report to Congress entitled The Agricultural Labor Market - Status and Recommendations, production of fruits and vegetables has increased and global demand for American produce continues to grow, but agricultural worker earnings and working conditions are either stagnant or in decline.
The condition of the workers in the fields of Immokalee has been documented by several government agencies. Taco Bell does not employ the workers and denies responsibility for their plight. Many of Taco Bell’s customers share their sentiment.
“At least they have jobs, they’re not unemployed in some third-world country making no money,” said Jack Snider, undeclared freshman.
There are those who have chosen not to take sides. “I eat Taco Bell because it’s cheap and I don’t have a lot of money,” said undeclared freshman Cameron Higgs.
Laurie Gannon, spokesperson for Taco Bell said, “Taco Bell does not purchase our tomatoes from Six L’s. We have a distribution company we use. We specify to them the quantity and quality parameters we need and they buy the tomatoes on the market in Florida.”
Gannon also said Taco Bell has asked Six L’s to resolve the dispute between them and the workers.
“Taco Bell ultimately has no say in setting the wages, working conditions or prices of the tomatoes. Our final position is that we don’t get involved in another company’s labor dispute,” said Gannon. “It’s really between Six L’s and their employees. They have to work it out.”
