Deal aids tomato workers
Taco Bell will pay more per pound
By Brett Barrouquere
ASSOCIATED PRESS
LOUISVILLE - Taco Bell will spend an additional $100,000 a year on the tomatoes it buys under a deal with a group that had criticized the fast food chain for not doing enough to help the farm workers, the company said yesterday.
The Coalition of Immokalee Workers, a group of mostly Latino laborers from the tomato-growing region near Immokalee, Fla., had sponsored a three-year campaign called the "Taco Bell Truth Tour." The effort asked people to stay away from Taco Bell and restaurants run by its Louisville-based parent, Yum Brands Inc., until the company pressured tomato growers to provide better wages and living conditions for farm workers.
Yum also owns KFC, Pizza Hut, Long John Silver's and A&W restaurants.
The Immokalee workers had planned a protest outside a Taco Bell in Lexington last weekend. But Ray Wilkie, co-chairman of the Central Kentucky Council for Peace and Justice, said negotiations between the two sides had progressed, so the demonstration was called off.
Instead, workers gathered at a Presbyterian church in Lexington and conducted a community forum, said Julia Perkins, a spokeswoman for the workers.
As part of the agreement announced yesterday, Taco Bell will pay an extra penny per pound, about $100,000 annually, that will be funneled to about 1,000 farm workers through a small group of suppliers, Yum spokesman Jonathan Blum said. Taco Bell buys about 10 million pounds of Florida tomatoes a year, Blum said.
Lucas Benetiz, co-director of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, said farm workers earn about $7,500 a year, but they do not receive health insurance or paid vacations. The extra penny per pound picked will almost double the yearly salaries of the roughly 1,000 farm workers employed by Taco Bell suppliers, Benetiz said.
"It would mean almost reaching the poverty level," Benetiz said, speaking through an interpreter.
The average price per pound at the farm level for the 2003-04 season was about 32 cents per pound -- $8.04 per 25-pound package, according to the Florida Tomato Committee, a marketing group based in Maitland, Fla.
Yum had long resisted a call for the penny-per-pound increase.
In trading yesterday, Yum shares (YUM: NYSE) fell 23 cents to close at $51.06. The stock has traded in a 52-week range of $35.04 to $51.73.
Chef2Chef News Desk