Picking sides
GAC told about campaign to win support for Taco
Bell boycott
by Alexa Smith, Presbyterian News Service
Click
here for earlier reports on the Taco Bell boycott
The
boycott has an effect. Check a November 2002 report.
LOUISVILLE -- September 28, 2002 -- The Worldwide
Ministries Division (WMD) has outlined to the General Assembly Council (GAC)
the first steps it has taken in mobilizing Presbyterians to boycott Taco
Bell restaurants in support of Florida tomato pickers.
The action, authorized by the General Assembly (GA) in
June, was proposed by the Presbytery of Tampa Bay as a way of seeking
"farm worker justice."
The Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), an
organization of tomato-pickers, is in a dispute over wages and working
conditions with Six L's Corp., a distributor that supplies tomatoes to
Taco Bell. The workers want the restaurant chain to pay an additional
penny per pound to Six L's. If that cent were passed along to the
workers, it would double their earnings. (Immokalee is town in Florida;
its name rhymes with "broccoli.")
The Presbyterian boycott is aimed at 18- to
24-year-olds, Taco Bell's most important consumer group, according to
Gary Cook, who directs the Presbyterian Hunger Program. He said the
action will be promoted mainly over the World Wide Web, an effective
means of reaching people of that age group.
In support of the workers' group, the Presbyterian
Church (USA) plans to create a boycott monitoring committee and to rally
support from congregations, presbyteries and synods.
The PC(USA) also will support a shareholders'
resolution against YUM! Foods Corp., Taco Bell's parent company,
introduced by the United Church of Christ; and will launch a media
campaign to give the denomination a voice in the current debate about
corporate responsibility.
"We haven't done any actions at this point,"
Cook told the Presbyterian News Service after the report sailed through
the GAC's WMD committee without any questions. "We haven't called
for a day for this-or-that. We think it is important to build a critical
mass of folks who … are responsive to these issues before we try to
rally them."
Cook said CIW maintains that the workers' salaries
haven't changed since 1978. They are paid $50 for picking and carrying
two tons of tomatoes. "Taco Bell has the power to change that
…… and they have a responsibility to do it," he said.
"They're making large profits on the basis of the farm workers'
work."
That's not how Taco Bell's public relations director,
Laurie Gannon, sees it.
She said Six L's is merely one of several
fruit-and-vegetable brokers working in Florida's open market for Taco
Bell, which doesn't meddle in contract disputes between its suppliers
and workers. "We can't get involved, can't mandate how they pay
their workers. They are complying with state and federal laws. It is the
government's job to monitor that."
Gannon said Taco Bell executive have tried without
success to get documentation from CIW and Six L's.
She said it appears that Six L's is "not
interested" in the wage-change issue. "We're not in the tomato
business," she said. "If Six L's wants to charge us a penny
more a pound, they can do that."
According to Gannon, Taco Bell's broker buys tomatoes
daily on the basis of the quality of the product -- and "some days
it is Six L's, some days not."
The denomination contends that Taco Bell's position is
unethical, because large buyers have clout to pressure suppliers to
change policies. The PC(USA) position statement says: "1) Taco Bell
knows about and benefits from the exploitative conditions under which
tomatoes for their products are produced, and, 2) Taco Bell has both the
power and the moral responsibility to resolve the inhumane conditions of
workers through (a) negotiation with growers and the Coalition of
Immokalee Workers and (b) agreement to pay one penny more per pound of
tomatoes."
Farm workers asked the PC(USA) to support the national
consumer boycott.
The Rev. Noelle Damico, the primary PC(USA) strategist
for the boycott, pointed to the denomination's 1995 statement,
"God's Work in Our Hands," as its rationale. It says
"employees, employers and customers need each other, depend upon
each other, and owe each other help beyond the letter of the law. …
Our partners in work, even when we cannot see them or know them
personally, deserve our respect and our attention to their needs."
It adds that the PC(USA) should serve as a "catalyst" for
conversations involving labor, management and government.
Brokering such conversations among CIW and YUM!/Taco
Bell/tomato growers is also a boycott goal.
Gannon said there is no way to monitor the boycott's
financial impact on the corporation. She said she has fielded some phone
calls from media and from church members seeking information.
Cook said that his own emails and phone messages have
changed since the end of this year's GA, when many members didn't
understand the church's position. Now, he said, he is getting many
expressions of support.
He said there is a movement on some college campuses
to "Boot the Bell," as students address
corporate-responsibility questions and more college food-service
operations contract with restaurant chains.
"That is not our strategy," he said of the
efforts to force the closings of restaurants. "Our ... goal is not
to shut down Taco Bell. It is to get them to do the right thing -- and
then champion them for doing it."
