Farm workers target McDonald's next

Building on its historic victory against Taco Bell, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) is now demanding that McDonald’s honor the precedents won in that successful fight for worker justice.

After a four-year boycott and thousands of actions against Taco Bell, the CIW-Yum! Brands agreement was ratified. It implements a penny-more-per-pound for tomato pickers who harvest for Taco Bell, a first-ever code of conduct for agricultural suppliers that names the CIW as a monitoring body, and complete transparency for Taco Bell’s tomato purchases from Florida. Yum! Brands is the parent company of Taco Bell.

The CIW wants McDonald’s and other fast-food corporations, such as Burger King and Chipotle Mexican Grill, to follow Taco Bell’s lead. It says McDonald’s refuses to honor the agreement by ignoring the organization’s demands and refusing to respect farm workers’ decisions and grievances.

The majority of agricultural workers in Florida and nationwide are immigrants from the Caribbean and Central and Latin America. They are super-exploited in the fields while multi-million-dollar food corporations profit off their sweat and back-breaking labor.

Lucas Benítez of CIW says of the latest protest actions against McDonald’s: “Today we are tired, in the words of Martin Luther King Jr., of ‘relying on the goodwill and understanding of those who profit by exploiting us.’”

As they did during the Taco Bell struggle, the workers are engaging in many tactics to win their demands. They will march on the corporation’s world headquarters in Oak Brook, Ill., a suburb of Chicago, on April 13. The all-day presence will begin at 8 a.m. A 4 p.m. rally will feature Tom Morello and Zack de la Rocha, formerly of Rage Against the Machine, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, Dolores Huerta of the United Farm Workers, Rev. Michael Livingston of the National Council of Churches and Eliseo Medina of the Service Employees International Union.

The headquarters rally is a kickoff to a weekend of activities in the Chicago area including a Carnaval and Parade for Fair Food, Real Rights and Dignity on April 14 at Chicago’s Federal Plaza. This festive and colorful event—taking the place of a traditional protest march—will loop around the Rock ‘n Roll McDonald’s and return to Federal Plaza for a celebratory rally featuring CIW members, allies and a dynamic lineup of well-known artists, musicians and speakers. The Parade and Carnaval will be composed of blocks, contingents, music groups and theater organized by the CIW and allies.

A McDonald’s Truth Tour will begin April 7 in Immokalee, Fla., a region where many of the major food corporations purchase their tomatoes and other crops. The tour with CIW members and allies will travel through the South and Midwest, arriving in Chicago on April 10 and returning to Florida on April 17.

All these events are “to raise the consciousness of the public,” Benítez said. “It’s also to shed light on the greed of this corporation that doesn’t want to respect even the most basic human rights.”

Hundreds of individuals and organizations have endorsed the CIW actions against McDonald’s, including many youth and students—a population that played a pivotal role in bringing Taco Bell to the table with CIW—as this corporation does business at hundreds of college campuses or near them.

On March 28 a letter was sent to McDonald’s CEO Jim Skinner advising him to “not underestimate our tenacity or the proven strength of our alliance with Florida’s farm workers.” The letter was signed by the Student/Farmworker Alliance, United Students Against Sweatshops, United States Student Association, Student Labor Action Project, National Latino/a Law Student Association, United Students for Fair Trade, Student Action with Farmworkers, Student Environmental Action Coalition and the Living Wage Action Coalition.

The student letter came only a week after 185 religious leaders sent their own letter to McDonald’s.

For more information, including logistics, transportation and “truth tour” dates, go to www.ciw-online.org.