CIW Campaign Pressures Taco Bell

Posted: 5 November 2004

by Chris Hufstader

Restaurant chain boycott gains support.

The Coalition of Immokalee Workers, Oxfam America’s farmworker justice partner based in Florida, continues pressuring Taco Bell and parent company YUM Brands to require its tomato suppliers to pay one cent more per pound to farmworkers. Tomato pickers are currently earning “virtually the same per-bucket piece rate today as they got in 1978, with no right to overtime, no right to organize, and no benefits of any kind,” according to CIW’s web site.

CIW’s public education and advocacy campaign is reporting the following successes in late 2004:

In California, the board of directors of the Associated Students of the University of California Los Angeles voted to end Taco Bell’s contract for its restaurant on campus. UCLA students objected to the working conditions of farmworkers in Florida picking tomatoes for the restaurant chain, and CIW urged the students to block a new contract for Taco Bell. CIW congratulated UCLA’s student and administration “For their commitment to human rights and to Fair Trade principles.” UCLA’s move follows a similar exclusion of Taco Bell on the campus of the University of Notre Dame in Indiana over the summer.
The students and faculty at the Boise State University in Idaho have urged the administration to cancel an agreement to name its sports arena after Taco Bell in exchange for $4 million. Mary Robinson, the former president of Ireland and the former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, called on the University to reconsider the agreement in a speech on campus in October. Robinson, the honorary President of Oxfam International, visited Immokalee last spring and since then has been calling on YUM Brands to take responsibility for the working conditions endured by tomato pickers.

Oxfam America is helping fund CIW’s “Boot the Bell” campaign to promote greater corporate responsibility, and is collaborating with the organization as part of its worker rights component of the Oxfam International Make Trade Fair campaign.

Visit CIW’s web site for more information on its campaign www.ciw-online.org/news.html