Taco Bell parent Yum! rebuffs pickers; wage war continues

Nation's Restaurant News,  May 27, 2002  by Milford Prewitt

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LOUISVILLE, KY. -- Emboldened by protests at a corporate shareholders' meeting here, Florida tomato pickers demanding that Taco Bell help them secure higher wages intend to continue their long-running campaign for a national boycott against the chain.

At this month's annual shareholders' meeting of parent company Tricon Global Restaurants, whose top agenda item was a corporate name change to Yum! Brands Inc., the coalition of farm workers and social activists was able to press its cause with a statement from the floor and through boisterous demonstrations outside the meeting.

"We hear you," Tricon chief executive David Novak was quoted as saying after Lucas Benitez, a leader of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, said Taco Bell "has an opportunity to market itself as the socially responsible company in the fast-food industry" Protesting what it said was the poverty-level wages of the pickers, the group said it wants Taco Bell, which is a major buyer of Florida tomatoes, to pay a penny a pound more for them.

Novak stressed to Benitez and Tricon shareholders that Taco Bell buys from suppliers who adhere to wage-and-hour laws, according to an Associated Press report.

In March the coalition ended a coast-to-coast protest march with a demonstration at Taco Bell's Irvine, Calif., headquarters, which was ringed by police and 80 specially hired security guards. Tricon officials met with protest leaders briefly there and said Taco Bell had discussed the wage issue with the packing company that employs the workers but only to say that the chain hoped the matter would be resolved.

Although shareholders of Taco Bell's parent agreed to change its name from Tricon to Yum! Brands, they also heard impassioned pleas by a host of environmental activists, labor rights groups and animal welfare supporters that the company become more socially and environmentally active.

But Yum! Brands officials insisted that they intend to change nothing about their purchasing practices or vendor relations, insisting that the boycott is misdirected.

"This is really a labor dispute between the workers and their employers, and it really has nothing to do with us," said Jonathan Blum, senior vice president of Yum! Brands. "We don't even have a contract with their employer."

In addition to being the parent of Taco Bell, Yum! Brands is the parent company of KEG, Pizza Hut, A&W restaurants and Long John Silver's. Those chains have about 19,000 domestic outlets, including nearly 6,500 Taco Bell units.

Benitez, who represented 3,000 to 4,000 Florida tomato pickers, lent a human face to the brewing discord. Addressing the Yum! shareholders, he asked the company to stop "sweatshops in the field."

"I'm disappointed and disillusioned that [Taco Bell] doesn't care about the people who pick their tomatoes," he said. "They certainly care about how their tomatoes are grown and delivered and how much money they make."

Repeating complaints first voiced more than a year ago when the workers organized the campaign, Benitez told the investors that Taco Bell purchases the bulk of the tomatoes that his co-workers pick in difficult, hot conditions in exchange for wages totaling $7,500 a year. According to published reports, Benitez told the Yum! shareholders that none of the pickers is paid overtime or has fringe benefits or health-care coverage.

Putting a different spin on Taco Bell's corporate advertising slogan -- "Think outside the bun" -- Benitez implored the company to seize the opportunity to position itself as an industry leader in social responsibility.

As he spoke, a group of about 50 protestors marched outside Tricon's headquarters with signs, many emblazoned with "Feed Us Justice." Company officials said they counted about 30 demonstrators.

Blum, the Yum! Brands senior vice president, said he and other company officials met with the workers after the shareholders' meeting. He said he again told the workers what the company has been repeating ever since the call for a boycott first surfaced -- that the dispute is really between the workers and their employer, Six L Packing Co.

"We buy our tomatoes on the open market through brokers who know our specs regarding size, color and price," Blum said. "But these workers have an issue with a company that our brokers may or may not even buy from in the course of a month or several months.

"It is an unrelated company with which we don't even have a contract, and so we are not going to get involved."

Blum stressed that Taco Bell makes deals only with companies that respect the nation's laws, treat livestock and poultry humanely, and obey federal wage and hour laws.

"Without a contract, there is nothing we can do to control how another company treats its workers," he said.

Nevertheless, Blum said Yum! Brands did write a letter to Six L, informing the grower that while it had no intention of involving itself in its labor disputes, it did intend to monitor developments.