BK refuses surcharge sought by tomato pickers

Nation's Restaurant News,  Feb 19, 2007  

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Miami -- Burger King Corp., based here, has refused to pay a penny-per-pound surcharge for tomatoes as requested by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, or CIW, saying that BK's produce supplier does not employee the Florida tomato pickers represented by the farmworker advocacy group.

In 2005, the CIW successfully negotiated a penny-per-pound surcharge agreement with Yum! Brands-owned Taco Bell Corp., which, after the CIW's four-year boycott against the chain, pledged to monitor its tomato vendors to ensure that the voluntary surcharge was somehow passed through to farm employees. The CIW also has pressured McDonald's and other fast-food chains to follow suit.

Burger King officials said that while they agree that living conditions for pickers are substandard, they do not believe that paying a surcharge would guarantee support for them.

Burger King also cited a controversial study of farmworkers' wages, funded in part by McDonald's Corp., which contends that most tomato pickers earn more than Florida's minimum wage of $6.40 per hour.

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