Tell McDonald's to Support Fair Wages & Treatment for Farm Workers

Idea exchange
April 2007

Tell McDonald's to Support Fair Wages & Treatment for Farm Workers
Farmworkers who pick tomatoes for the fast food industry are among this country’s most exploited workers, according to union organizers. They frequently endure subpoverty wages, no rights to form unions, no benefits of any kind.

While farmworkers for Taco Bell (Yum Brands) have recently negotiated better conditions and wages, tomato pickers fpr the ginat McDonald's fast food empire have not similarly benefited. According to farm labor advoicates, McDonald’s could make a huge difference in the lives of these workers in its supply chain, literally for just a few pennies more per bushel, but so far has refused.

Sign this petition to demand McDonald’s implement fair wages and real rights for workers.

But the online petition is not the only way McD's may begin to feel a squeeze about the way it's trearting tomato pickers. A group of church-backed Florida farmworkers will embark on a 10-day regional tour through the Southeast and Midwest next month to carry their struggle for higher wages and better working conditions right to the fast-food behemoth's corporate doors .

About 60 members of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) will travel by bus and van from Immokalee, FL, on the six-state multi-city trek, which runs from April 7-17, with stops in Georgia, Kentucky and Alabama. Highlights will include a rally on April 13 outside the hamburger company’s corporate headquarters in Chicago’s western suburb of Oak Brook, IL.

The demonstration is expected to feature national human-rights leaders, clergy, labor union leaders, student activists and musicians, including Tom Morello and Zack de la Rocha of Rage Against the Machine, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, Dolores Huerta, Rev. Michael Livingston (President of the National Council of Churches). The next day, the farmworkers and their allies will lead a march for fair food through downtown Chicago, culminating with a rally outside McDonald’s flagship restaurant.

The CIW is organizing the event, the “McDonald’s Truth Tour 2007: Behind the Golden Arches .”

“McDonald’s, which everybody knows for these beautiful shinning golden arches, doesn’t seem worried about the welfare of the very workers that bring the products to the table at McDonald’s,” said Lucas Benitez, a CIW staff member. “It seems like McDonald’s is obscuring the reality that actually goes on in their supply chain. The fact is the farmworkers are very much a part of the food industry as a whole. They’re at the base of it."

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