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April 28, 2006
After reviewing the recently released study “Economic
Impact: Tomatoes in Florida,” a report paid for by McDonald’s
and prepared by the Center for Reflection and Action (CREA),
we have grave concerns about both the reliability of the data
presented in the report as well as how this study is being deployed
by McDonald’s.
The data presented in the report have been thoroughly
and convincingly critiqued in the paper entitled “Critical
Analysis of the Report, Economic Impact: Tomatoes in Florida,
Report 1” by
Professor Bruce Nissen, Director of the Research Institute on
Social and Economic Policy, Florida International University.
Dr. Nissen is a nationally respected labor economist with particular
expertise in the area of wages and labor market conditions in
the state of Florida.
We agree wholeheartedly with Dr. Nissen when he concludes that, “Unfortunately,
the (study) is so riddled with errors both large and small that
it cannot be accepted as factually accurate on virtually any
measure.” The critique continues, concluding that “almost
nowhere are ordinary norms of social science research followed” in
the McDonald’s/CREA study, and that on the issue of wages,
the central issue in the study, “the report should have
no credibility whatsoever.”
As of the publication of this statement, twenty-nine scholars
from the fields of labor law and labor relations – including
a former General Counsel of the National Labor Relations Board
and the Dean of the University of Maine School of Law – have
signed-on to Dr. Nissen’s analysis of the McDonald’s/CREA
study. Their statement of support for the analysis concludes, “We
agree that the McDonald’s report does not meet accepted
standards of research, and its findings and conclusions should
not be taken seriously.”
Dr. Nissen’s analysis of the reliability
of the McDonald’s
study is a powerful document and should be read by anyone sincerely
interested in understanding this critical juncture in the movement
for a fair food industry. The analysis is available by clicking here. We defer to Dr. Nissen’s critique to convey our concerns
about the actual data contained in the report and will instead
focus here on McDonald’s decision to use such a clearly
ill-conceived and poorly executed study for its public relations
purposes.
Undermining precedents for change
As founding and endorsing members of the Alliance
for Fair Food (AFF), we represent religious, human rights, and
student organizations that have been working with the Coalition
of Immokalee Workers (CIW) on their campaign for fair food and
are acquainted first-hand with the dire, inhumane conditions
under which farmworkers labor and live. It is clear to us that
this tomato study is being deployed by McDonald’s not to
reach an objective understanding of farmworker wages and working
conditions, but as part of a broader strategy to thwart farmworker
participation in the advancement and protection of their own
rights and to roll back the other precedents established in the
historic CIW-Yum Brands agreement of March 2005.
The CIW/Yum Brands agreement ended the four-year, CIW-led, consumer
boycott of Taco Bell and established the following key precedents
for wholesale reform within the agri-food industry:
- Yum! Brands is taking supply-chain responsibility
for the downward pressure its high-volume, low-cost purchasing
practices have on farmworker wages by paying a wage increase
directly to the farmworkers that harvest its tomatoes;
- Yum! Brands is working with the CIW on its code of conduct
for the company’s suppliers so that farmworker participation
in the protection of their own rights is ensured;
- Yum! Brands has ensured transparency within Taco Bell’s
tomato supply chain.
The principles established in the CIW/Yum Brands agreement set
a new threshold for social responsibility in the fast-food industry
and in so doing challenged the rest of the industry to meet these
new standards. But just as farmworkers and their allies in the
religious, human rights, labor, student, and grassroots communities
were poised to demand an extension of these precedents to other
fast-food corporations, McDonald’s commissioned the CREA
study to show that these improvements really aren’t needed
at all.
Public relations response to a human rights crisis
The stated purpose of the McDonald’s/CREA study is to
substantiate the proposition that McDonald’s suppliers
compensate their workers at a rate that is “equal to or
better than the ‘penny-a-pound’ increase presently
being proposed.” But by defining its purpose in these
terms, the study begins with a significant flaw: The CIW has
never proposed a simple “penny-per-pound” increase
in wages, but rather has consistently, publicly, and clearly
insisted that fast-food companies must work with the CIW to implement
all the Yum agreement precedents of improved wages, farmworker
participation, and transparency. To those principles, the CIW
has added the demand that McDonald’s tomato suppliers respect
their workers’ universally-accepted human rights, including
the right to overtime pay and the freedom of association, as
McDonald’s requires respect for those same rights from
suppliers in other areas of its supply chain, including the factories
in China that produce the toys included in McDonald’s Happy
Meals.
As an essential part of its public relations strategy to combat
the CIW campaign, McDonald’s has consistently sought to
diminish the CIW’s demands and to lower the bar for social
responsibility by focusing its public discourse on only the penny-per-pound
element of the CIW/Yum Brands agreement. By building this false
premise into the very purpose of its study, CREA effectively
joined with McDonald’s in its duplicitous efforts to minimize
the CIW’s demands and, in so doing, forfeited from the
outset any claim to independence or objectivity that might bolster
the study's results. In short, McDonald’s set the terms
of the study based squarely on its public relations needs, and
CREA willingly followed suit.
Farmworkers are not poor?
The study’s results are equally troubling. The central
finding of the McDonald’s/CREA study is that farmworkers
picking for McDonald’s suppliers are actually not poor.
The study asserts that workers laboring for “Grower 1” earn “on
average” approximately $14 an hour, with the highest earners
pulling in well over $18 an hour. Beyond the fatal methodological
problems with the study outlined in Dr. Nissen’s critical
analysis that render the study’s results meaningless, it
is achingly clear that such an assertion of farmworker wealth
(the $18/hour figure puts tomato pickers above the 70th percentile
of all Florida workers, according to the 2005 study entitled “The
State of Working Florida”) defies common sense as well
as decades of reports from the United States Department of Labor.
We would add that our own experience also flies in the face of
such absurd results.
Many of the AFF’s member organizations have been working
cooperatively for generations with farmworkers and social service
providers in Florida to address emergency survival needs such
as inadequate housing, limited food, and lack of health care
and child-care. Because workers are not paid a fair wage by the
growers that employ them, they are robbed of the dignity of securing
these basic needs for themselves and their own families. Charitable
assistance would not be needed if farmworkers for “Grower
1” or any other growers were earning “on average” $14
an hour.
But you don’t have to take our word for it. McDonald’s
own partner in the grower-led “SAFE” employer certification
initiative, the Redlands Christian Migrant Association (RCMA),
is a childcare provider that targets specifically the migrant
farmworker community and serves thousands of migrant children
statewide – including children of workers picking tomatoes
for McDonald’s suppliers. The RCMA enforces a strict income
limit on its services, yet faces an ever-growing demand for the
essential assistance it provides.
The RCMA exists because it asserts that farmworkers are poor.
McDonald’s, RCMA’s partner in SAFE, is attempting
to deflect calls for higher wages in its tomato supply chain
by asserting that farmworkers are in fact not poor. They can’t
both be right. Our experience tells us that RCMA is correct,
farmworkers are poor, and do desperately need affordable childcare
because their incomes are too low to purchase child-care on the
market.
Sweatshop conditions and modern-day slavery
Further, the tomato study fails to mention the
broader context within which tomato pickers labor – farmworkers’ explicit
exclusion from the National Labor Relations Act and the rise
of modern-day slavery.
For decades, respected, faith-based organizations including
the National Farm Worker Ministry, Agricultural Missions, and
the National Catholic Rural Life Conference, have facilitated
cooperative partnerships between our faith bodies and farmworkers
organizing for their human rights to a living wage, to organize,
to overtime and to other protections that they are not currently
guaranteed by law. While the report lauds McDonald’s for
asking their suppliers to uphold the law, nowhere does it remind
the reader that farmworkers – including the workers who
pick tomatoes for McDonald’s – are excluded from key federal
laws that protect the rights of employees in other industries
and would help ensure farmworkers own rights.
Recently, the CIW, the United States Department of Justice and
the F.B.I. have successfully investigated and prosecuted five
operations of modern-day slavery. In cases of slavery, workers
are forced to work against their will, held captive, and coerced
through violence or the threat of violence. More than 1,000 slaves
have been freed through the CIW’s efforts and five farm
labor employers are currently serving time in prison. There are
more cases pending. This extreme exploitation does not occur
in a vacuum, nor does it occur to the Florida firefighters and
police officers or hospital orderlies and construction workers
who earn wages lower than many tomato pickers, if the results
of the McDonald’s/CREA study are to be believed. Rather,
the sweatshop conditions that undeniably prevail in the Florida
tomato industry are the fertile ground that allows modern-day
slavery to flourish in the 21st century.
That’s why some of our religious congregations have been
trained along with social service providers, and law enforcement
officers, by the federal government and the CIW to notice the
signs of slavery and have worked together on corporate campaigns
to change the market conditions in the agri-food industry that
foster this dire social evil. The fact that one of McDonald’s
own suppliers, AgMart, recently re-hired a crew leader who served
time in prison for enslaving workers should give the company
pause before indicating that “all is well” for farmworkers
in its supply chain.
Moving forward
In our cooperative efforts with the CIW to reform the agri-food
industry, we have come to believe that systemic change in the
agricultural industry will not come from “weeding out a
few bad apples.” Rather, together we must change the balance
of power so that farmworkers are finally in a position to protect
and advance their own rights. Full farmworker participation in
advancing their own rights is a fundamental matter of human dignity
and respect for our sisters and brothers who labor in the fields.
Full farmworker participation is also critical to ensuring change
actually occurs on the ground.
By not acknowledging the need for farmworkers to participate
with McDonald’s and its suppliers in crafting solutions
to the exploitation farmworkers face, and even denying such exploitation
exists through its discussion of wage rates, housing, purchasing
power, and McDonald’s current certification process and
code of conduct, this commissioned tomato study dangerously reaffirms
the immoral inequities in power between grower and farmworkers
that have been the root cause of farmworker exploitation.
McDonald’s is in a position to be a valuable
ally in correcting these inequities in power that have afflicted
farmworkers and their families for far too long. Yum Brands has
already demonstrated that working together with the CIW has brought
positive benefits for itself, its suppliers, and for the tomato
pickers.
It is our sincere hope that McDonald’s will look upon
this obviously flawed and failed tomato study as an opportunity
to reevaluate its approach and change course, instead working
as genuine partners with the CIW, the farmworker organization
that is a proven, respected force for human rights and voice
for the farmworkers whose undervalued labor provides millions
of pounds of tomatoes for McDonald’s salads and sandwiches.
Signatories:
The Rev. Dr. Clifton Kirkpatrick, Stated Clerk of the General
Assembly
Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) [founding member]
Todd Howland, Director
Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Center for Human Rights [founding
member]
Cathy Albisa, Executive Director
National Economic and Social Rights Initiative [founding member]
Sean Sellers and Melody Gonzalez
Student/Farmworker Alliance [founding member]
Brigitte Gynther and Sarah Osmer
Interfaith Action [founding member]
The Rev. Dr. Robert Edgar, General Secretary
National Council of Churches of Christ in the U.S.A.
Rob Keithan
Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations
Rev. Linda Jaramillo, Executive Minister
United Church of Christ Justice and Witness Ministries
Virginia Nesmith, Executive Director
National
Farm Worker
Ministry
Kim Bobo, Executive Director
Interfaith Worker Justice
Arnold Nelson, Jr., President
Disciples Home Missions of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)
Brother David Andrews, CSC, Executive Director
National Catholic Rural Life Conference
Buddhist Peace Fellowship
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