MIAMI Burger King Corp. is being pressured by four U.S. senators to pay a penny more per pound for tomatoes from southwestern Florida, an extra outlay championed by a farm workers’ advocacy group there.
The group, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, has been pressing Burger King to join McDonald’s Corp. and Yum! Brands Inc. in agreeing to pay the penny-per-pound charge. The CIW has said the additional revenues would be used to improve the lives and working conditions of tomato pickers and farm workers.
Burger King has repeatedly refused to enter such a deal. In past interviews with Nation’s Restaurant News, Burger King has said it saw “no legal way of paying these workers” since it doesn’t actually employ the workers.
The four senators — Edward Kennedy, D-Mass.; Dick Durbin, D-Ill.; Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio; and Bernie Sanders, Ind.-Vt. — have written letters to Burger King chief executive John Chidsey urging the nation’s second largest burger chain to oblige the CIW. Last week, Sanders delivered copies of the letters during a visit and a speech at the CIW’s headquarters.
Last week, the Associated Press reported that Burger King wrote in a letter to suppliers that it was considering buying its tomatoes from areas other than southwestern Florida in order to avoid the penny-per-pound surcharge.
Sanders said: "For a major company like Burger King not to pay that additional penny and raise workers' wages and improve their conditions is unconscionable.”
Yum was the first company to agree to the penny-per-pound charge, saying in 2005 that it would pay that amount for Taco Bell’s tomatoes. Last year it expanded the program to include tomatoes purchased for its Pizza Hut, KFC, Long John Silver’s and A&W All-America brands. McDonald’s signed a similar agreement in 2007.
However, those agreements were thwarted when the Florida Tomato Grower’s Exchange, a growers’ cooperative, said its members refused to pass on the surcharge because of concerns about potential violation of antitrust, labor and racketeering laws. McDonald’s and Yum both have said they stood by their agreements and would pay their part when the matter was settled.
The senators said in the letter to the grower’s exchange that the “expressed concern that the penny-per-pound program violates antitrust law does not hold up to even minimal legal scrutiny.”
Burger King consists of about 11,100 namesake restaurants.