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Students Rally Against Burger King
Friday’s ice and rain did not put a freeze on a Georgetown Solidarity Committee protest at a Burger King restaurant in the 1600 block of K Street. Cheers of “Down, down with exploitation! Up, up with fair food nation!” and fliers awaited Burger King customers that day as they ventured to the restaurant for their lunch breaks.
GSC has been working with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers “organizing for better wages, [improved] working conditions and an end to modern-day slavery,” said Ashwini Jaisingh (COL ’08), one of the protestors.
A town in southern Florida, Immokalee is home to more than 4,000 farm workers, most of whom pick tomatoes. They are paid about 45 cents for every 32-pound bucket they fill, according to the CIW’s Web site.
“Workers make an average of $10,000 per year,” Jaisingh said. This income falls places them and their families below the poverty line, which the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services currently places at $21,200 for a family of four.
In April 2007, McDonald’s agreed to increase the price it pays pickers to 46 cents per bucket, and in May, Yum Brands, which owns chains including Taco Bell, Long John Silver’s, KFC and Pizza Hut, followed suit.
Julia Shindel (COL ’10), a GSC member, said the group’s goal is to appeal to Burger King through their consumers.
“We want to spread awareness. We want people to know what’s going on,” she said. “Burger King can basically do whatever they want,” Shindel said. “But they have one power that controls them — consumers.”
Organizers said anti-Burger King protests are currently taking place nationwide. At each one they present the manager with a letter which calls for managers to contact Burger King Corporate Headquarters and asks them to stop the “human rights crisis” in Immokalee.
“The main objective is letting the manager know, and he’ll let his supervisor know that there’s significant consumer pressure,” said Kelsey Spitz (SFS ’10).
The group Friday, however, forgot a copy of the petition.
“I’m not really expecting anything as a direct result of this protest,” GSC member Joe Parker (SFS ’10) said, “but hopefully the larger effort will get Burger King to give in.”
While protestors succeeded in irritating management, their message never made it beyond the 1600 block of K St. “They came and did what they did — it was hard on business,” said Raj Raj, the manager, “but I didn’t tell anyone else about it.”
GSC members said they chose this location because “at lunchtime, this Burger King is extremely packed,” Shindel said.
While many passers-by ignored the protestors, a few stopped to talk to students and took flyers, while one man even joined in. “I’m for another penny, I’m for another dollar!” onlooker Richie Jones shouted, “Those workers deserve to get paid!”
Jaisingh said she became involved with the CIW after she attended an alternative spring break trip to the town in 2005. When she returned to Georgetown, she and other members of the GSC began working more closely with the coalition. From Feb. 6-7, GSC members attended the United Students Against Sweatshops Conference and visited Immokalee, where some members said they were “shocked” by what they saw.
“A guy basically kept people chained up in a U-Haul truck,” Jaisingh said. “The only compensation they received was alcohol and drugs, to increase their dependency. … We talk about sweatshops abroad, but seeing sweatshops right here in the United States is a very sobering experience.”
The protest marked the end of GSC’s Student-Worker Solidarity Week, which aimed to raise awareness of workers on campus and around the world, Parker said. Events included a screening of a documentary on living wages, a panel of on-campus workers and a round table discussion with a representative of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers.
Jaisingh said GSC’s efforts to improve workers’ rights are not yet finished.
“We’re trying to do a bigger D.C.-wide thing later on,” Jaisingh said.
Burger King declined to comment for this story.
Correction: The article "Students Rally Against Burger King" (THE HOYA, Feb. 26, 2008, A1) erroneously reported that last April, McDonald's agreed to increase the wages for tomato pickers in Immokalee, Fla., by one cent per bucket; the wage increase was actually one cent per pound.
Wendy's is better anyway...
I'm surprised Burger King declined to comment. Georgetown Solidarity is such a highly regarded, credible, rational organization that you would think Burger King would want to get involved with this.
Hunger Strike against Burger King? Bring back the DOME!
The members of Georgetown Solidarity are participating in a major anti-poverty campaign which will have a serious impact on the way food is grown and sold in this country. But the reporter who wrote this piece seems more interested in mocking the group than in accurately representing the issues.
The CIW demands a penny more per pound of tomatoes picked. The article incorrectly states that the YUM/McDonald's agreements require an increase from 45 cents per bucket to 46 cents per bucket. In fact, the agreement requires the companies to pay a penny more per pound of tomatoes picked. A worker who picks an average of 2 tons a day gets that much more in wages directly from the corporations at the top of the supply chain. This is a revolutionary way to remedy minimum wage violations, and it was totally unprecedented until the CIW and student activists like GU Solidarity took up this fight.
The article also incorrectly states that the YUM Brands agreement followed the McDonald's agreement, when the reverse is true. This is relevant because the prospect of the very pressure tactics that GU Solidarity employed this week was so threatening to McDonald's that it signed the agreement with the CIW before a major campaign was launched. The same will happen with Burger King eventually, and it will be directly traceable to the efforts of these students.
As a Georgetown alum, I wasn't surprised to encounter contempt for a social justice campaign in a Hoya article. It's standard fare at GU, and I admire the students who are going out to protest in spite of this. But the quality of the paper suffers when a reporter can't get the basic facts straight in an article about one of the most strategic social justice movements of our generation. Do some research, and report the facts accurately next time.
The King is dead...long live the King!
As a Georgetown alum and former Student/Farmworker Alliance intern, I wanted to correct a few inaccuracies, though Ms. Wagoner actually already hit most of them.
* The "one more penny" per pound of tomatoes picked works out to about 32+45 or 77 cents for a 32-lb bucket, a 71% increase over the former 45-cent wage - very different than the Hoya reported. Considering that the former rate stood more or less stagnant across the industry since the early 1980s, this near-doubling of the piece rate is an impressive and historic win for workers.
* Taco Bell (owned by Yum! Brands) was the first company to agree (in 2005) to the three demands made by farmworkers, after a 5-year boycott in which students at 22 universities successfully kicked off or prevented a Taco Bell from doing business on campus. McDonald's followed suit (without a boycott) this past April, and most recently, Yum! Brands extended the agreement to all of their chains, including KFC and Pizza Hut (previously only Taco Bell was covered). In all stages of this campaign, student pressure on fast-food corporations has been instrumental to farmworkers' success.
* To the poster who prefers Wendy's, it's not a question of one fast-food chain versus another: farmworkers experience these unbelievable conditions across the industry, with wages held down by the relentless bargaining to the bottom in large corporations' produce contracts. Consumers have incredible power to influence these companies, however, and that's what's happening, one fast-food corporation at a time. If you think about it, that one penny per pound increase adds up to less than a quarter cent on any given taco/hamburger - hardly a hefty price for such big profit-makers as BK, McD's, and Yum!
It disappoints me when I see such easily-researchable errors coming out of the paper I read so religiously as an undergrad - step it up a notch, Hoya!
Nick Laskowski
COL '03
San Jose, CA
Unfortunately, with a little research you will find that the CIW is a self-serving attack organization with no real members or workers. See their IRS "non-profit" form 990’s that lists the large amount of money they collect! (http://dynamodata.fdncenter.org/990s/990search/esearch.php )
The CIW creates conflict and spreads overly simplistic misinformation to unquestioning students via the internet. The CIW through its attacks reaps millions in cash from unknowing or duped supporters. Burger King does not hire tomato pickers, has anyone questioned that? You might as well protest yourself for buying tomatoes in the supermarket. Who is protesting the actual tomato farmers or employers that hire the tomato harvesters? This seems very strange that the protesters are not even mentioning the people that are directly responsible here. By these actions the protesters seam to support the CIW internet extortion tactics to raise money that goes to who? The CIW has been protesting YUM, McDonald’s and now Burger King for over 7 years and the workers in Immokalee are not getting a single penny of the money today. In other words the CIW and their followers have accomplished nothing in the last 7 years with these false attacks and missinformation protests. The CIW has fooled thousands with its slick internet stories, collected millions in return and given the workers nothing. Who is really exploiting the workers now!
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