Consumerist
The next time Burger King VP Stephen Grover goes online to spread FUD about labor advocates, he should probably leave his daughter out of it. For one thing, she's a horrible accomplice and will spill her guts to the first reporter who calls. For another thing, this forthrightness clearly makes her too ethical to smear a group that's trying to bring pay for tomato pickers up to living wage levels.
Here's the quick back story: tomato pickers in the U.S. are paid ridiculously low wages and treated badly, and some people are talking to fast food companies about increasing their pay by a penny per pound in order to help solve the problem. There was an agreement on the penny pay increase—McDonald's and Taco Bell were okay with it—but that fell through after Burger King joined up with some Florida tomato growers to claim that the low-wage claims were false and the workers were treated just fine.
It's gotten so bad that earlier this month, farm workers and their advocates testified before the Senate that claims of $12.50/hour wages were false, and that the industry has a history of worker abuse:
"It may not sound like much, but for the tomato pickers, it means the difference between poverty and decent wages," Kennedy said. He invoked Edward R. Murrow's landmark 1960 documentary "Harvest of Shame," which detailed the grim plight of migrant workers in Immokalee and elsewhere.To give Burger King an edge in the discussions, Stephen Grover took it upon himself to spread disinformation to the media, going so far as to hide behind his daughter's email address. Classy work there, Grover. Where do you think you work, Whole Foods?
"Too little has changed over the years," he said. The fact that there's a need for hearings today shows "how far we have to go to provide genuine fairness and justice for this vulnerable workforce," he said.
"Do the math with me," Durbin said in his opening statement. Workers would have to fill and empty a 32-pound bucket of tomatoes, each worth some 45 cents, about every two minutes all day long to earn the $12.50, he said.
"Is that possible?" he asked. "I don't think it is."
Sanders also decried conditions in Immokalee, pointing out that when he visited in January, a 17-count indictment was handed down for enslavement of tomato workers.
"In America, in the year 2008, it is not acceptable that workers producing the food we eat should live in these conditions," he said.
Workers face seven-day work weeks, physical and psychological abuse, and debt bondage to their employers, said Lucas Benitez, co-founder of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers.
At one point, Burger King Vice President Stephen Grover told reporters he was concerned the coalition was pocketing the extra money. After several independent groups that verified the agreements dismissed the allegations, Burger King officials stopped repeating them.
But the allegations were repeated on blog posts, according to a story published Monday in The News-Press in Fort Myers. The paper traced those posts to the online user name of Grover's daughter. The girl, who is in middle school, later confirmed to the paper her father had used her online screen name.
In a post still available Monday on YouTube, an individual with the girl's screen name wrote: "The CIW is an attack organization lining the leaders pockets by attacking restaurant companies. They make up issues and collect money from dupes that believe their story...."
Messages left for Grover at work and at home by The Associated Press on Monday were not immediately returned.
Our favorite part of this is how Grover's wife acts so offended that her daughter has been dragged into the story. Look to your husband, Susan! Don't blame the press because the girl's father decided to use her as a human shield!
His wife, Susan Grover, confirmed the screen name was their daughter's but said she didn't know if her husband had used it. She accused the News-Press reporter of not identifying herself as a journalist to their daughter.In contrast to Susan Grover's complaint, we'd like to give a shout out to the reporter, Amy Bennett Williams, who has been following the larger story since the beginning. She's the main reason any of this has reached the general public in the first place.
Reporter Amy Bennett Williams said she did identify herself and told the girl she was taking notes. She also said she left all of her contact information, which the girl's mother later used to call and complain.
"Farm worker advocates to present Burger King with petitions" [Fort Myers News-Press]
"D.C. takes up tomato pickers' plight" [Fort Myers News-Press]
RELATED
"The Harvest of Shame" — report from U.S. senator Bernie Sanders [OpEdNews.com]
(Photo: Getty)
Comments
Who makes these visuals? They're kickass!
I will gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today,
im hungry now
Damn! $12.50/hr to pick a tomato? That's pretty good pay for totally unskilled labor!
Grab tomato, twist, remove, repeat. HOw hard is that?
@unklegwar:
Yeah, but as the article states, you have to do 32 pounds of tomatoes every two minutes to do it. Given an eight hour workday, that's just under four tons of tomatoes in one day by one person to maintain that $12.50/hr.
Think you can pick four tons of tomatoes per day for a full-time job? I don't think I could.
@unklegwar:
Seriously. I know people with jobs that require 1. dressing nicely in clothes they had to purchase 2. interacting with the public 3. making decisions 4. being responsible for banking and 5. managing other staff that make less money than $12.50/hr.
There's a reason there's a minimum wage - for jobs with a minimum of responsibility.
@NightSteel: Don't forget to add that they also have to do this work in, what, 110 degree weather with ridiculous humidity? In long clothes? That makes it a lot easier too.
@unklegwar: They aren't getting $12.50 an hour... probably like $3.00 if that.
@unklegwar: The point is they're NOT getting that wage. That's what BK claims they're getting. In order to get $12.50/hr, they would have to fill and empty a 32-lb bucket every 2 minutes. That means they're being paid ABOUT $.42 per bucket. The suggested increase agreed to by McD's and Taco Bell was $.01 more per bucket, bringing them up to $.43 per bucket. If you can do 4 buckets an hour, you're currently earning $1.68/hr or $13.44 in an 8 hour day (note, they probably work 18 hour days for about $30 per day). Not exactly the big bucks.
upper middle class, suburban white high school students working at in n out for 10 bucks an hour and Mexican immigrants working as tomato pickers are pulling in $12.50...(a tear rolls down my face)...today is a sad day to be an American...
They need to make it a federal offense to pay someone less than the federal minimum wage no matter their status to be here and no matter what creative scheme they come up with to pay them less.
They also need to make some of these slave labor schemes a huge federal offense. Any form of holding someone in servitude, repaying an immigration debt, holding passports, locking them in a factory should land the people who do it in federal prison for at least a few decades.
What's amazing to me are the comments at the newspapers web site regarding the story and how many of them are attacking the reporter and the workers organization. Glad to know that TX doesn't hold the monopoly rights on myopic business rights advocates.
BK is just trying to prove that you can have it your way.
Taco Bell probably uses a LOT more tomatoes than BK. If they are willing to get the extra penny, why not just do it BK?
A penny a pound is nothing!
How cheap can BK be?
Yeah, the amount of labor probably makes the reality of 12.50/hr an impossibility.
What I can't really get over is the fact that Burger King, a MIAMI based company, cares so little about the people that are from their own state! I realize there are cost factors here, and to dumb it down by saying McD's and Taco Bell were OK with the tomato agreement is somewhat absurd (especially because they fought and fought.. I remember hearing about this years ago), but I find it repulsive that Burger King cares so little about it's next door neighbors, even if it's all about being able to compete. MAYBE if you had made the concession before Taco Bell and McD's, you would've looked like a hero to Floridians, YOUR OWN PEOPLE. Dumb shits.
@bohemian: It already is a federal offense. The problem is, there are exceptions to that minimum wage, in this case, an agricultural exemption. Just remove the exemptions, problem solved.
I am guessing a 32 pound bucket is about the size of the old bushel buckets we used to have as a kid. They slightly larger than a big square laundry basket. Now fill that with tomatoes every two minutes including pulling tomatoes off the vine without damaging the plants. A good test would be to get a bunch of tennis balls, pile them up, grab one, bounce it off the floor, catch it in your hand and put it in the basket. Repeat this process until the basket is full and then walk it at least 50 feet and walk back to where you were. I doubt many if anyone could do that in two minutes.
@unklegwar: Not to mention that as the article suggests the industry still uses what amounts to indebted servitude. You pay out for living quarters, the "right" to pick, etc. so that even if you DID get $12.50/hr (which as others pointed out is effectively impossible) they'd take half of it back to cover what you "owe".
Outsource all of it from Mexico, screw americans.
@modenastradale: I think it's usually some guy named "Stock Images". He seems pretty talented.
@unklegwar: Read again.
"Do the math with me," Durbin said in his opening statement. Workers would have to fill and empty a 32-pound bucket of tomatoes, each worth some 45 cents, about every two minutes all day long to earn the $12.50, he said.''
Worker do NOT get paid that much.
@rgshredder: You should read the article, before writing comments.
@rgshredder: are you and unklegwar intimate?
@youbastid: And you forgot about having to deal with the pesticides that cause cancer, birth defects, and all kinds of other nasty health problems.
Oh, and that mythical $12.50/hr. comes without anything resembling health insurance.
And they are working 7 days a week. What's that? You can't work today because you're sick/your kid is sick/you were injured on the job? Sorry, sucka, we don't know you, you just lost your job.
@unklegwar:
Have you ever seen anyone pick fruit/vegetables for a living? Since they are paid piecemeal, speed and efficiency are a premium. Those people have some serious skills and some serious pain tolerance. For some reason, we seem to value their ability to put food on our tables much less than we value A-Rod's ability to hit a ball with a stick.
@bohemian:
Except tennis balls are furry and light, whereas tomatoes are heavier and have bugs, thorns, and sticks to make it even worse. I bet they don't make more than $4/hr in reality.
@laserjobs: "Outsource all of it from Mexico, screw americans."
Last time I checked, Americans were nonexistent among the ranks of vegetable pickers. The vast majority are illegals from Mexico. If they don't like the pay, they can go back to their huts with dirt floors making no money. Of course then BK would have to actually pay Americans $12/hour to pick produce which should raise the price of a Whopper to about $17.95.
This is a local story down here and more than a few people I know seem to think they are pocketing the money....
Not to defend the parents of the girl, but as a parent as well as a former reporter, I can understand why they would be upset. It's not illegal for a reporter to contact a kid that age without parental consent, but it is an ethical issue. It's safest to talk to kids with their parents present or with their prior consent. Getting confirmation for your story isn't more important than a kid's privacy and safety.
Nevertheless, the father sounds like a complete idiot. His blog post put the girl in the public eye first, not the reporter's story. It's doubtful he has any clue what it is like to be a farm laborer.
@Victo: read the article
hah
that's a good one.
Get with the program, nobody reads articles anymore. They read a few things here and there, enough to form a completely ass-backwards view on what it actually says, and then spit off crap here and sound like morons.
Welcome to the Consumerist.
The sad part is, people like them in higher-up positions have the same attitude, so theyll probably never get fair pay, much less this $12.50.
@FightOnTrojans: It's funny that we abandoned DDT which was safe to humans, but made birds eggs soft, to the new stuff which has all these bad side effects. I guess the workers can admire the beauty of a soaring hawk w/their third eye.
@laserjobs: What? What do you mean?
@unklegwar: Okay, stop using your daughter's Consumerist screen name.
It truly is modern day slavery. The conditions they live in are terrible. I am from SC and there was a tomato farm there that had shacks for the workers to stay in. They looked similar to the historic slave shacks that they have on James Island. Heck they may even originally been slave shacks since it is SC. You get paid crap just to go home to a small shack with just a box fan. Quit being cheap BK. Even if you use a 100 million lbs of tomato's a year you could just cut back on your execs bonus/salary to cover it.
Even more reason to go check out www.localharvest.org and find some farmer's markets in your area. I found it through consumerist and I'm now a CSA Farm shareholder, I buy eggs from a local farm that are so darn delicious you wouldn't believe it. Totally worth it to buy local food from local farmers instead of supporting the dreaded "agribusiness".
@Unklegwar & All others feeling no sympathy.
I am an American born and raised. I spent my summers on my moms boyfriends Organic Blueberry farm in Western Oregon making some money. There were some migrant Hispanic families that the farm also employed repeatedly.
Those people were the most amazing fruit pickers I ever met. They could pick BUCKETS of berries in the time it took me to pick one. Saying that picking and processing your food is "unskilled" labor is ridiculous.
Also ... $10 an hour to work in fast food ... where do you live?! Here people make exactly minimum wage in fast food which when I last looked was around $7.35 an hour.
In the migrant farm worker industry out here you make money based on how hard you work. Period. The farm I worked at seemed very respectful of their workers, because they were some of the best pickers out there. I remember several occasions where we visited their home, and had dinner with them and vice versa. Then when the season was over we had some tearful goodbyes.
TBH I can't remember what we paid per bucket, how many buckets an hour those people could actually pick or even what the minimum wage was 20+ years ago (Somewhere around $3-4 an hour). But they could always afford to rent a house, and took care of their kids.
Having that history this story about BK really pisses me off. They will never ever see another dime from me!
@rgshredder: In the heat! Shackled by debt! And the laborers aren't even making anywhere near $12.50 because it would be physically impossible to approach that level of efficiency.
Yes, it is sad.
Burger King is full of crooks, from the highest levels and downwards. My bf worked as a manager there and the mismanagement, ignorance, lies, deceit and backstabbing he witnessed amazed me. Unfortunately since they went public, everything has gone steadily downhill, so this article doesn't surprise me.
She is *so* grounded.
@friendlynerd:
"There's a reason there's a minimum wage - for jobs with a minimum of responsibility."
Clearly, Stephen Grover should be paid such a wage. After all, he's not taking responsibility for hiding behind his kid.
@rgshredder: Start your mourning AFTER you read the article and after you read U.S. History and race relations.
I'd imagine that if you weren't being sarcastic that you'd be surprised that some, if not many of your "Upper middle class, suburban white high school students" were once the "Mexican immigrants" equivalent in US History.
---
Let me guess, Burger King wants to raise prices on our end without raising wages for the tomato pickers? I wonder where the difference in profit is heading off to?
So if I order my whopper without tomatoes, am I helping or hurting the tomato pickers?
They can have a pay increase when they pry my $1 value meal burger from my cold dead hands (which, given the amount of fat in calories in said burger may be any day now).
Finally, why is it only the fast food franchises? Are the pickers who pick tomatoes used in spaghetti sauce getting paid more than the fast food pickers, or do they just don't care?
I did a project for my Business Ethics class on the Immokalee tomato pickers when the Taco Bell case was going on. These workers have to live in horrible conditions just so they can get by on their meager wages from picking tomatoes. It's hard work and they deserve to be paid more for it.
I think we're forgetting to blame the victim here. I can understand the problem with 'slavery' type conditions, but I'm not sure someone doing this job deserves anything close to $12.50/hour!?!
If you get paid by each bucket (QUOTE: each worth some 45 cents) and you were are really good tomato picker you should be able to make decent enough money for this type of 'profession'.
I'm sure no one has had the ambition to grow up and be a 'tomato picker'. Sometimes you have to take what you can get, and if you can't handle the tomato war, stay out of the trenches.
sarcasm people...calm down...
1. If they pickers are not happy with their pay, they need to find a job that will pay what they want. If no one is willing to work as a picker for low wages, then the boss will have to offer more money, it's simple economics really.
2. Since when is it illegal or even unethical to trash talk your opponents?
I did read the article, and I was pointing out the huge wage discrepancy between the remedial positions within the food industry...with a satirical twist with respect to class and race.
High school students (i.e. don't have a high school degree) are making at least 3x as much as the average tomato picker.
Those missing the point are probably the ones with high school kids making a good wage off the back of slaves and enjoying their double whopper...(not satirical)
@rg: I came here to say that, thank you for saving me some effort, spot on.
Dude. Just a note for the future. Email addresses are free. And yes, easily attainable.
@TakingItSeriously: "Also ... $10 an hour to work in fast food ... where do you live?! Here people make exactly minimum wage in fast food which when I last looked was around $7.35 an hour."
No.
Oregon minimum wage is 7.95. Everyplace I looked in getting a job in fast food (didn't want it, but looked anyway), it was between 9-11 an hour.
Just sayin.
@rg: Actually, I have a degree in economics, and I'd say this particular issue is far from simple. Significant political, legal, financial, and social pressures have converged to produce this situation. If it were as simple as you're making it sound, uh, don't you think it would already have happened?
@Phillip M. Vector:
Well, here in the east, you're lucky if you get 8 an hour for ANY fast food job, and you only get that if you work the night shift. fast food here in maryland pays the absolute minimum, which is the current federal minimum wage, 5.85 an hour. (it does go up this July to 6.55 an hour, Woohoo! ). Try living on that and paying rent, feeding a family (with real food, not leftovers out of the dumpster), insurance, car payment, etc...
@Frank Grimes: Maybe the BK exec is busy creating more sock puppets?
@modenastradale: Like, laws are for losers! Did they not brainwash you into believing theoretical models based on ideal situations always govern people's rational actions? Clearly, you went to some hippie liberal arts college for eCo[mmu]n[ist]omics.
On a serious note: thank you.