In a sharp reversal, Burger King agreed last week to increase wages and improve working conditions for tomato pickers in Florida.  The agreement is a victory for the Coalition for Immokalee Workers and Student/Farmworker Alliance who have been pressuring Burger King for the last year to adopt the agreement.  The victory is not complete, however, because the tomato pickers may not actually receive the increased wages if the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange, which represents 90 percent of Florida’s tomato growers, continues to discourage growers from implementing the wage increase.  Burger King received negative publicity earlier this spring when media outlets disclosed that a corporate vice president had used his young daughter’s email to post vilifying information about the CIW online and that Burger King had hired a private company to pose as students in an attempt to infiltrate the Student/Farmworker Alliance.

Read more from the News Press
Read more from the New York Times
Read the Student/Farmworker Alliance press release
Read a previous NSNS post on this campaign