Miami, Nov. 5 - A Florida tomato farm owners group said Monday its members would not participate in deals with McDonald's Corp and Yum Brands Inc to pay a penny-a-pound wage increase to Florida tomato pickers.
The announcement was a snag in a highly publicized and successful campaign by a farm workers' coalition to force restaurant giants to improve pay and working conditions, a campaign now focused on Burger King.
Following a two-year campaign by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, McDonald's agreed in April to pay an additional penny per pound for Florida tomatoes. The Carter Center, founded by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, helped broker the deal.
The coalition, which came to prominence in the 1990s by exposing a series of farm worker abuses and human trafficking cases, won a similar agreement with fast food chain Taco Bell and its parent, Yum Brands, in 2005.
The Florida Tomato Growers Exchange, a cooperative of Florida growers, said in a statement on Monday that its members had opted not to participate in the deals, citing concerns over federal and state laws related to antitrust, labor and racketeering.
"Our members have reaffirmed to us that they will not participate in the much-publicized deals that involve our industry's workers due to legal concerns," said Reggie Brown, the group's vice president.
Julia Perkins, a spokeswoman for the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, said it was not immediately clear how the FTGE announcement would affect the pickers because the growers were simply passing along the penny-a-pound increase from the restaurant companies to the workers.
"It's hard to say right now if all of the individual members are in line. So we don't know if it (the FTGE announcement) means anything," she said.
McDonald's spokesman William Whitman said in a statement it was premature to comment on details of talks. "We've said all along, more needs to be done -- and with the ongoing discussions with our Florida produce suppliers and the CIW, that's exactly what we're doing," he said. Yum could not be reached for comment.
At the time of the McDonald's deal, the CIW said the penny-a-pound increase would raise pickers' wages to 77 cents for each 32-pound bucket of tomatoes they picked, effectively a 71 percent wage hike.
Under terms of the Yum and McDonald's agreements, the companies would buy tomatoes from growers who agreed to pass on the penny-a-pound increase to their workers, Perkins said.
Yum had been buying from two Florida growers, she said, while the McDonald's agreement had yet to have any real effect because the picking season is still a couple of weeks away.
Florida is the source of more than 90 percent of the fresh winter tomatoes produced in the United States.
"It's not surprising that this is happening. We're disappointed, but it also shows the real need for companies like Burger King to participate, to call on the growers to do the right thing," she said.
The coalition planned a major demonstration at Burger King's Miami headquarters on Nov. 30.