Tuesday marked the end of a three-year, nationwide boycott of Taco Bell.
The fast-food industry leader, a division of Yum! Brands, Inc., has agreed to work with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, the Florida-based farm worker organization that called for the boycott.
"With a broad coalition of industry leaders committed to these principles, we can finally dream of a day when Florida's farm workers will enjoy the kind of wages and working conditions we deserve," CIW Co-Director Lucas Benitez said in a written statement.
The first step Taco Bell has agreed to take to address wages and working conditions in the Florida tomato industry is to pay a penny-per-pound "pass-through" fee. In an agreement with its tomato growers, Taco Bell said it will pay the equivalent of a penny per pound, directly to the workers.
"With this agreement, we will be the first in our industry to directly help improve farm workers' wages," Taco Bell president Emil Brolick said in a written statement. "And we pledge to make this commitment real by buying only from Florida growers who pass this penny-per-pound payment entirely on to the farm workers."
CIW asked for the Taco Bell boycott, called "Boot the Bell," in response to the poor working conditions and low wages faced by workers in the Florida tomato fields.
"Florida's fields have seen some of the most shameful extremes of exploitation that this country has known, both decades ago and still today," Benitez said. "My community is one of the poorest communities in the country, and our sacrifices have helped make Florida's tomatoes some of the least-expensive, highest-quality tomatoes on the market today."
Yum! Brands also urged other restaurant chains and supermarkets to join in pursuing legislative reform because "human rights are universal, and we hope others will follow our company's lead," said Jonathan Blum, senior vice president of Yum! Brands, in a written statement.
Since the national Taco Bell boycott has officially ended, so has the UT portion of it, according to Student Labor Action Project member Alexis Herrera. Though SLAP, which spearheaded the boycott on campus, was unsuccessful in removing the Union's Taco Bell, Herrera said the pressure it put on the company to meet the CIW's demands helped end the boycott.
"This is such a huge, historic and monumental event," she said. "We think it's about time."
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