Funferal

Farm workers gain victory in struggle with Taco Bell

Just before Pete Tridish’s talk to the participatory media reading group yesterday I got word over Prometheus’s Stubblefield list that:

In a precedent-setting move,
fast-food industry leader Taco Bell Corp., a division of Yum! Brands
(NYSE: YUM), has agreed to work with the Florida-based farm worker
organization, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), to address the
wages and working conditions of farmworkers in the Florida tomato
industry.
Taco Bell announced today that it will fund a penny per pound
‘pass-through’ with its suppliers of Florida tomatoes, and will
undertake joint efforts with the CIW on several fronts to improve
working conditions in Florida’s tomato fields. For its part, the CIW has
agreed to end its three-year boycott of Taco Bell, saying that the
agreement ‘sets a new standard of social responsibility for the
fast-food industry.’

The Immokalee workers have their own LPFM station (hence the message on the Prometheus list) and while it would be silly to credit the victory to that fact rather than to the ongoing work of the group, I’d hope that the station has played some role.
More information is available from this Indymedia audio piece