Reaches agreement with workers coalition

By Amy Bennett Williams

Subway has agreed to increase tomato pickers' pay and improve their working conditions.

With more than 30,000 restaurants in 87 countries, Subway is the world's third-largest fast-food chain and the biggest fast-food buyer of Florida's $619 million annual tomato crop.

The company reached an agreement with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers on Tuesday - the day the coalition planned to start a 10-day nationwide protest urging Subway to join fast-food giants McDonald's, Burger King and Yum Brands as well as Whole Foods Market - all of which have agreed to the increase and improvements.

They include a supplier code of conduct that requires farmworker participation in monitoring growers' compliance and zero tolerance for serious labor rights violations.

Subway also extended those higher standards to its entire supply chain - not just tomatoes, the company said in a statement.

Calls to company headquarters in Milford, Conn., seeking further comment Tuesday were not returned.

For 15 years, the coalition has worked to change the way fast-food chains do business - at least in terms of tomatoes.

After a hunger strike and boycott organized by the coalition, Taco Bell's parent company, Yum! Brands, signed on in 2005, followed by McDonald's in 2007, Burger King in May and Whole Foods in September. Yet for all the agreements, one obstacle has blocked the coalition's efforts to put more money in workers' hands: Florida's tomato growers.

Citing legal concerns, they refuse to pass the increase from the companies to the workers. If they did, coalition member Greg Asbed has said workers' yearly wages could rise from about $10,000 to between $16,000 and $17,000.

"Today, the fast-food industry has spoken with one voice," said coalition member Gerardo Reyes, "and the message is clear: It's willing to pay more for tomatoes if they're harvested by fairly treated workers."

But Sherri Daye Scott, who edits QSR, a North Carolina-based food-service industry magazine, noted consumers spoke first - by supporting the coalition's petition drives, protests and boycotts.

"Until the college students and then the consumers got involved, it was not that big a deal," Scott said.

Will fair food become an industry watchword?

"It could," Scott said. "I haven't heard any rumblings yet beyond the tomato pickers yet, but it could gain traction. Look at food safety - five, 10 years ago, you didn't hear much about it; now it's everywhere. The same thing could happen with transparency in the food supply chain."

Yet because the growers' exchange hasn't passed on the increase, the money pickers would have received from the deal is held in escrow - and will be until a solution is reached.

"(Fast-food restaurants) are certainly at liberty to sign whatever deals they want, but we had no part whatsoever in the negotiating process," said Reggie Brown, vice president of the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange, a cooperative group, to which 90 percent of the state's growers belong.

The exchange, Brown said, "cannot be involved because of legal complications that are very real and very challenging."

Brown said he finds it "amazing that someone cannot creatively find an opportunity to distribute those funds that does not involve the grower community."

There are likely between 10,000 and 30,000 migrant farmworkers in Florida, according to government estimates. Southwest Florida accounts for about a third of the state's tomato crop, Brown said.

U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., has championed the 4,000-plus-member Immokalee farmworker organization. About Immokalee's tomato labor conditions, "the norm is disaster; the extreme is slavery," he said after visiting the Collier County town earlier is year.

"This agreement between Subway and the Coalition of Immokalee Workers is yet another blow to the scourge of slavery that continues to exist in the tomato fields of Florida," Sanders said in a statement. "Subway is to be congratulated for moving to ensure that none of its products are harvested by slave or near-slave labor. Sadly, too many other companies continue to tolerate this travesty."