The Florida Tomato Growers Exchange, an agricultural marketing cooperative that controls about 90 percent of fresh tomatoes sold in Florida, announced that it would advise members not to honor the historic April agreement between the Coalition of Immokalee Workers and McDonalds.
With the agreement, McDonalds agreed to pay a penny more per pound of tomatoes picked and have an outside entity
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The Exchange’s attorneys claimed that the agreement could leave them open to racketeering and antitrust lawsuits, characterizing it as “a potentially unlawful sales enterprise with unaffiliated third parties.”
But a similar agreement has been used with Taco Bell for the past two years. In addition, the growers would not be paying the additional money to farm workers—McDonalds would.
The Exchange simply wants to keep the wages of farm workers as low as possible. If workers fight for and win higher wages, the capitalists fear that fewer companies will buy tomatoes from them.
