For Immediate Release:
Contact: Sushetha Goppallawa 202-463-7575 ext 270
gopallawa@rfkmemorial.org

RFK Center Supports CIW 2007 Truth Tour Exposing McDonald’s Rights Abuses

Washington, DC--- RFK Memorial Center for Human Rights lends its full support to the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) in launching the 2007 Truth Tour in route to McDonald’s headquarters in Chicago, IL area. The CIW and its coalition of supporters, the Alliance for Fair Food (AFF), leave from Immokalee, Florida to launch a multi-city tour April 6th.

Click here for schedule: http://www.ciw-online.org/2007truthtour/schedule.html

The Tour goes “Behind the Golden Arches” exposing the human rights violations McDonald’s and other large produce buyers continue to profit off.

RFK Center staff and founder, Kerry Kennedy, will join the Truth Tour outside McDonald’s corporate headquarters in Oak Brook, Ill., April 13th for a historic demonstration. RFK Center supports the CIW’s courageous actions and encourages those who support social justice to join the Truth Tour and stand with the CIW.

“Over the past 25 years, slavery cases and sweatshop conditions have flourished and farmworkers wages have stagnated as large-volume corporate purchasers like McDonald’s drove produce prices down further and further,” said RFK Center Director Monika Kalra Varma. “During the Truth Tour, McDonald’s customers and leadership will see the human price of its practices through the eyes of the workers in the fields.”

In March 2005, Taco Bell and Yum! Brands took historic steps toward ending human rights abuses in their tomato supply chain by working with the CIW to effectively double farmworker wages and improve hazardous and abusive working conditions. Paying a wage increase directly to farmworkers who picked their tomatoes and codes of conduct at their suppliers to respect workers’ human rights cost Yum! Brands only a little over $100,000 a year.

McDonald’s claims “corporate social responsibility is the foundation upon which the company has been built,” yet it profits from low priced tomatoes for its sandwiches and salads while refusing to recognize it is accountable for abuses that come as a consequence of such low prices.

“McDonald’s has the opportunity to take the responsible course and support human rights in its’ supply chain,” said Varma. “It can easily follow Yum! Brands’ lead by directly paying farmworkers a mere penny per a pound of tomatoes they pick.”

Instead of partnering with farmworkers, McDonald’s has taken steps to undermine workers’ rights by allying with a front organization for Florida’s growers’ association, SAFE. SAFE’s plan would not allow farmworkers to participate in determining or enforcing policies meant to protect them nor would it address the economic needs of workers. They do not acknowledge fundamental labor rights like the right to overtime pay or freedom of association.

“By embracing SAFE’s weak labor standards, McDonald’s is setting the bar lower for its American agricultural producers than it does for its suppliers in China”, said Varma. “Their plans are incapable of ending the cycle of poverty, abuse and slavery that plagues the industry.”

For more information about the Coalition of Immokalee Workers’ 2007 Truth Tour visit http://www.ciw-online.org/2007truthtour/index.html