Wall Street High-Flyers: Having It Their Way at Burger King

[marmar]

from Too Much: A Commentary on Excess and Inequality:



Wall Street High-Flyers:
Having It Their Way
at Burger King
Florida tomato pickers started a protest march last week at the Miami office of a New York investment bank. For good reason.
December 3, 2007

By Sam Pizzigati

Hundreds of migrant farmworkers marched through Miami this past Friday to protest a Florida tomato grower maneuver that will cut some tomato picker wages by 40 percent.

The growers are refusing to honor deals the state’s top farmworker group has cut with McDonald’s and Taco Bell to pay pickers a penny a pound more for the tomatoes they pick — over the course of workdays that often last 12 hours.

Fast-food chains just happen to be the biggest market for Florida’s tomatoes. But one fast-food giant — Burger King — has resisted the penny-per-pound wage increase, and that resistance, says food industry analyst Eric Schlosser, “has encouraged tomato growers to cancel the deals already struck with Taco Bell and McDonald’s.”

Why is Burger King so up in arms against upping farmworker wages a penny a pound?

Here’s a hint: The farmworkers started last week's nine-mile protest march at the Miami office of Goldman Sachs, the Wall Street investment banking colossus whose top power suits will shortly be divvying up somewhere between $17 and $22 billion in annual bonuses.

How are Wall Street’s power suits making all those billions? They certainly, of course, don’t pick tomatoes — or even flip burgers. They flip companies. And that flipping, maybe more than any other single factor, is driving the battle over pennies currently raging in Florida’s tomato fields. ........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.cipa-apex.org/toomuch/articlenew2007/Dec3a.html

[1932]

1. Excellent that workers see the financialization of the american economy is so bad for the economy &

for workers.

[madrchsod]

2. they would take pennies from a dead man`s eyes

no wonder this country is in financial ruin...

[flashl]

3. "divvying up somewhere between $17 and $22 billion in annual bonuses"

$17B would cover the payroll for several generations of tomato pickers across the country.

[Angela Shelley]

4. Migrant workers practicing democracy

by standing up for themselves.

Thanks for the good example!

[Laughing Mirror]

5. It really is too much

Thanks for posting.