Supermarket leads way on penny-a-pound deal

A US supermarket chain has broken new ground by signing an agreement with a workers’ organization to improve wages for Florida’s tomato pickers.

Texas-based Whole Foods Market, which has a $6.6billion (£3.76bn) turnover and runs 270 organic food stores in the US, Canada and the UK, has signed the deal with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), a community-based body whose 2500 members are largely Hispanic, Haitian, Guatemalan and Mayan Indian immigrants in low-paid jobs.

Under the agreement, the first of its kind in the supermarket industry, the company will support the CIW’s ‘penny-per-pound’ tomato programme, paying one cent more per pound for tomatoes bought from growers and insisting that the entire amount goes to the pickers. Growers that do not comply will lose their contracts.

Florida grows virtually the entire US crop of fresh field tomatoes, and civil society groups say harvesters are regularly victims of exploitation, low pay, violence and, in extreme cases, slavery.

Karen Christensen, global produce co-ordinator for Whole Foods Market, said the company had decided to go ahead despite the high cost because the scheme was ‘in line with our core values and in the best interest of the workers’. Costs have not been disclosed.

The company will buy only from Florida growers that agree to provide monthly dockets recording that extra payments have been passed on to workers. Those records will be checked by the CIW.

No other supermarkets have yet supported the penny-per-pound programme, but three large companies in the restaurant sector – Burger King, McDonald’s and Yum! Brands – have signed.

Burger King had long resisted pressure from the CIW to sign up, and became involved in a spat with the organization after anti-CIW comments posted on the internet under assumed names were found to have been written by one of the company’s executives. Burger King apologized and joined the programme this summer.

Yum! was the first company to agree to the charge for its Taco Bell chain in 2005 (EP7, issue 1, p7), and last year expanded its involvement to include tomatoes purchased for other brands, including KFC and Pizza Hut. McDonald’s signed in 2007.

The CIW uses both lobbying and consumer pressure to persuade companies to sign. The next retailer in its sights is Wal-Mart. Other targets are fast food chains Subway and Wendy’s.

Whole Food Markets, which has more than 53,000 employees, said the deal had led it to consider extending its global ethical supply monitoring regime to the US, which until now had not been seen as a high risk country.