Methodists might boycott Taco Bell over tomatoes(Good Boycott)

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/04121/308893.stm

The United Methodists, at their General Conference here, signaled they will join a boycott against fast-food chain Taco Bell over working conditions of migrants who pick its tomatoes in Florida.

The Committee on Church and Society recommended the boycott action, which will be taken up by the General Conference as a whole next week. The once-every-four-years assembly runs through next Friday at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center.

According to the petition, tomato-pickers for Taco Bell's major supplier in Immokalee, Fla., make an average of 40 cents a 32-pound bucket with no pay raise in 20 years. It also said some workers are held against their will in what amounts to slavery.

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Damico said workers had tried unsuccessfully for years to negotiate better wages with the tomato grower and started putting pressure on Taco Bell only when they discovered that the fast food giant was the major buyer of the tomatoes. The U.S. Department of Justice has begun to prosecute cases in which workers are brought in from other countries and sold to growers, she said.

Chavez elaborated, saying that for most of his 26 years he rose at 4 a.m. to pick tomatoes for 12 to 14 hours, 365 days a year. As examples of slavery, he said some pickers were forced to remain in the fields at gunpoint, and that one who tried to escape was taken from the work camp, had both knees broken with a hammer and was thrown from a van going 40 mph.

and the protest about Migrant Workers had worked towards making things better.

I think we are heading back to the times of "Grapes of Wrath. Since tht idiot was selected, so much has gone to hell. It's hard to know where to begin to fix things. So much damage in such a short time. So little ground made on issues, but to have backtracked this far. :nuke:

Un centavo mas, one penny more is the slogan of the Immokalee workers. You can barely believe the way they get treated is in America. And if workers in America can be treated like that, how about the third world? Taco Bell will go on my boycott list next to Coca-Cola (for what they're doing to workers in Colombia).

And I'm glad not all churches are towing the line with the fundies. This is a boycott that makes sense, from a social justice point of view.