REPORT: BK CEO TOP-PAID EXEC IN MIAMI AREA… MEANWHILE, COMPANY CONTINUES TO TURN ITS BACK ON FARMWORKERS WHO HAVEN’T SEEN A REAL RAISE IN NEARLY 30 YEARS…

Survey of CEO pay evokes firestorm of criticism on Air America as Miami community reacts to economic injustice of BK’s refusal to follow Yum Brands and McDonald’s leads…

Recent reports of Burger King CEO’s salary ranking among the highest of executives in south Florida (see the report here) have caused many to ask the question: Just where does all that money come from?

Could it be that keeping tomato costs low — at the expense of farmworkers who earn the same bucket price today as in 1978 — helps Burger King pad its profits and pay its CEO nearly 12 million dollars a year? And the BK executives living in Miami certainly can’t exactly claim ignorance of the conditions under which their tomatoes are picked. Miami area papers have published expose after expose in recent years (see, for example, “Fields of Desperation — Destitute Farmworkers Exploited” from the Miami Herald, 9/03 ” or “Modern Day Slavery — Still Harvesting Shame,” Palm Beach Post, 12/03), about the brutal labor conditions in the fields less than two hours from Burger King’s global headquarters.

This issue hit the Jim DeFede Show on Air America who interviewed both Brigitte Gynther of Interfaith Action of Southwest Florida and then Burger King’s Steve Grover. To listen to these interviews, click here and scroll down to the May 22nd and 23rd reports from the show.

While Burger King continues to turn its back on the inhumane working conditions in the fields where their tomatoes are picked, also this week, ABC World News Tonight featured the CIW’s Anti-Slavery Campaign in a special national report on slavery in America. To see a powerful interview with a worker (CIW member, Antonio Martinez, pictured here on the right in a still from the interview) who was held captive and forced to pick tomatoes in Florida’s fields against his will, click here.

And finally, in a not unexpected development, some Florida tomato growers made public their discontent with commitments from Yum Brands and McDonald’s to pay a premium for their tomatoes so that farmworkers can receive a fair wage and to work with the CIW to ensure more fair labor relations in Florida’s fields. While corporate social responsibility and respect for workers’ fundamental labor rights — like the right to overtime, for example — have become the norm in most of the world, many in the Florida agricultural community clearly continue to resist long over-due change in Florida’s fields. Click here to read the AP article on the growers’ announcement and responses from McDonald’s, Yum Brands, and the CIW.