FIRST ANNUAL

CIW GOLDEN BUCKET AWARD FOR CORPORATE IRRESPONSIBLITY

GOES TO… TACO BELL!! (ORLANDO, 4/1/01)

Actual quote from prize presentation speech: “We have chosen as the first ever recipient of this award a corporation that has truly risen head and shoulders above the crowd, a corporation that we are sure you will recognize by its achievements, a corporation that…

* systematically coerced its employees to work off the clock in order to avoid paying them overtime, forced workers to clean their restaurants on their own time, and even sometimes compensated their employees with food, not wages, as a Washington state jury found in 1997…

* wilfully cheated thousands more of their employees out of wages, systematically engaging in the illegal alteration of time records to do so, as found by a jury in Oregon in 2001…

* and, last but not least, a corporation that has profited enormously from the sweatshops of our great state’s fields, where farmworkers do back-breaking work under a burning sun at below-poverty wages picking tomatoes destined for their tacos and chalupas; sweatshops, which, while like those in Asia, employ workers at miserable wages with no benefits, no right to organize, no overtime, no sick leave, no vacation pay, and no medical insurance; sweatshops which are nonetheless not in Asia but right here in this corporation’s own backyard; sweatshops whose workers live in roach-filled, decrepit trailers or corrugated tin shacks without the money to even buy a car to go to this corporation’s drive-through window; sweatshops whose workers have written twice to this corporation’s executives, and who the corporation has treated with such utter disdain that they haven’t even graced the workers’ correspondence with a response.

For all this and more, we proclaim TACO BELL Corporation the Grand Prize Winner of the Golden Bucket Corporate Irresponsiblity Award for 2001, taking us into the 21st century by stepping back into the past!! Congratulations Taco Bell! You have won the race to the bottom!!!!”