corrente

Nico Pitney has a new blog. Visit: Nico Pitney's Priority Wire. Priority Wire has a great list of resource links focusing on a wide range of topics and issues - from Art and Activism to Globalization - so save that link.

You'll also find there a recent short post dated May 28, 2004 and titled New Campaign: Yum Foods which you should read in full because thats where I located the following:

In the fields of Florida, California, North Carolina and other states, one million farmers earn less than $7,500 per year. To earn $50 a day a tomato farmworker must pick nearly two tons of tomatoes. The reason? The supply-chain model of global economics has tightened profit margins. In 1990 growers received 41% of the retail prices of tomatoes; by 2000 they were receiving barely 25%. Value is passed up the chain, while workers at the bottom pay the price.

The PW post cited above contains a link to Oxfam's Take Action! One Penny More for Workers Rights campaign which in part reads as follows:

Global food giants such as Yum Brands — owner of Taco Bell, KFC, and Pizza Hut — use their purchasing power to squeeze growers who, in turn, cut their labor costs and offload risk onto farmworkers. Today's tomato pickers toil in often dangerous conditions for rock-bottom wages; they must pick two tons of tomatoes to earn just $50. If they were paid just one penny more per pound, they could nearly double their daily wage.

Scroll down the Oxfam page to contribute your two cents on behalf of "a penny a pound more" for farm workers. Help support labor rights and a living wage. Message sent on your behalf will be delivered to "Yum Brands Chairman and CEO David Novak" and "Taco Bell President and Chief Concept Officer Emil Brolick."

Links:
Nico Pitney's Priority Wire
Oxfam America