The Burger King and his serfs

Those of you familiar with the United Methodist Church’s social justice programs may recall a church-endorsed boycott of Taco Bell a little while ago, based on that restaurant chain’s refusal to pay migrant tomato farm workers in Florida an extra penny per pound of tomatoes they harvested. Taco Bell (and McDonald’s) eventually relented, and are now paying that extra penny per pound in a manner that ensures the penny goes directly to the farm workers themselves.

To give you an idea of the workday of the average migrant tomato farm worker, here’s an excerpt from a recent NY Times column:

For 10 to 12 hours a day, they pick tomatoes by hand, earning a piece-rate of about 45 cents for every 32-pound bucket. During a typical day each migrant picks, carries and unloads two tons of tomatoes.

That’s $56 per day, assuming 125 buckets at 32 pounds per bucket. The article goes on to state that the increase of a penny per pound has translated into the workers’ now receiving about 77 cents per bucket, or $96.25 per day. [Note: I have not independently verified any of these figures; I’m merely doing the math based on the facts stated in the article.] So that’s the current situation – workers pick and haul two tons of tomatoes for a little less than $100 per day, or roughly $8 to $10 per hour. Under the prior system, the wages were roughly $4.67 to $5.60 per hour.

However, there’s a new twist. Burger King has adamantly refused to pay the extra penny per pound, and according to the article, “its refusal has encouraged tomato growers to cancel the deals already struck with Taco Bell and McDonald’s.” In brief, “the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange has threatened a fine of $100,000 for any grower who accepts an extra penny per pound for migrant wages.”

Can you imagine any other situation in America where companies would be punished for offering higher wages to their employees? And remember, this new fine structure would not merely maintain a current wage level already in place; rather, it would reverse the gains made in negotiations with Taco Bell and McDonald’s.

The article estimates that paying the additional penny per pound would cost Burger King only $250,000 a year. Let’s see how that stacks up against some other numbers. Burger King’s three principal shareholders are Bain Capital, the Texas Pacific Group, and Goldman Sachs Capital Partners, each owning about 18% to 20% of BKC’s shares; thus, each holding is worth somewhere in the neighborhood of $600 million. According to Forbes magazine, in 2006 Mr. Lloyd C. Blankfein, the Chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs, garnered an annual bonus of $27,243,500, bringing his total cash compensation to $43,867,924. Seems as though $250,000 wouldn’t exactly break the bank.

But wait, what about the fact that these migrant workers are, by and large, in this country illegally? If you watched last night’s GOP debate sponsored by CNN and YouTube (I admit I did not), you would have heard much about the supposed plague of illegal immigrants in our nation. In response to one issue, Mike Huckabee’s support of an Arkansas state scholarship program that did not discriminate against children of illegal immigrants, Mitt Romney said, “That’s not your money. That’s the taxpayers’ money!”

Now, stick with me here. Mr. Romney is upset that “taxpayers’ money” is being used to provide government services to illegal immigrant families, who are supposedly non-taxpayers. What about the migrant workers in Florida? Aren’t they also taxpayers? Remember that Florida has no state income tax; it relies on a statewide sales tax for its main revenue source. Mr. Romney, are you telling me that every migrant worker in Florida receives a tax-exempt card enabling him or her to make tax-free purchases in Florida? Or are you saying that if the employers of these workers don’t withhold taxes from their wages, it’s the fault of the workers themselves rather than the corporations that employ them?

Why am I picking on Mitt Romney rather than one of the other GOP candidates who love to rail against illegal immigrants? Because he was one of the founders and, until 1999, the CEO of Bain Capital. Yep, that Bain Capital, the same one that now owns about 19% of Burger King. For the record, Romney’s campaign states that he is "no longer involved in Bain Capital and their investment decisions," yet there’s a delicious irony in the fact that the private equity fund he formerly ran is making money by investing in a company that is profiting from the employment and underpayment of migrant workers (i.e., illegal immigrants) in the tomato fields of Florida. I wonder why that didn’t come up in last night’s debate?

I have a call in to the United Methodist Board of Church and Society to see whether the UMC has an official position on this topic, particularly with respect to any boycotts of Burger King. In the meantime, however, may I suggest you avoid Burger King in favor of other fast food (if you must eat fast food, that is). Also, if you’d like to contact BK directly to express your displeasure, their main phone number is 305.378.3000, and their Consumer Relations number is 305.378.3535, or if you’re inclined to write, you can address your comments to:

John W. Chidsey
Chief Executive Officer
Burger King Corporation
5505 Blue Lagoon Drive
Miami, FL 33126

Too easy, but I couldn't resist

Today's puzzle: How many turkeys can you find in the following picture?

Food and wine blogging

This segment will soon be known as “What I’m drinking right now”. FYI, that’s a 2005 chateau-bottled Bordeaux, Chateau Pierredon to be specific. I picked up a few of these in the $9 to $13 range recently, in response to my spouse’s desire to have more French wines on hand. We have been drinking a lot of California and Spanish reds of late, most of which tend to be somewhat fruit forward, and said spouse really wanted to get away from all that sweetness.

I was sitting around with friends Wednesday night, having opened a Cotes du Rhone (also 2005 vintage, I believe), and was surprised by how different it tasted vis-à-vis my recent wines. I had almost forgotten the pleasures of a dry, slightly tart, airy French red, and was quite pleased to re-discover them.

Now, I’m always one to rant and rave against the Parkerization of red wines (that being the high-alcohol, high-sugar, fruit-forward style preferred by so many winemakers these days that tends to yield those “scores” of 90), but of late I had only been doing that in the context of California wines. Having plunged back into French reds, I’m reminded of the joys of these wines. It’s almost as if they taste older (even though they’re not) – and not “older” as in a complex palate (although they often have those also), but “older” in terms of the overall flavor profile. Something just tastes more ancient about these “old-world” wines. It’s as if the wine is telling you, “Hey, nice work in California, but just to remind you, this is what folks have been drinking for millennia, and that many wine drinkers can’t be entirely wrong.”

Oh, and the food element of this entry – dinner tonight was a “pizza puttanesca”, a homemade pizza crust topped with leftover homemade puttanesca sauce, mozzarella and parmigiano-reggiano cheeses. For those not familiar, puttanesca sauce (literally translated as “the way a whore would make it”, presumably because of the spicy ingredients) features tomatoes, olive oil, capers, peppers, and copious amounts of garlic. Let’s just say it works really well with the cheeses as a pizza topping. (And yes, I left out the semi-traditional anchovies…sorry, Greg.)

I’ve been considering adding a wine & food element to my blog for a while now, but I don’t want to be diligent enough about wine blogging to compete with the super-serious wine bloggers out there. So, dear readers, you’ll have to be content with an occasional mention of good affordable wines that I’m currently drinking – and if you want more, just speak up.

One final note – I did attend a Beaujolais Nouveau release party last night. The 2007 Nouveau is….well…another Nouveau. It was not remarkable, in either a good or a bad way, so I suppose there’s some hope there. Just don’t make me drink it at Thanksgiving.

Rain of God, part deux

So Wednesday night it rained in the Atlanta area. You may recall that Governor Sonny Perdue gathered a group of dignitaries on the Capitol lawn to pray for rain the day before, in an effort to relieve the severe drought conditions. That’s right, God answered Sonny’s prayers…with a third of an inch of rain. Not exactly enough to cure the drought, but it was enough to have Sonny proclaim the next day that God had answered the prayers of the faithful.

IMHO, if this is your god’s answer to a prayer to relieve a drought, it sounds to me like you need a more potent divine being. As an acquaintance said to me last night (wish I could take credit for this line myself), “It’s like God hit the snooze button”. In other words, it’s as if God said, “Oh right, there are those humans in Georgia wanting me to cure the drought. Let me just give them a few drops, hit the snooze button and roll over. After all, I’m pretty tired from trying to combat hunger, war, poverty, disease, and climate change.”

Are you listening, Sonny? Get yourself a better rain deity, because obviously your current one doesn’t quite have the meteorological pull you were hoping for…

The rain of God

As many of you are already aware, the state of Georgia is facing a record drought that has caused significant declines in the levels of reservoirs that supply metropolitan Atlanta. The worst-case estimates of the remaining available water describe a scenario wherein Atlanta would run out of water in 80 days if the reservoirs are not replenished with sizeable amounts of rain.

Can you imagine a major U.S. metropolitan area actually running out of water? Can you imagine the civil unrest, the health and safety dilemmas? Clearly, this is a time for government to take serious action.

Enter Georgia’s Governor, Sonny Perdue. Today he is taking action to combat the water crisis. What is he doing, you ask? Is he instituting mandatory restrictions or implementing sweeping conservation measures? Yes, there are some significant restrictions now in place in the Atlanta area – most outdoor watering is banned (except for various commercial uses, including car washes, construction sites, and other activities essential to daily business. But now Perdue really means business, as described in this Atlanta Journal-Constitution article, Perdue “has asked Georgians to pray for rain today, and at lunchtime will convene with various religious and political leaders on the steps of the state Capitol to seek divine intervention in the state's months-long drought.”

That’s right, Georgia has skipped right over the 20th and 19th Centuries, and has leapfrogged all the way back to the era of the Old Testament prophets (see, e.g., Elijah). So what’s wrong with this, you might ask? Why not invoke a little civic religion in an effort to rally the community together (it should be noted that, to Perdue’s credit, leaders of many religious traditions have been invited to join in today’s Capitol rain dance)?

Where do I start? There’s the bad theology, invoking a divine being’s mercy when you haven’t been doing a damn thing to take care of said divine being’s created works, otherwise known as environmental stewardship. How can you go to your god in prayer when you’ve spent the last decades passing legislation that allowed massive sprawl and reckless development throughout the metropolitan Atlanta area with complete disregard for its natural resources and the capacity of the creation to support the ever-expanding suburbs and exurbs? If you want to pray for something, pray for some wisdom to create smart growth policies. Pray for better mass transit to take some of those automobiles off of Atlanta’s roadways and thus reduce the amount of greenhouse gases they’re emitting, which just might help stem the tide of climate change and thus restore some equilibrium to the region’s weather patterns. Oh, and please pray to shut down the Southern Company’s hideous coal-fired power plants in the state, which are some of the worst sources of greenhouse gas pollution imaginable.

OK, let’s say that even if you disagree with the theology and you assume they’ll be repenting of their appalling lack of environmental stewardship and creation care, you might consider this to be harmless nonsense, albeit nonsense. But then, of course, there’s the whole church-state issue. Are you seriously telling me that you’re spending my state tax dollars to hold a rain dance on the state Capitol grounds? Because that’s what this is, a good old-fashioned rain dance, and I won’t be any happier about it if Governor Perdue dons a feather headdress and paints his face. It’s too bad Perdue isn’t eligible for re-election, because I could design a great campaign commercial for his opponents – something along the lines of Nero fiddled while Rome burned, and Perdue did a rain dance while Atlanta dried up. Just imagine the visuals.

This reminds me of the old joke about the guy whose house is in the path of oncoming floods. A rescue team comes along in a jeep, but he says, “No, I’m staying here, God will save me.” Later the waters rise, and as his first floor is flooded a boat comes along to rescue him, but again he protests, “No, I’m staying here, God will save me.” Finally as he’s stuck on his roof, the waters raging around him, a helicopter flies overhead and drops a ladder, but he stands firm in his faith, “No, I’m staying here, God will save me.” Naturally, the guy dies in the floodwaters, and when he enters heaven and meets God, he asks him, “Lord, I was faithful to you, I trusted you, why didn’t you save me?” God replies, “Save you? I sent you a jeep, I sent you a boat, I sent you a helicopter? What else did you want me to do?”

So that’s God’s message to Georgia – you could have repaired your water infrastructure, you could have controlled your urban sprawl, you could have taken better care of the creation and your natural resources. What else did you want me to do?