The so-called “Smart Cap” amendment, which would place a constitutional limit on state revenue, is set to join the lineup, having cleared its final two committees this week.

The measure is modeled on Colorado’s Taxpayer Bill of Rights (nicknamed TABOR), which limits state revenue using a formula based on population growth and inflation. Colorado is the only state with such a measure in place, and voters suspended it amid concerns it stifled funding for government services.

Haridopolos has said the version he’s supporting makes several improvements on Colorado’s. It’s more flexible (because a supermajority of lawmakers can vote to suspend it) and less restrictive (because it doesn’t apply to local governments).

He said the measure will support his efforts to make the state’s tax burden more stable and predictable.

Jack McCray of AARP warned the cap could prevent government services from keeping up with demand. Florida’s seniors contribute a substantial portion of the state’s tax revenue, but in some cases they also rely more heavily on government services, such as health care.

Florida’s elderly population is projected to increase faster than the rest of the state, but under Haridopolos’ “Smart Cap,” any taxes that exceed the revenue cap would be set aside in the state’s “rainy day” fund. Once that fund is maxed out, any additional surplus would be sued to offset required local taxes for schools. As a result, if seniors’ demand for government services increases, there may not be a corresponding increase in revenue to pay for it.

Sen. Don Gaetz, R-Niceville, rejected that argument Wednesday. More spending does not mean more or better services, he said, citing the example of Florida’s schools, which rank lower among other states in terms of funding than they do in measures of quality.

Sen. Ellyn Bogdanoff, R-Fort Lauderdale, said the debate comes down to a philosophical question: Should the government keep taxing, spending and borrowing, or should those things be held in check?

“This about self-restraint,” she said, adding, “Every time we have money we keep spending, spending, spending and creating more programs.”

Ben Wilcox of the League of Women Voters has argued those philosophical questions should be left open for future lawmakers, not answered permanently by a constitutional amendment, to no avail so far. The Senate’s measure has advanced with votes largely along party lines.

The House is working on its own version of the measure, which if passed would appear on the 2012 ballot for voter approval.

The Sierra Club is determined to reduce U.S. oil dependence. (Flickr, The Sierra Club)

The Sierra Club is in the process of trying to answer that question. For the past six months, it has worked on a massive study on how to reduce the United States’ oil dependence in an economically and environmentally beneficial way. The group is also building a coalition of environmental advocates and lawmakers to support the project, which will quantify potential oil-use reductions across every industrial sector.

“Over the next 20 years, how steep can we make cuts in oil consumption while allowing the economy to flourish and while creating more jobs rather than penalizing individual workers or communities?” Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune asked. “So, this will be a major priority of the club over the next several years — to build a broad based coalition of organizations and elected officials who will want to stand up for a very thoughtful and pragmatic, but visionary and aggressive plan to get off oil.”

Brune, who took over his post just one month before the oil spill started, recently sat down for an interview with me. He outlined the organization’s oil study, talked about the prospects for energy legislation and previewed the upcoming mid-term elections.

Here is an edited-down version of our talk:

What is the major issue going forward for the Sierra Club right now?
Our top issue remains fighting climate change in a way that increases the availability of clean energy like solar and wind, while also improving the public health benefits associated with decreasing our reliance on fossil fuels.

Is the focus now on Environmental Protection Agency regulations, Congress or both?
I would say both for sure. We see great opportunity in EPA rulemakings to increase public health benefits by forcing utilities in particular to account for the cost of their pollution. A top priority right now is organizing around EPA’s hearings on coal ash, to make sure that coal ash is treated as a hazardous waste. But, over the next couple of years, we’ll be looking at a whole series of rulemakings, many of which are focused on stationary sources like coal plants, but we’re also looking at EPA rulemakings to cut our dependence on oil.

Is there a serious concern about challenges to EPA’s regulatory authority under the Clean Air Act going forward?
Yeah, certainly many threats have been made to EPA’s authority to act under the Clean Air Act, attempts either to gut the Clean Air Act or eliminate EPA’s authority. So, we’re taking those threats very seriously. We also think that should there be a public debate about these issues that the public overwhelmingly supports strong, effective and cost-effective regulations that have come out of the EPA for the last 40 years under the Clean Air Act. We think there’s broad public support for retaining its authority.

In terms of Congress, it doesn’t seem that anything is going to happen on cap-and-trade any time soon. Is that your thinking as well?
Well, you know, I think it is difficult to predict too far into the future. We think Congress should act. We know that members were put into office with the expectation that there would be a meaningful, substantive response to climate change and that Congress would enact laws that would put a down payment on scaling up clean energy. So, we know that the demand is there. But whether or not senators in particular will respond remains to be seen.

Putting aside cap-and-trade, there’s been talk of a narrower energy bill. It looks like Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) and Sen. Brownback (R-Kans.) are introducing a renewable energy standard that they are hoping to get passed. Is there a specific RES target that you would like to see or is it that the policy needs to move forward as soon as possible?
Well, let me make a general point. There was far too much of a focus earlier this spring on a single bill to address climate change economy-wide. And, in reality, there are dozens of things that Congress can do to fight climate change and to increase energy security in the country. In regards to this particular RES bill, our focus is primarily on keeping it clean. We want to see a renewable energy standard that is focused on truly clean energy and doesn’t have absurd giveways to nuclear power or so-called clean coal or any one of the other handful of options. And then of course to increase those investments as quickly as possible.

Is there a number that’s being thrown around among your members now?
Yeah, but it’s not something I really want to discuss in the public right now.

What other things are you focusing on in Congress?

I’d say the top thing is a plan to get off oil. We just experienced the largest environmental disaster in our country’s history and in response, Congress has done nothing. There’s not even a plan to fully reform what used to be called MMS and there’s not yet a plan to hold oil companies fully accountable and to lift the liability cap. And most importantly, there’s no effective plan right now to significantly reduce our dependence on foreign oil. So, if there’s one thing that Congress can do in the next couple of months, it would be to challenge the oil industry and deliver us a plan to get off oil.

It’s been sort of an uphill battle trying to get an oil spill response bill to pass, something that is incredibly popular with the American people. And you’re right, it seems like the bill is getting held up on this idea of liability, whether or not an oil company should be held 100 percent liable for spilling thousands of gallons of oil into the ocean. What are your thoughts on that?
We shouldn’t be privatizing the gain and sharing the risk with the public. If oil companies are going to be benefiting from oil drilling, they also have to be able to absorb any of the risks associated with drilling.

Do you expect that Congress will pass an oil spill bill this year?
We do.

I wanted to also touch on the mid-term elections. It’s on everybody’s mind right now. What is the Sierra Club doing in terms of working with individual candidates?
So, there’s lots that we’re doing. The Sierra Club has 1.4 million members and supporters, so over the next several weeks, a big job of ours will be to educate our supporters about what’s at stake Nov. 2., trying to get people out to the polls and to engage our members to become volunteers. So, the Sierra Club endorses specific candidates.

We get very heavily involved in local and state propositions. Arguably our biggest priority this year is to defeat Prop 23, which would undermine the Global Warming Solutions Act, AB32, that was passed in California a few years ago. With that, we’re doing a massive voter mobilization drive. Individual members will be calling voters to encourage them to get out. We are also part of a coalition of groups that is doing advertising, thought we’re not doing any ourselves.

Are there any other races that are of particular concern for you?
We’re looking at the Senate races in Nevada and Missouri. Obviously, Harry Reid has been excellent in fighting the coal industry as well as supporting big investments in clean energy. We are also looking at the Florida race. Democratic Senate candidate Meek has a 100 percent League of Conservation Voting score. He’s been strongly in favor of Florida’s solar bills as well as the ban on offshore oil drilling. There’s obviously dozens or even hundreds of races in which the environmental voice is an important one.

There has been a lot said by the oil industry and Gulf coast lawmakers about the Obama administration’s offshore drilling moratorium’s impact on jobs, though there was a report that came out last week that said job losses might not be quite what people estimated. What’s the Sierra Club’s position on all of this? Should the moratorium be lifted?
No, I think that a full moratorium should be put in place. We’re mindful of the fact that we need to make stronger investments in clean energy jobs so that those who work in the oil industry who want to put food on the table for their families have viable alternatives in growing industries that they can work in.

To be clear, we’re not advocating turning off the spigot in the Gulf. There are more than 4,0000 rigs operating in the Gulf right now and we are not saying there should be no oil drilling in the Gulf, not until we have a clear plan to get off oil. But what we’re saying is that since it’s been proven now that oil drilling offshore is dirty and it’s dangerous and it’s deadly, we need to tighten up the safety regulations to make sure that disasters like this don’t happen in the future. And we need to stop investing in exploring for new oil and instead explore much more carefully and aggressively investments in solar and wind so that we’re not poisoning our coastlines as we’re trying to keep our lights on.

On pipeline safety. There have been a couple major disasters this year. Of course, the natural gas pipeline explosion in San Bruno, Calif. And before that there was an oil spill in Michigan from an oil sands pipeline. Looming over this you have a massive proposed pipeline project, the Keystone XL project, that is going to go from Canada to Texas. Has the Sierra Club been looking at the issue of pipeline safety through a new set of eyes now that we’ve had these disasters?
Yes, we have. There’s two things that we’re doing. Clearly, the cost of our reliance on oil — when you talk abut the Michigan spill, the Gulf oil spill and the Keystone pipeline — is so much higher than what we pay at the pump when you consider the foreign policy implications, the fact that our entire economy is held hostage to wild fluctuations in oil prices.

So, what we’ve done over the last six months since I started at the Sierra Club is to build out a much more aggressive, comprehensive plan for how our country can get off oil. Over the next 20 years, how steep can we make cuts in oil consumption while allowing the economy to flourish and while creating more jobs rather than penalizing individual workers or communities. So, this will be a major priority of the club over the next several years — to build a broad based coalition of organizations and elected officials who will want to stand up for a very thoughtful and pragmatic, but visionary and aggressive plan to get off oil.

And then, regarding natural gas, we don’t think we can simultaneously phase out coal, oil and gas at the same time. Gas will need to stick around for a while. But there the challenge is to have much higher and much tighter safety standards so we’re not in this disastrous position again and again and again where people are losing their lives due to an industry is ineffectively regulated.

On oil sands or, as some call them, tar sands. There were senators in Canada last week reviewing oil sands production in there. Is there a message you would like to send to them in terms of how oil sands should be treated? Because there’s an argument out there that it’s better to get oil from Canada, despite the high greenhouse gas emissions of oil sands production, because we’re no longer reliant on the Middle East.
I think that’s just misguided thinking. The Pentagon says that climate change is one of the top national security threats in the 21st century. We have to deal effectively with climate change. Importing oil from the tar sands is 2-3 times more greenhouse gas intensive than conventional oil. You don’t solve a problem by making it worse. So, I understand that the notion that we have oil that is under the sands of our neighbors to the north is attractive to people who think we can have a simply pipeline solve a lot of problems. But the reality is that if we rely too much on a different source of oil that is dirtier, that will accelerate climate change rather than reduce it’s impacts, we’re only going to be replacing one set of problems with an entirely different set of problems. The only effective way to address this problem systemically is to adopt a plan to get America off oil.

Can you be more specific about this plan?
We’ll have a plan that we can introduce probably in the next 3-6 months. It looks at every major industrial source of oil consumption, from the oil that’s used in medium- and heavy-duty trucks, light trucks, cars and SUVs, the oil used for pesticides and paints. Whatever the major source of consumption is, we’re looking at a major, comprehensive plan to phase it out where and whenever possible.

What’s the time frame of this phase-out?
The big challenge is political will. For example, clearly it is technically possible, one would presume, to produce nothing but plug-in hybrid and electric vehicles in the next couple years. Whether that’s politically possible, of course remains to be seen. If the United States were to mobilize as we did in World War II and completely transition the entire automobile fleet to produce a new technology, clearly that could be done.

What we need to do is measure the distance between what we can do and what we’re willing to do as a country and develop what we feel as responsible and pragmatic, but also aggressive tactics to achieve energy independence. To help inform that decision we would look at the cost of different decisions under different time scenarios, the benefits economically, environmentally or socially depending on our foreign policy and what would the oil savings be in real-world terms. Then we’d highlight a few different options. We’ll have the data shortly. Then we’ll figure out how to use it. We’ve commissioned this first study just as the Sierra Club, but we anticipate doing more with a broad coalition.

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The long-awaited extension will pose a challenge to already overextended state unemployment insurance agencies. During the recession, states have been dealing with a massive expansion of the system, granting up to 99 weeks of benefits to many of the 38 million unemployed Americans. Now, with the Senate on the verge of action, states are scrambling to figure out how to retroactively disburse seven weeks of benefits worth more than $10 billion to 2.5 million people as quickly as possible.

Part of the problem is that the high unemployment rate has already overloaded state systems. Last month, the National Association of State Workforce Agencies completed a survey of the unemployment insurance providers in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. In the report, 46 of the 51 providers said they had difficulty managing the work flow. And states cited congressional inaction as one source of the headaches. Oregon, responding to the NASWA inquiry, named Congress as its biggest problem: “[Lawmakers’] inability to complete legislation to extend [emergency unemployment compensation] in a timely [manner] has created a substantial amount of work in our UI Call Centers answering inquiries from concerned and panicked UI beneficiaries.”

Those “panicked UI beneficiaries” number in the millions and need answers as to what they are getting, how and when. Expecting the extension to come through, most state agencies have continued to update their files through the lapse. Though unemployed workers have not received checks, they have continued to file with their state agency to affirm that remain out of work and are searching for new jobs, a requirement to receive benefits. The decision to keep that information current through the Senate’s dithering means that the states will not need to work through a 2.5 million-person backlog of paperwork once the benefits are extended.

But unemployment benefits are allocated using a complicated multi-tier system, with dozens of rules about qualification. Nobody — neither the state agencies nor the unemployed — knows just what Congress will approve and how that will comport with state systems. Will the Senate vote on the House bill? Will the House have to take up the Senate version? Will Congress approve the $25-per-week Federal Additional Compensation funds, tacked onto unemployment checks? How will states deal with disbursing the money? Will they go claimant by claimant, or week of dropped claims by week? Confusion over what is happening means that state unemployment agencies are already receiving thousands of questions, overloading call centers.

One issue is that if a worker has had an intervening period of work during the eight-week lapse, he or she needs to inform the state and might qualify for a new tier of benefits. “Say you were a construction worker who got a week-long gig on a project during the lapse,” explains George Wentworth, an analyst at the National Employment Law Project. “Maybe before you qualified for $600 a week in federal extended benefits. You might requalify for a $150 state benefit rate because of those intervening earnings, even if you had weeks of federal benefits left. Congress is, in this legislation, probably saying you can stay on your federal benefits. But all of those people need to be reprocessed, and there is no sense of scale as to how many people that might be.”

Communication — simply getting news about about changes and processes — might be the biggest challenge. “You will hear lots of claims from workers, claims that will be accurate, that it will be difficult to get through to staff in the unemployment insurance agencies,” Wentworth says. “The infrastructure has really been operating beyond maximum capacity for some time. This is the most weeks [of benefits] for the most people that states have ever had to manage. Frankly, the systems were designed in terms of capacity based on historical previous high levels of unemployment. And this is the highest level of unemployment since the early 1980s.”

Other problems are state-specific. Some states, such as Georgia, have had no official policy of retroactive payment, but are planning to make make an exception this time — posing a logistical challenge as they update their systems. And in Florida, more than 200,000 unemployed persons might not get their benefits at all. The state included a June 5 expiration on the extended benefits in a state statute. That means that when Washington re-ups the program, hundreds of thousands of Floridians won’t be able to resume receiving their benefits if current law stands, the Florida Independent reports.

“Almost 35,000 workers are losing their only real source of income each week while Congress continues to stall the re-authorization of the extended benefits program,” Florida AFL-CIO President Mike Williams said in a statement. “The fact that these workers and our economy will continue to suffer when Congress does act because of a single line in Florida Statutes is appalling. This program costs the state next to nothing and does not raise unemployment insurance rates for businesses.”

Other states have prepared for the congressional reauthorization but still face an enormous logistical challenge. Norm Isotalo, a spokesperson for the Department of Labor in Michigan, the state with the second-highest unemployment rate at 14 percent, said the state had been working overtime to ensure the more than 120,000 persons in need of retroactive benefits get them quickly. “We’ve been holding meetings in anticipation that the Senate will pass some legislation next week that will restore these federal benefits,” he said. “We will probably make a lump sum payment to people who are owed retroactively. Then, we are going to reach out to people who have exhausted state benefits and never had a chance to apply to [federal extension programs].” He noted the department was preparing for the deluge by keeping additional workers on overtime, but that planning remained ongoing.

Labor experts say that unemployment insurance recipients should expect some hiccups as their states send all of those checks out. “It’s unfair to the states,” Wentworth says. “It is very difficult to manage these situations when you have a long gap in reauthorization, even in terms of just explaining it to unemployment insurance recipients.”

[EPA/ZUMAPRESS.com ]

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The men behind Fla. House Joint Resolution 37 are Republican State Senator Carey Baker and Republican State Representative Scott Plakon. Their resolution has so far garnered 14 cosponsors:

JOINT RESOLUTION by Plakon and Workman (CO-SPONSORS) Adams; Carroll; Dorworth; Drake; Ford; Hays; Horner; Hudson; O’Toole; Precourt; Proctor; Renuart; Snyder; Stargel

Health Care Services: Proposes creation of s. 28, Art. X of State Constitution to prohibit laws or rules from compelling any person, employer, or health care provider to participate in any health care system; permit person or employer to purchase lawful health care services directly from health care provider; permit health care provider to accept direct payment from person or employer for lawful health care services; exempt persons, employers, & health care providers from penalties & fines for paying or accepting direct payment for lawful health care services; permit purchase or sale of health insurance in private health care systems; & specifies what amendment does not affect or prohibit.

No report yet on the extent to which the lawmakers were assisted by insurance industry executives and health care lobbyists in crafting the language of the amendment.

According to WOKV in Jacksonville, the bill would have to be supported by a three-fifths majority in both chambers– the Fla. House and Senate– just to get onto the 2010 ballot.

Any state-wide ad campaign for the amendment would be costly– running into the millions at least– and would likely focus on the drawbacks of a “socialized” system and the great benefits of a “market-based” system.

The country, including Florida, now benefits from both systems. Medicare is socialized medicine. The market-based system is the one many Americans now think of as the one that is “broken,” riddled with abuses, where costs continue to climb at the same time patients are denied coverage in increasing numbers and have little recourse, where they search in vain for any truly alternative health insurance to buy, for example.

“We believe this unprecedented power-grab by President Obama and Congress is clearly not in the best interests of the citizens of Florida,” Baker and Plakon said in a joint statement. Baker told WOKV that the reform plan in Congress amounts to socialization.

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Currently, Sen. Hillary Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama are less than 200 delegates apart in the presidential race, not counting Florida or Michigan.

Originally, Florida’s 121-member district-level delegation from the now-illicit January primary was divided between three candidates: 67 for Clinton, 41 for Obama and 13 for former Sen. John Edwards. Edwards has since dropped out of the race. There is a total of 210 delegates from Florida.

It is possible Clinton and Obama could remain in the tight race for delegates after Tuesday’s Ohio and Texas presidential primary. If Crist, a Republican, is successful in setting up a new primary date for the state Democrats, Florida could again impact the results of a Democratic presidential campaign, this time without any hanging chads.

Local groups allied with a farmworker alliance based in Immokalee, Fla., staged a protest Saturday outside the Chipotle restaurant on 16th and Blake streets, just blocks from the company headquarters. The Coalition of Immokalee Workers has targeted fast-food chains in its quest to raise wages and improve working conditions for migrant farm laborers who harvest tomatoes in south Florida.

“We think ‘food with integrity’ is a great idea,” said Jordan Garcia, of Coloradoans for Immigrant Rights, a member organization of the Denver Fair Food Committee. “The reason we have chosen Chipotle is because they have said very clearly that they believe in honest food.”

Chipotle, which at one point purchased about 20 percent of its tomato supply from Florida for 12 weeks a year, has responded to the CIW claims of farmworker abuse by ceasing to buy Florida tomatoes. But that’s not acceptable for those who want to see the company incorporate the fight against farmworker exploitation into its mission of “food with integrity.”

“We’re asking Chipotle to take a stand,” said Seth Donovan of Prax(us), an anti-human trafficking organization in Denver and ally of the CIW. “Fast-food chains have such huge buying power, they are in a position to pressure farmers to raise wages and protect workers.”

The CIW negotiated hard-fought penny-per-pound deals with McDonald’s Corp., and Taco Bell owner Yum Brands, Inc. – agreements that, if adopted industrywide, would essentially double wages for farmworkers. But those deals are in danger of collapsing under pressure from Miami-based Burger King, which has refused to sign on, and a tomato growers group that is threatening $100,000 fines against any farmer that participates. A spokesman for the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange called the penny-per-pound deals “un-American” because they allowed a third party to set wages. The growers also claim the deals are in violation of anti-trust laws but have so far offered no specifics.

Given the precarious future of these deals, Colorado organizers say it’s more important than ever that Chipotle, with its focus on humanely raised livestock and organic produce, become an industry leader in the struggle to improve the lives of farmworkers. Chipotle spokesperson Chris Arnold did not return repeated calls for comment. In a short e-mail Arnold wrote, “We certainly respect their right to protest, but we don’t buy any Florida tomatoes at all. We are reviewing practices among Florida tomato growers, but don’t have any plans in place to begin buying Florida tomatoes.” Arnold did not specify where Chipotle purchases its tomatoes. Florida supplies roughly 80 percent of the nation’s fresh tomatoes between November and February.

Farmworker advocates say Chipotle’s move does nothing to address the problem as the sub-poverty wages and abuse suffered by Florida pickers are well-documented and endemic throughout the tomato growing industry.

Migrant laborers – many of them illegal immigrants – have long been among the nation’s most impoverished and most exploited workers. Over the past 10 years, the Justice Department has prosecuted six cases of farmworker slavery in Florida. There, the backbreaking job of harvesting tomatoes takes place in hot, pesticide-laced fields, where the workers must stoop to pick and haul tomatoes for 10 to 12 hours a day. They earn a piece-rate of about 45 cents for every 32-pound bucket. That can mean up to $10 an hour for those who can fill more than 200 buckets a day – 6,400 pounds of tomatoes. But the work is not guaranteed, and tomato pickers get no health insurance and receive no overtime pay.

“Chipotle preaches ‘food with integrity,’ but if they’re not going to step up and protect the rights of human beings, I don’t see much integrity in that at all,” said Scott Kwasny, executive director of Colorado Jobs with Justice. His comment was in reference to Chipotle’s well-publicized efforts to buy all its pork and some of its chicken and beef from “free range” farms, seen as more humane, where the animals are allowed to roam rather than kept in small cages.

Sarah Gill, a Denver resident who came out for Saturday’s protest downtown, also said she’d like to see Chipotle’s practices fall in line with its rhetoric.

“If you say you care, I want to hold you accountable.”

The nationwide reach of Florida tomatoes, which dominate supplies during the winter months, is the reason activists are staging protests across the country this fall to demand improved wages and conditions for Florida farmworkers who harvest the tomatoes we all eat.

About 25 people gathered Monday outside a Burger King restaurant in Denver in support of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), an organization of Florida farmworkers that has called on the fast-food giant to address allegations of substandard wages and working conditions in its tomato supply chain.

“It’s some of the most difficult and dangerous work in the U.S.,” said Robert McGoey, a member of the Student/Farmworker Alliance, which is a member organization of the Alliance for Fair Food,a coalition formed to support the CIW. “Farmworkers are out in the hot fields all day hauling heavy containers in fields that are covered with pesticides. It’s dirty, dangerous work that just isn’t respected.”

The Denver protest was part of a nationwide campaign by the CIW and the Alliance for Fair Food to call attention to the plight of Florida farmworkers and to pressure Burger King to use its purchasing power to ensure the rights of low-wage laborers at the bottom of its supply chain.

“It’s the purchasers that have a lot of power in the marketplace,” said McGoey. “They are the ones who can dictate prices.”

Both Burger King Corp. and the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange have vigorously defended themselves against the allegations of worker abuse and exploitation in the tomato supply chain.

On the main page of its website, the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange states that the average hourly wage for a Florida tomato harvester is more than $12, well above the federal minimum wage. 

Burger King spokesperson Keva Silversmith said the company enforces a “robust member code of conduct,” which requires all suppliers to be in full compliance with federal, state and local laws.

“The dispute about wages needs to take place between the employer and the employee, and Burger King is not a party to that dispute,” Silversmith said. “There’s a belief that Burger King is a direct employer of the tomato harvesters, which we are not.”

The CIW wants Burger King to agree to pay one penny more per pound of tomatoes as a surcharge to help farmworkers. The coalition came to a similar agreement with McDonald’s, but citing legal concerns, the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange recently backed out of the “penny-per-pound” agreement, raising questions over the future of the hard-fought CIW accords with McDonald’s and Yum Brands Inc. 

The decision by the Florida tomato producers to eliminate the penny-per-pound extra pay to workers makes corporate cooperation on issues of farmworker rights all the more important, McGoey said. 

“It points to the need for more companies, such as Burger King to say that they are going to support the human rights of the workers in their supply chain,” he said. “Purchasers need to stand up for workers’ rights.”

In February, after negotiations with CIW representatives, Burger King decided not to enter into a penny-per-pound agreement with tomato harvesters, instead offering to recruit Immokalee farm workers for full-time jobs in Burger King restaurants. The Alliance for Fair Food called the offer “insulting.” Burger King is not reconsidering, however.

“The bottom line is that if the Florida Tomato Growers are not going to participate in the penny-per-pound program, we have no way of identifying who the harvesters are, much less figure out how to get them additional money,” said Silversmith. The CIW has never provided the corporation with specific locations where worker abuse occurs, Silversmith added. “Here at Burger King we are ready to jump in our cars today to investigate allegations of slavery or severe worker misconduct in Immokalee.”

But McGoey insists that the abuse of farmworkers is widespread in Florida.  “We can’t pinpoint a specific supplier to Burger King because their supply chain isn’t transparent.”