Is it good to be Burger King?

Tom Philpott gives us this post today at Gristmill, a blog that describes itself as "leafy green commentary." Philpott covered the speech of Eric Schlosser - author of Fast Food Nation - at Eco-Farm, the annual conference held by the Ecological Farming Association of California. Philpott writes:

Organized by the heroic Coalition of Immokolee Workers, tomato pickers had managed to cajole major tomato buyers Taco Bell and McDonald's to agree to pay an extra penny a pound for tomatoes -- enough to double the wages of workers.

But Burger King has refused to go along with the hike, a move that threatened to scotch the deal. By holding back on that penny per pound, Schlosser reports, Burger King saves itself $250,000 per year -- a rounding error compared to annual profits, and a fraction on a fast-food CEO's annual pay.

Schlosser himself recently brought that story to broad public attention with an op-ed in The New York Times. And while he didn't mention it in his speech, it was almost surely his high-profile expose that inspired Bernie Sanders, Ted Kennedy, and other senators to get involved, pressuring Burger King to relent. Schlosser predicted that to get the senators off its back, Burger King would likely soon pay the extra penny.

TK: Should Burger King pay the extra penny a pound for tomatoes? Here is a link to an interesting Web site that discusses the history and effectiveness of boycotts. From the site, about the history of boycotts:

The word "boycott" is of much more recent origin than the act of boycotting. Many British absentee landowners in late 19th century Ireland took advantage of famine conditions in Ireland to evict tenants from their property and to lower wages for field work. One of the worst offenders was Captain Charles Boycott (1832-1897), estate manager of the Irish lands of the British Third Earl of Erne. In 1880, Boycott evicted undesirable tenants from the Earl's estates and paid laborers only half the day wage for field work. An American journalist in Ireland and an Irish priest came up with a fitting word to describe the Irish Land League's tactic of encouraging the peasantry to stop working and producing for oppressive landlords, coining the term "boycotting." Irish peasants "boycotted" the estates of absentee Earl of Erne, forcing Charles Boycott to harvest the crops. The boycott was extended further: no merchant would service the Boycott family, and their servants disappeared. This collective social and economic ostracism forced Boycott to stop his abusive tactics.

The example of the Irish Land League and the rise of organized labor in the United States encouraged the use of boycotts as never before. Hitherto the most famous "boycott" in the U.S., before the word was invented, was in 1765, to protest the Stamp Act. As a result, Parliament repealed the act.

TK: What makes a boycott effective? From the Web site:

Most boycotts deliver less than they set out to achieve, though, and as a mechanism for change they have a very spotted record. Financially, boycotts have had negligible impact on their targets, according to a 1997 study published in the Journal of Business Research. Some of the least successful boycotts, now all but abandoned in the United States, have been consumer protests against price increases. Other ill-fated boycotts have been directed at only one link in a complex chain of factors, making the object of the boycott seem unclear or unrealistic. Still others never appeal to widely held values in order to attract mass support.


TK: I think any organized boycott of Burger King over this tomato wage issue would be ill-fated, in part because it precisely is directed at one link in a complex chain of factors. I believe most of the public would like Congress to deal with the working conditions of immigrant farm workers by enforcing our immigration and employment laws, not by this patchwork effort that is driven by one interest group.