Hold the Tomatoes

You should think twice about pulling into a drive-thru for one of those burgers topped with a slice of tomato these days. Consider what someone had to go through to garnish your burger with tomato.

Migrant farm workers who harvest tomatoes in South Florida for growers who supply tomatoes for fast-food chains like Burger King, McDonalds, and Taco Bell have one of the nation’s most backbreaking jobs. 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. For their efforts, this holiday season many of them are about to get a 40 percent pay cut.

Two years ago migrant farm workers in Florida gained their first significant pay raise since the late 1970s when Taco Bell ended a consumer boycott by agreeing to pay an extra penny per pound for its tomatoes, with the extra cent going directly to the farm workers. Last April, McDonald’s agreed to a similar arrangement, increasing the wages of its tomato pickers to about 77 cents per bucket.

But Burger King, whose headquarters are in Florida, has adamantly refused to pay the extra penny. And as a result the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange, representing 90 percent of the state’s growers, announced this month that it will not allow any of its members to collect the extra penny for farm workers. The Exchange has threatened a fine of $100,000 for any grower who accepts an extra penny per pound for migrant wages.

Three private equity firms — Bain Capital, the Texas Pacific Group and Goldman Sachs Capital Partners — control most of Burger King’s stock. Last year, the chief executive of Goldman Sachs, Lloyd C. Blankfein, earned the largest annual bonus in Wall Street history, and this year he stands to receive an even larger one. Goldman Sachs has served its investors well lately. According to Business Week, the company has doubled the value of its Burger King investment within three years.

Telling Burger King to pay an extra penny for tomatoes and provide a decent wage to migrant workers would hardly bankrupt the company. Indeed, it would cost Burger King only $250,000 a year. At Goldman Sachs, that sort of money shouldn’t be too hard to find. In 2006, the bonuses of the top 12 Goldman Sachs executives exceeded $200 million — more than twice as much money as all of the roughly 10,000 tomato pickers in southern Florida earned that year.

The least Goldman Sachs could do is find a way to share some of the company’s good fortune with the workers at the bottom of the food chain.

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