Activists from Students Against Sweatshops GVSU (SAS-GVSU) visited six Taco Bell locations in West Michigan today to hand out information and draw attention to the ongoing campaign and boycott against Taco Bell initiated by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW). Today's actions were organized in solidarity with the CIW's 2004 Truth Tour during which workers from Immokalee, Florida travelled to Taco Bell's world headquarters in Irvine, California. Along the way, the CIW Truth Tour stopped at a number of college campuses working on the Boot the Bell campaign and visited Taco Bell restaurants, in addition to visiting Taco Bell's parent company, YUM! Brands, in Louisville, Kentucky.
Taco Bell is the target of a three-year boycott initiated by the CIW in order to force Taco Bell to pay more for tomatoes grown in Florida. As a major buyer of Florida tomatoes, Taco Bell can use its economic and financial power to demand better working conditions in Florida's tomato fields. Farmworkers who pick for Florida growers who sell tomatoes to Taco Bell earn between 40-50 cents for every 32-lb bucket of tomatoes they pick. Taco Bell could nearly double the picking piece rate paid to farmworkers by agreeing to pay just one penny more per pound for the tomatoes it buys from Florida growers.
SAS-GVSU is supporting the boycott by working to have Taco Bell removed from the Grand Valley State University's Allendale campus and replaced with a restaurant that offers similar priced food. The group is currently distributing information about the treatment of tomato pickers in Immokalee and collecting signatures on a petition that calls for Taco Bell's removal from campus. SAS-GVSU is the most well-known activist group on campus and the campaign is a frequent subject of articles and letters in GVSU's student newspaper.
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