Tomato Casual » Subway Paying More for Florida’s Tomatoes

By Vanessa Richins

In response to a “protest tour” started by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, Subway has agreed to pay an extra penny per pound for all tomatoes bought from Southwest Florida.

Members from the Coalition went to Subway’s headquarters in Miami, Florida with demands that Subway help them give their tomato pickers better wages and working conditions.

On Tuesday, when the protest tour began, Subway signed an agreement that they would pay the penny per pound extra.

“Today, the fast-food industry has spoken with one voice,” Gerardo Reyes, a member of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, said in a prepared statement.

“With this agreement, the four largest restaurant companies in the world have now joined their voices to the growing call for a more modern, more humane agricultural industry in Florida. Now it is time for others in the fast food and supermarket industry to follow suit and for the promise of long-overdue labor reform in Florida’s fields contained in these agreements to be made real.”

Taco Bell, McDonald’s, and Burger King have already signed similar agreements.

Another condition included the fact that an outside organization would supervise and verify that Subway gives the correct payments to the workers. It also called for “a more stringent supplier code of conduct that includes farmworker participation in the monitoring of growers’ compliance and strict “zero tolerance” guidelines for the most egregious labor rights violations.”

Subway has decided to apply this code of conduct to all of its products, not just tomatoes. Good for them!