Posted on 11/25/2005 7:26:00 AM PST by paudio
The head of the Presbyterian Church U.S.A. has endorsed a call for McDonalds to improve working conditions and raise the pay of its tomato pickers.
In a letter released on Wednesday, the Rev. Clifton Kirkpatrick, stated clerk of the two-million-member denomination, challenged the fast food chain giant to “put an end to human rights violations” by bringing an “adequate solution to the grievous conditions and sub-poverty wages of farmworkers.”
"Farmworkers are explicitly excluded from the National Labor Relations Act, which denies them the right to organize, the right to negotiate with their employers, and the right to appeal grievances to the National Labor Relations Board," Kirpatrick wrote. "Current law does not provide farmworkers with overtime pay or secure other benefits such as healthcare."
The PC(USA), the nation’s largest and wealthiest Presbyterian denomination, just recently ended a successful three-year boycott of Taco Bell and Yum! Brands Inc. over the working conditions of immigrant tomato pickers in Florida. The PC(USA) was also the first mainline denomination to join the boycott and stand by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers – “a human rights award-winning, worker-led community organization of Mexican, Guatemalan and Haitian laborers.”
In March 2005, Yum! Brands consented and nearly doubled the per-pound wage of tomato pickers.
According to Kirkpatrick, workers who pick tomatoes in Florida for McDonalds still earn just 40 to 45 cents for every 32-pound bucket they pick and haul – the same wage they received more than 25 years ago.
“McDonald's has a clear moral responsibility to take leadership to assure just working conditions and compensation for the very persons who provide the products which are at the heart of its operation,” Kirkpatrick wrote. “Any corporation which benefits through the exploitation of others is gravely implicated in such exploitation and has a moral and ethical responsibility to end that exploitation.”>
Not to be outdone by the Presbyterians, the Methodists dutifully follow in Kirkpatrick's footsteps;
http://gbgm-umc.org/global_news/pr.cfm?articleid=3061&CFID=6876667&CFTOKEN=75143722
United Methodist Women joined the National Farm Worker Ministry to support the Coalition of Immokalee Workers in their advocacy for tomato farmers and in the boycott. The entire United Methodist denomination voted to support the boycott at the May 2004 General Conference, the legislative-making body of the church.
The Women’s Division represents United Methodist Women, a one-million member organization, whose purpose is to foster spiritual growth, develop leaders and advocate for justice. Members raise close to $25 million a year for programs and projects related to women, children and youth in the United States and in more than 100 countries around the world.
http://gbgm-umc.org/umw/wdnews.cfm?articleid=3267&pgref=aa
Contact McDonald's, Burger King, and Subway today to ask that they follow Taco Bell's lead, meet with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), and help end human rights abuses in their supply chain!
Time to quit eating at Taco Bell and start eating at McD's.
Oops. I read the United Church of Christ (UCC) is claiming they are the first to join with the Communists, Socialists, and Anarchists in boycotting Taco Bell.
http://www.ucc.org/news/u030805a.htm
"We can be proud that the UCC was the first national denomination to endorse the boycott, and that many UCC congregations all over the country worked and prayed in support of this struggle for justice," Rasell said.
In July 2001, just three months after the boycott's launch, the UCC's General Synod, meeting in Kansas City, Mo., became the first denominational body to endorse the farm workers' campaign against Taco Bell. In subsequent years, the UCC was joined by several religious groups including the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), the United Methodist Church and the National Council of Churches.
Well, of course, PCUSA isn't evangelical. So what does your statement have to do with this story?
Here is the list of the usual cast of characters involved in Taco Bell and McDonalds' boycotts:
http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:upPQyBhMbGoJ:w3.pcusa.org/boycott/+episcopal+%22taco+bell+boycott%22&hl=en
After much study and prayer, this consumer boycott was endorsed by many national religious bodies including the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), the United Methodist Church, United Church of Christ, the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), the American Friends Service Committee, Alliance of Baptist Churches, Pax Christi International and US affiliates, and the National Council of Churches of Christ in the (U.S.A.) whose membership comprises 36 Protestant and Orthodox communions whose constituent membership represents over 50 million Christians in the United States. Church leaders and local congregations have been actively letter-writing and boycotting the restaurant and its products. The boycott has also been endorsed by Bishop John J. Nevins of the Diocese of Venice in Florida who has written to all of the congregations in his diocese. The National Farm Worker Ministry, the Episcopal Migrant Ministry, Agricultural Missions as well as many councils of churches and regional religious bodies have endorsed the boycott.
At the risk of really honking someone off, I'd wager there are a LOT of farmworkers who don't WANT the unions coming in, preferring instead to fly under the radar screen of certain government agencies.
Look at their membership numbers since about 1965. They are losing about 40,000 members a year these days. Does that sound like the quoted material has any relationship to reality?
You are good! Very well-researched!
If you don't play the game, you shouldn't make the rules. Churches that advocate rules for commercial enterprises should enter the game by paying taxes.
Evangelical e·van·gel·i·cal (ē'văn-jĕl'ĭ-kəl, ĕv'ən-) pronunciation also e·van·gel·ic (-jĕl'ĭk) adj.
1. Of, relating to, or in accordance with the Christian gospel, especially one of the four gospel books of the New Testament.
Can't accuse the PCSUA of that.
2. Evangelical Of, relating to, or being a Protestant church that founds its teaching on the gospel.
No on that one as well.
3. Evangelical Of, relating to, or being a Christian church believing in the sole authority and inerrancy of the Bible, in salvation only through regeneration, and in a spiritually transformed personal life.
A most emphatic NO to that one.
4. Evangelical
1. Of or relating to the Lutheran churches in Germany and Switzerland.
Doesn't apply.
2. Of or relating to all Protestant churches in Germany.
Doesn't apply
5. Of or relating to the group in the Church of England that stresses personal conversion and salvation by faith.
Doesn't apply
6. Characterized by ardent or crusading enthusiasm; zealous: an evangelical liberal.
OK. You may have me on this one. The leadership certainly crusade on behalf of abortion and homosexual rights.
n.
Evangelical A member of an evangelical church or party. e'van·gel'i·cal·ly adv.
For quite a while, PC(USA) national leadership and staff have functionned as a left-most-wing wholly-owned subsidiary of the Democratic Party.
A few links to the experiences of those who are committed to defeating this long-entrenched and out-of-control clerocracy:
http://www.layman.org/layman/the-lay-comm/williamson-parker.htm
http://www.layman.org/layman/the-layman/2001/no3-may-june01/ayres-whit-profile.htm
and the latest issue of their quarterly publication:
http://www.layman.org/layman/the-layman/2005/4-october-layman/october-05-layman-web.pdf
"For quite a while, PC(USA) national leadership and staff have functionned as a left-most-wing wholly-owned subsidiary of the Democratic Party."
PCUSA leader Kirkpatrick is not the only mainline protestant church leader who function as PAC's for the Democratic Party.
Read more here:
http://www.layman.org/layman/news/2005-news/senate-democrats-mainline-protestant.htm
and here
http://democrats.senate.gov/faith.html
A photo posted on 'A Word to the Faithful,' a Senate Democratic Caucus Web site, shows Sen. Harry Reid (second from right) meeting in his office in Washington, D.C., with (from left to right) Maureen Shea, director of government relations for the Episcopal Church USA; Rev. Frank T. Griswold, presiding bishop and primate of the Episcopal Church (USA); Rev. Clifton Kirkpatrick, stated clerk of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA); Rev. Elenora Giddings Ivory, director of the Washington Office of the PCUSA; Rev. Ron Stief, director of the UCC Justice and Witness Ministries; and Jim Winkler, general secretary of the General Board of Church and Society of the United Methodist Church.
You didn't know?
Why, let me explain how Micky-D exploits his hidden workers...
They work in the fields next to McD's feed lot, both of which are located behind McD's packing house.
The cheeeldren that are too young to pick or pack, shovel the manure from the feed yard onto the tomato fields.
Sometimes, the drivers of the tanker trucks of hormones for the cattle laugh as they spray the workers as they wash out their tanks...telling them it will help them grow strong, so they can pick more.
At night, McD's overseer locks them all up in their RonaldoMcD huts, to eat their meals of cold, unsold Big Macs & stale fries, before passing out from fatigue....
A reader suffers from some common misconceptions about immigration and agriculture: "Do you want to depend on foreign food imports to feed the U.S.A.? Because that cheap foreign labor and state subsidized agriculture is already hurting the U.S. farmer. You better look at the big picture quick! You think our citizens are pissed about foreign oil dependence, think what they will do if they go to the grocery store and the shelves are empty?" In fact, no immigrant, or anyone else, ever touches the corn, wheat, soy beans, etc. that account for the bulk of farming -- foreign labor is concentrated in the harvest of fresh fruits and vegetables. And if you look at the actual numbers , you'd see that since labor accounts for such a small part of the retail price fruits and vegetables, giving farm workers a 40 percent raise would increase grocery costs for the typical American consumers by $8 a year. Eight dollars. A year.
Ain't globalization a bitch? That's what I'd do if I was Mickey D.
Isn't it amazing that the ministerial leaders of the mainline protestant churches, who studied philosophy, history, sociology, psychology, theology, or women studies, are such self-acclaimed experts on micro and macro economics? These protestant ministers believe themselves to be such experts in economics and finance that they can tell "growing" secular corporations how to run its business.
Meanwhile, these self-anointed experts totally fail at the job they are assigned----namely to run a mainline denomination. Collectively, the mainline protestants have chased away 40% of their membership.
Would the McDonalds' management be around today if they had chased away 40% of their customers?
Kirkpatrick--PCUSA, Griswold--ECUSA, Thomas--UCC, and Winkler--UMC show great incompetence in managing their respective denominations.
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