Dear Wendy’s shareholder,
Tomorrow is the big annual meeting in Dublin, Ohio, your chance to hear from your company’s executives and officers about the successes of the past year and the challenges of the year ahead. It’s also your chance to express your thoughts and concerns as a part owner of Wendy’s.
On the eve of tomorrow’s meeting, we here at the Coalition of Immokalee Workers would like to share with you our thoughts about the company’s position with regard to the Campaign for Fair Food. But before we do, we’d like to remind you of the words of one of your own, Mr. Bradford Grazier, a shareholder who stood to speak at last year’s meeting in New York after listening to the CIW’s presentation on the merits of the Fair Food Program. To be clear, Mr. Grazier spoke not as a representative of the CIW, nor as a Fair Food ally, but simply as a concerned shareholder moved to question the decision of Wendy’s CEO Emil Brolick to reject — on your behalf — participation in a proven solution to abuses like sexual harassment in its supply chain:
“Honestly, the potential bad publicity between the folks here and outside on the street does not do our company much good. I’m wondering what the downside is of not signing the darn agreement and doing something that I think would make a lot of sense.”
As Mr. Grazier spoke, the CIW delegation that addressed the assembled shareholders had already stepped outside the meeting to hold a crowded press conference in New York’s busy streets (below).
wendys_shareholder4
There they were joined by long-time Fair Food allies Kerry Kennedy, Executive Director of the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights, and Larry Cox, former Executive Director of Amnesty International, who echoed the CIW’s call for Wendy’s to join the growing Fair Food Program, a social responsibility initiative that already enjoyed the support of all of Wendys’ principal competitors from Burger King and Subway to Yum Brands, McDonald’s, and Chipotle. It bears mentioning that last year’s shareholder action also came on the heels of a march by more than 300 Fair Food allies through the Big Apple, who took to the streets (below), live band and all, just days before the meeting to call on your company to “get with the Program”:
wendys_shareholder
Why, you might ask, are we rehashing all of the sound and fury around last year’s shareholder meeting? Well, if nothing else had happened on the Fair Food front since last year’s protests, you might be tempted to dismiss those demonstrations as the attempt of a small band of outsiders to hijack your company for their own interests, just another anti-corporate protest that popped and fizzled. But what if last year’s actions were just the prelude to a year of escalating protests, bad press, and growing public scrutiny of Wendy’s indefensible decision to turn its back on long-overdue progress on sexual harassment and other farm labor working abuses?
What if, since last year’s protests, the Fair Food Program has become the single most respected social responsibility program in all of US agriculture, called “the best workplace monitoring program in the US,” on the front page of the New York Times?
What if, since last year’s protests, the world’s largest food retailer, Walmart, joined the Fair Food Program, agreeing to expand the Program to other crops in their supply chain and justifying their decision by saying, “Our participation in the Fair Food Program… will ensure that our customers get great products at great prices from suppliers that are working to improve the lives of their workers”?
What if, since last year’s protests, consumer frustration with Wendy’s continued to rise, culminating in a massive march on the company’s headquarters in Dublin, OH, by 800 farmworkers and consumers this past spring (below)?
wendys_shareholder2
We could go on, but we think the point is clear: Mr Grazier was right. The “potential bad publicity” he feared indeed came to pass, and as he predicted, it has not done your company any good whatsoever. And yet, your executives and directors stubbornly continue to thumb their noses at the program that has, in the year since last year’s protests, been lauded by human rights observers from the White House to the United Nations for its unique success in preventing everything from sexual harassment and wage theft to modern-day slavery in the fields where Wendy’s buys its tomatoes.
Wendys-may-28-shareholder-actionAnd that is why, this Wednesday in Dublin, Ohio, you and your fellow shareholders, your company’s CEO Mr. Brolick, and Wendy’s Board of Directors will be hearing once again from CIW representatives and their stalwart allies at the annual meeting (the flyer on the right announcing the shareholder action is the work of the fine folks at the inimitable Ohio Fair Food).
The Fair Food Program has not gone away since last year’s meeting, it has only grown stronger, as a social responsibility program and as a consumer movement, and it is time for your company to re-think its position.
And that is also why we are writing to you today. As a shareholder, you have a voice in the decisions your company makes. It may not seem like a big voice, and in fact, unless you happen to own enough shares to find yourself on the Board of Directors, like your company’s Chairman Norman Peltz, it is hard to believe that a single shareholder can be heard at all by the leaders of a multi-billion dollar company like Wendy’s.
But don’t you think that, after a year of escalating pressure and disastrous public relations, Mr. Grazier’s words at last year’s meeting might just be ringing in the executives’ ears today?
Don’t you think that, if your executives and directors can’t seem to find their way toward a resolution of this escalating public relations crisis, it is time for you to help them drag Wendy’s out of the last century of farmworker exploitation and into the more modern, more humane food industry represented by the Fair Food Program?
We think it is. And to help you form your own argument for Wednesday’s meeting, we are providing you, here below, with a quick review of the Year in Fair Food. While most of the regular readers of this site are already familiar with the inspiring advances of the Fair Food Program since last spring, we have collected the highlights here below for your convenience, a one-time service so that you as a shareholder can be fully informed, ahead of tomorrow’s meeting, of developments on a front that will grow ever more important to your company in the year to come.
After you have had a chance to review the Year in Fair Food, we hope you can join the CIW, our Fair Food allies, and Mr. Grazier in calling on Wendy’s to drop, at long last, its senseless resistance to progress and join the Fair Food Program.
Sincerely,
The Coalition of Immokalee Workers
