On March 4-5, When the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) came through Chicago for a series of events at colleges, meetings with local day laborers, and a celebration at a Pilsen church that took place, they were keeping a secret.

The workers had actually learned that after a three year long campaign, Taco Bell parent company Yum! Brands had agreed to all of their demands for better wages and a workers’ rights code for the south Florida farm workers who pick tomatoes bought by the fast food chain.

News of the agreement was embargoed until after the Chicago visit. Several days later, thousands of supporters around the country were given the news that the planned March 12 protest at the Louisville, KY headquarters of Yum! Brands would be a celebration instead of a protest.

The agreement included instituting a workers’ rights code of conduct for all the growers the company buys tomatoes from and paying a “pass-through” of a penny a pound for tomatoes, which adds up to a significant pay increase for farm workers.

The Taco Bell campaign used a unique approach to improve workers’ rights, targeting the huge company which ultimately buys the fruits of their labor rather than the middlemen who directly employ the farm workers, since they are largely free from concerns of public image or oversight. Now, Taco Bell will take the lead in verifying that the contractors it buys tomatoes from have ensured that those tomatoes are picked in decent conditions and for a living wage.

CIW members and participants in the huge solidarity movement which had grown up around the campaign saw the agreement with Yum! Brands as an important step in forcing other fast food companies to demand improved conditions and pay for the workers who pick the produce they end up selling.

Representatives of Taco Bell and Yum! Brands, which also owns KFC, Pizza Hut and other restaurants, spoke at the celebration, vowing to become industry leaders in promoting workers’ rights.

“We have always been willing to help; it’s just been only recently that we’ve been able to get the money directly into the workers’ hands,” said Taco Bell spokesperson Sally George. “We have contacted the National Council of Chain Restaurants to get the word out to retail chains. We’re working through the industry groups.”

According to George, the company is working out the mechanics of getting the penny per pound increase into workers’ hands. “It will be retroactive, starting now,” she emphasized.

Company representatives also promised to work with other supermarket chains and the Florida Tomato Committee to press for legislative reform supporting farm workers.

The harmonious front presented by company executives and coalition members at the event belied the contentious nature of the long campaign, during which Taco Bell executives had been reluctant to meet with members, saying they didn’t have the power to affect growers’ policies. Several weeks before the planned protest, the coalition was informed that a billboard that they had commissioned near Yum! headquarters which criticized Taco Bell would not be allowed by the billboard company, because it delivered a “negative” message about a corporation. Slogans used by the campaign included “No soy un tractor” (“I am not a tractor”). Most of their protest signs and literature were printed in English, Spanish and Creole, since most of the workers come from Latin America and Haiti.

CIW members and supporters, including many college students and faith-based groups, say the ongoing boycott, several cross-country tours and countless actions in different cities clearly succeeded in pressuring the company to step up to bat for the workers. At least 21 colleges removed Taco Bells from their campuses or cancelled plans for the restaurant in response to student pressure.

The Immokalee workers have visited Chicago multiple times over the past few years, and protests have been held at various Taco Bells around the city, including the location on Western and Addison. The Chicago-based Mexico Solidarity Network has been one of the coalition’s long-time supporters, and during their recent visit the Immokalee workers met with members of the Albany Park Workers Center who are mostly Latino immigrant day laborers who face many of the same issues as the farm workers.

 “When you have as many groups as we had on board, it makes an impact,” says CIW organizer Julia Perkins. “The workers are a little overwhelmed [by the victory]; it’s still hard to process.”

Immigrants’ rights and workers’ rights groups from all over the country were at the Louisville event. Those present ranged from Derechos Humanos (a group which works at the Arizona border) to national leaders of the United Farm Workers union. Speaking to the crowd of thousands, farm worker and organizer Gerardo Reyes, a native of Mexico, described an image of corporations hoarding resources and wealth away from workers and non-affluent people, as if at the top of a mountain. He described the CIW victory as opening a spring in this reservoir of wealth, so it could begin to flow down to the people.