Mitt Romney co-founded Bain Capital in 1984.  In December 2002, Bain joined with two other buyout firms to purchase Burger King for $1.5 billion. To date, Bain and its partners have nearly tripled their original investment. Bain and its partner firms own roughly 43 percent of Burger King and control six seats on the company’s board.

During the same period, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), a community organization in Immokalee, Fla., organized the Campaign for Fair Food, calling on major buyers of Florida tomatoes to take responsibility for the chronic poverty and horrific labor abuses faced by tomato workers.

The CIW campaign achieved several unprecedented successes, bringing companies like McDonald’s and Yum Brands behind two key principles:

• Economic relief for farm workers through a penny-per-pound surcharge passed on directly to workers in the form of a raise in the piece rate.
• A code of conduct with strict consequences for violating workers’ rights.

Burger King has chosen to join with the most extreme elements of Florida’s tomato industry to undermine these agreements and enable a “harvest of shame.”