Tomato pickers from Florida have been coming to Ahold AGMs for the last eight years to plead their case, much to the annoyance of shareholders, the Financieele Dagblad reports.

The tomato pickers are trying to persuade the Dutch supermarket giant – which earns more than half its turnover in the US, to throw its weight behind a campaign to improve their rights.

‘This is not the place for this and it’s taking up far too much time,’ FD quotes shareholder Ineke Geneste as saying.

According to Geneste and the other shareholders present at Wednesday’s shareholder meeting, it’s the annual report, the remunerations, nominations if any and, ‘of course’, the dividends that should be on the agenda, the FD writes.

Union

The American Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), which owns some Ahold shares, made the yearly trek to Amsterdam to try to convince the company to sign a charter which will help improve the working conditions of some 30,000 tomato pickers in Florida.

Wal-Mart, McDonalds and Taco Bell have already signed and are paying one cent more for every pound of tomatoes from CIW affiliated growers. The money goes towards eradicating abusive situations, such as forced labour, the union says.

Laws

Ahold’s legal representative Lodewijk Hijmans van den Bergh says the company already has strict guidelines in place and abides by the CIW’s rules when buying tomatoes in Florida.

Ahold says it is not prepared to sign the agreement because it won’t intervene in the relationship between employers and workers.

The fact that Ahold won’t commit itself to the ‘penny for a pound’ scheme does not mean it condones sexual intimidation or exploitation of workers, Hijmans van den Bergh stated.

Head in sand

The CIW does not think Ahold is doing enough. ‘Are you going to pay or are you going to stick your head in the sand?’, the paper quotes one of the delegates as saying.

Far from gaining support, the tomato pickers from Florida were once again proving a thorn in the side of Ahold shareholders, FD reports. Confronted with a group of demonstrators on entering the building, one shareholder said he didn’t feel like sitting through ‘that crap’ again.