Leading Like Jesus

An article in early December 2004 on the progressive media site gadflyer.com provides a provocative new perspective on Yum Brands, Inc and its CEO David Novak.
Posted December 13, 2004

By Sarah Posner

Why did YUM! Brands, the oxymoronically named corporate conglomerate that owns Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Long John Silver, and A&W Restaurants, stop advertising on Desperate Housewives in the face of a boycott threat by a fringe right-wing Christian group, the American Decency Association?

Maybe it has something to do with Jesus.

YUM!'s CEO, David Novak, is a member of the evangelical Southeast Christian Church in Louisville . With 18,000 members, Southeast is one of the largest churches in the country and the largest in Kentucky . In March, the church sent busloads of people to lobby the Kentucky legislature to pass an anti-gay marriage amendment and later spent $150,000 on advertising to support the anti-gay marriage referendum on the Kentucky ballot. Southeast has hosted former Alabama Supreme Court Justice Roy "Ten Commandments" Moore at its church. Its head pastor, Bob Russell, said during the 2004 presidential campaign that "we [evangelicals] have more reasons to start a revolution than they did in 1776 . . . . I don't see how you can be a dedicated Christian and remain neutral." Novak and Russell are also speakers for Lead Like Jesus, a group that stages motivational seminars across the country to teach people how to, well, you get the idea.

So how, exactly, does Novak lead like Jesus? Let's take a look.

Novak, as YUM!'s CEO, made $8.8 million last year in salary, bonuses, and stock gains (not including unexercised stock options), according to Forbes. By contrast, Pizza Hut drivers make about $6 an hour, and franchisees have actively discouraged their efforts to organize a union. Someone making $6 an hour (the equivalent of about $12,000 a year if the person worked a forty hour week every week of the year) would have to work for about 730 years to equal Novak's 2003 compensation. And Pizza Hut drivers aren't reimbursed for gas or mileage, either.

At Pizza Hut in China , a pizza, at $8, costs almost three times an average Chinese person's daily $3 wage.

It took YUM! just a few weeks to relent to the pressure from the American Decency Association to withdraw its advertising from Desperate Housewives. Yet for the last three and a half years, YUM! and its subsidiary Taco Bell have ignored the boycott of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), a group representing farmworkers who pick the tomatoes supplied to YUM! restaurants. The CIW boycott is supported by the Presbyterian Church USA, the United Methodist Church, the United Church of Christ, the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), the American Friends Service Committee (Quakers), the National Council of Churches, and the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee. Yet YUM! has refused to give into CIW's demand in order to end the boycott.

And what is the CIW's demand? That farmworkers who pick the tomatoes that are supplied to Taco Bell and other YUM! subsidiaries be paid an additional penny – yes, that's one additional penny – per pound of tomatoes they pick. To give you some perspective on that, these farmworkers are paid forty to fifty cents per 32 pound bucket of tomatoes they pick. That amounts to about $7,500 a year, well below the poverty level. Even John Ashcroft's Justice Department has prosecuted cases against bosses who held these tomato pickers in slavery conditions. What has YUM's response been? To send the CIW a check for $110,000 to end the boycott (which CIW returned). Meanwhile, conditions haven't changed for the farmworkers.

YUM! actually has some control over the price it pays for the tomatoes. In the same way that Wal-Mart forces its suppliers to charge it rock-bottom prices for merchandise because of the sheer size of its market share, the market-dominating Unified Foodservice Purchasing Co-Op (UFPC) leverages the supply chain for all of YUM!'s subsidiaries. But instead of paying more for tomatoes so the farmworkers can have a higher wage, both YUM! and UFPC match employee donations to the radical right-wing Christian group, James Dobson's Focus on the Family.

YUM! tries to portray itself as a model corporate citizen with its Supplier Code of Conduct, through which it claims that its suppliers "are required to abide by all applicable laws, codes or regulations including, but not limited to, any local, state or federal laws regarding wages and benefits, workmen's compensation, working hours, equal opportunity, worker and product safety."

But it's an empty promise with respect to the farmworkers, who are not covered by the National Labor Relations Act, any state unionizing law in Florida , or the overtime provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act. But they do have to pay payroll taxes on their sub-poverty wages. So if you're wondering where Jesus stands on whether it's fair that these farmworkers still have to pay a payroll tax while CEOs like Novak get hefty tax cuts, YUM!'s PAC, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, donated to Republican rather than Democratic candidates by about an 80% to 20% margin, which is in line with the rest of the restaurant industry.

Other outside pressure YUM! has ignored was the protest of the AFL-CIO over the YUM! board membership of corporate executive Kenneth Langone. Langone, who has a net worth of $820 million, is under scrutiny for his closeness with former NYSE Chairman Dick Grasso, and for his role as chair of NYSE's compensation committee when Grasso was given his excessive compensation package. That leadership must be A-OK with Jesus, though, just like involuntary servitude is good for the company's bottom line. But fictional depictions of sex, murder, and dysfunctional families? Unacceptable.

It's obvious that all of this has a lot more to do with money than it does with Jesus. But, according to a recent "American Decency Update" from the American Decency Association, money was Jesus's favorite topic. The newsletter quotes Richard Halverson, the former chaplain of the United States Senate, at length on the topic: "'Jesus Christ said more about money than about any other single thing because, when it comes to a man's real nature, money is of first importance. Money is an exact index to a man's true character. All through Scripture there is an intimate correlation between the development of a man's character and how he handles his money.'"

So if "money is an exact index to a man's true character," I think we now all know a bit more about David Novak's true character.