Make a Call for Tobacco Worker Justice

by James Parks, Feb 5, 2009

Tobacco farm workers, joined by supporters, rallied in North Carolina in 2007 for justice on the job.

For nearly two years, Susan Ivey, the CEO of Reynolds American, the parent of the nation’s second-largest tobacco company, has refused to meet with workers to discuss the conditions of thousands of tobacco farm employees in North Carolina and other states who harvest the tobacco Reynolds uses to make its products. 

 As a dominant player in the big tobacco game, Reynolds American wields significant industry clout and can improve working conditions in the fields, but it has not developed the political will to bring about change, says the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC).

Instead, tobacco’s big player continues to rake in billions of dollars every year, while farm workers live in dire poverty on subminimum wages and toil in extremely dangerous working conditions. In fact, conditions for farm workers who harvest tobacco are far more dangerous than many realize.

FLOC is urging union members to call Ivey at Reynolds headquarters in Winston-Salem, N.C., tomorrow, Feb. 6, to urge her to meet with FLOC and the workers. The number is 336-741-5000.

Last year, FLOC President Baldemar Velásquez spent a week working as a field laborer in an all-male group at a North Carolina farm to see firsthand the conditions of tobacco workers.

In “A Week in the Tobacco Fields” on the AFL-CIO website, Velásquez used excerpts of his daily diary to relate his experiences and emotions working with the men in the hot fields.

Velásquez recounts how he had to wear rubber boots and a roll of plastic bags fashioned as a poncho to keep the morning dew from soaking his clothes. The workday, which began around 7 a.m., involved topping, suckering and weeding the plants. The flower had to be broken off the top and the suckers gleaned from the leaf.

He explains how tobacco farm workers live in poverty, suffer from nicotine poisoning and exposure to deadly pesticides and harsh conditions in the fields. They have few enforceable human rights protections. Read the entire column here.

While the farm workers are not employed directly by Reynolds, FLOC says Reynolds has the ultimate responsibility to ensure safe and fair working conditions for the thousands of tobacco harvesters in its supply chain.

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