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FLOC Calls for Justice at Reynolds, Immigration Reform |
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Delegates to the Farm Labor Organizing Committee’s (FLOC’s) national convention reaffirmed their determination to go to the mat to gain basic human and labor rights for tobacco workers in North Carolina and other states who harvest the tobacco that R.J. Reynolds uses to make its products.
At the conclusion of FLOC’s 11th triennial convention in Toledo, Ohio, this past weekend, hundreds of FLOC members and supporters marched and rallied in the streets to demand that Reynolds, the nation’s second-largest tobacco company, give workers a voice on the job. They also called for quick action on comprehensive immigration reform.
Speaking to the convention on behalf of AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, Fred Azcarate, director of the AFL-CIO Voice@Work department, said the struggles of all workers are connected:
Whether you work in the fields or in a factory, whether you work in construction or communications, we know the best way for us to get ahead, to make a decent life for ourselves and our children is by forming a union and engaging in collective bargaining.
Workers in the U.S. have seen an almost steady erosion of wages. Wall Street has gotten rich while the rest of us struggle. Something has to change…it’s going to take work at the grassroots level. We need to build our power. We need to build our unions.
For more than two years, Susan Ivey, the CEO of Reynolds American, the parent of R.J. Reynolds, has refused to meet with workers to discuss the conditions of thousands of tobacco farm employees.
As a dominant force in big tobacco, Reynolds American wields significant industry clout and can improve working conditions in the fields. But Reynolds American has not developed the political will to bring about change, says FLOC President Baldemar Velásquez, who last month was elected a member of the AFL-CIO Executive Council at the AFL-CIO Convention in Pittsburgh.
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.
Says Velásquez:
The fact that farm workers still live in extreme poverty and are vulnerable to many work-related illnesses is not only a tragedy but a moral disgrace hidden from the eyes of most Americans. FLOC will campaign until Reynolds Tobacco commits to joining us in addressing this national shame.
Last year, Velásquez spent a week working as a field laborer 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. Read the entire column here.
FLOC marchers also called for a massive grassroots mobilization to make immigration reform a reality. Speaking to the rally, Velásquez echoed comments he made at the recent AFL-CIO Convention, where he said creating a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants is not only a political issue, it’s a moral issue.
America is reaping what it has sowed. Migration does not happen on its own. NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) has displaced more than six million Mexican corn farmers, who have not another option than to go to the U.S. seeking a way to support their families.
The Bible says to not mistreat or oppress the alien, yet we are terrorizing a whole segment of the population. Christians believe that we have received the greatest amnesty known to man. How can we deny this to others?
The AFL-CIO Convention passed a resolution calling on Congress to pass comprehensive immigration reform that provides for shared prosperity. The framework for reform is based on an approach developed by former Labor Secretary Ray Marshall and the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) that calls for a practical pathway to citizenship and protection of immigrant workers’ rights.
In other business, the FLOC delegates re-elected the union’s top officers, including Velásquez, Vice President Maria Garcia and Secretary-Treasurer Beatriz Maya.
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HI.ALL USA UNEMPLOYED SHOULD BE EMPLOYED BEFORE ANY IMMIGRATION ACTION IS TAKENTHANK YOU JAMES BEVAN
We don’t need comprehensive immigration reform. What we NEED is comprehensive immigration ENFORCEMENT!
Rampant population growth threatens our economy and quality of life. Immigration, both legal and illegal, are fueling this growth. I’m not talking about environmental degradation or resource depletion. I’m talking about the effect upon rising unemployment and poverty in America.
I should introduce myself. I am the author of a book titled “Five Short Blasts: A New Economic Theory Exposes The Fatal Flaw in Globalization and Its Consequences for America.” To make a long story short, my theory is that, as population density rises beyond some optimum level, per capita consumption of products begins to decline out of the need to conserve space. People who live in crowded conditions simply don’t have enough space to use and store many products. This declining per capita consumption, in the face of rising productivity (per capita output, which always rises), inevitably yields rising unemployment and poverty.
This theory has huge implications for U.S. policy toward population management, especially immigration policy. Our policies of encouraging high rates of immigration are rooted in the belief of economists that population growth is a good thing, fueling economic growth. Through most of human history, the interests of the common good and business (corporations) were both well-served by continuing population growth. For the common good, we needed more workers to man our factories, producing the goods needed for a high standard of living. This population growth translated into sales volume growth for corporations. Both were happy.
But, once an optimum population density is breached, their interests diverge. It is in the best interest of the common good to stabilize the population, avoiding an erosion of our quality of life through high unemployment and poverty. However, it is still in the interest of corporations to fuel population growth because, even though per capita consumption goes into decline, total consumption still increases. We now find ourselves in the position of having corporations and economists influencing public policy in a direction that is not in the best interest of the common good.
The U.N. ranks the U.S. with eight third world countries - India, Pakistan, Nigeria, Democratic Republic of Congo, Bangladesh, Uganda, Ethiopia and China - as accounting for fully half of the world’s population growth by 2050. It’s absolutely imperative that our population be stabilized, and that’s impossible without dramatically reining in immigration, both legal and illegal.
If you’re interested in learning more about this important new economic theory, I invite you to visit my web site at OpenWindowPublishingCo.com where you can read the preface, join in my blog discussion and, of course, purchase the book if you like. (It’s also available at Amazon.com.)
Pete Murphy
Author, “Five Short Blasts”