Florida Students Rally for Tobacco Workers
Students at the University of Florida (UF) and the University of Central Florida (UCF) spent last Saturday morning raising their voices for justice for tobacco workers. Chanting ”Justice now!” and holding signs that read “Hasta la Victoria” (”Onward to Victory”), dozens of students marched and rallied on UF’s Gainesville campus.
The students joined members of the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC), the Student/Farmworker Alliance and the National Farm Worker Ministry to demand justice for tobacco farm workers in North Carolina who suffer low wages and poor working conditions at the hands of Big Tobacco.
The rally followed a UF Student Senate resolution calling for a pay increase and better treatment of Immokalee farm workers, who pick the tomatoes used by Aramark, UF’s food provider. “Somebody’s got to fight for social justice,” said UF junior Justin Wooten.
FLOC: Mexico Doing Nothing to Solve Organizer’s Murder
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The murder two years ago of Rafael Santiago Cruz, an organizer for the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) in Monterrey, Mexico, is part of a corrupt system of supplying immigrant labor to harvest crops on America’s farms, says FLOC President Baldemar Velasquez. Over the past two days, Velasquez and members of his union have been in Washington, D.C., meeting with members of Congress and international human rights panels to push for justice in Cruz’s murder.
Yesterday, FLOC brought the case of Cruz’s murder before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), an arm of the Organization of American States. After Cruz’s killing in 2007, the IACHR granted protective measures to Velasquez and FLOC staff located in Mexico.
The Mexican government has done little to solve the case. Of the four people who are known to have participated in the murder, all but one of Cruz’s killers remain at large, said Leonel Rivero Rodriquez, a Mexican human rights lawyer, at a briefing today at AFL-CIO headquarters.
All Faith Traditions Teach That Workers Should Be Treated With Respect
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Led by Interfaith Worker Justice, religious organizations and faith groups have been working hard for the passage of the Employee Free Choice Act.
A dozen faith groups and 50 faith leaders came together March 9 at the Methodist House on Capitol Hill to reaffirm their support for the Employee Free Choice Act and to discuss the theological foundation of that support from Judaism, Catholicism and Evangelical Christianity.
The Rev. Adam Taylor of Sojourners quoted liberally from both the Old and New Testaments, including Isaiah 58, Jeremiah 22 and St. Luke, to make the point that God commands the faithful to fight poverty and inequality. He went on to say that in a society and economy as unequal as ours, organizing unions and restoring collective bargaining is one of the most important ways to fight poverty and inequality.
Make a Call for Tobacco Worker Justice
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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.
