Eye-Witness to the Cruel Conditions in Tobacco Farm Labor Camps
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Brenda Loya in AFL-CIO Media Affairs sends us this from North Carolina, where she is on a fact-finding trip to witness the brutal conditions endured by tobacco workers.
We joined a diverse delegation of 25 activists, students, labor and community leaders and traveled to farm labor camps in Dudley, N.C.., to witness firsthand the appalling and abusive conditions of tobacco farm workers.
Our journey began with a visit to the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC), where we learned about a recent report, “State of Fear: Human Rights Abuses in North Carolina’s Tobacco Industry,” that brings light to the tobacco industry’s impact on the human rights of farmworkers in the fields of North Carolina. Issued jointly by FLOC and Oxfam America, the report presented human right violations that we would later witness.
We drove 40 minutes into the country to visit labor camps where farmworkers live while they harvest tobacco to supply companies like RJ Reynolds, one of the richest corporations in U.S. agriculture—in fact, one of the largest tobacco corporations in the world, with annual profits of over $2 billion.
We what saw was never to be imagined. Read the rest of this entry »
Hundreds Demand Chase Respect Human Rights
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Hundreds of workers, religious leaders, community activists and farm worker advocates rallied and protested in 200 cities across the couintry today to demand that JP Morgan Chase respect the basic human rights of people to have decent places to live and work.
Large banks such as Chase are flush with cash and protestors demanded the bank declare a one-year moratorium on home foreclosures. The Wall Street Journal reports that Chase has $19.5 billion worth of home loans in foreclosure—nearly 7.5 percent of its mortgage portfolio and more than any other big bank.
Nearly 400 people rallied at Chase headquarters in New York City. Speakers stood on the back of a truck with banners declaring “Chase: Morally Bankrupt” and laid out the case that as a result of the bank’s reckless pursuit of profits at any cost, thousands of people have lost their homes.
Reynolds, Del Monte, Chiquita Top List of Worst Companies for Freedom of Association
Last Friday, International Human Rights Day, the International Labor Rights Forum (ILRF) named R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. as one of the world’s worst companies of 2010 for workers’ freedom of association. Of the top five worst companies, three are headquartered in the United States: R.J. Reynolds, Chiquita Brands International and Fresh Del Monte Produce.
According to the ILRF, R.J. Reynolds’ annual profits top $2 billion, but the workers who pick the tobacco that goes into the company’s products barely make $8,000 a year, just one-third of the official poverty level for a family of four.
Executives of the nation’s second-largest tobacco company continue to refuse to meet with workers to discuss working conditions. The Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) reports that the tobacco workers suffer from racism, harassment, lethal pesticides, nicotine poisoning and lack of labor and human rights as well as poverty.
Human Rights Day: Workers Ask, ‘What’s Gone Wrong at Chase?’
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Today is International Human Rights Day and hundreds of union members, religious leaders, activists, farm workers and victims of bank home foreclosures are protesting at 100 JPMorgan Chase Bank branches across the country to demand the bank respect the basic human rights of people to have decent places to live and work.
Large banks such as Chase are flush with cash and protestors handed out fliers asking, “What’s Gone Wrong at Chase?” and demanded the bank declare a one-year moratorium on home foreclosures. The Wall Street Journal reports that Chase has $19.5 billion worth of home loans in foreclosure, more than any other bank.
Social Forum Focuses on Workers’ Issues
Workers’ issues were the focus of five days of marches, rallies and workshops at the U.S. Social Forum in Detroit, which ended over the weekend. Grassroots activists and progressives from across the country came together to build new alliances, create new strategies and put new energy into the movement to turn around the American economy.
Writing in Workday Minnesota, Howard Kling quotes a UAW leader who says the forum was an opportunity for labor to build relationships with other movements and encourage a “strong, fight-back attitude toward the intense corporate agenda that is blocking change on health care, labor rights, fair trade policies and a host of issues that we believe in.”
U.S. Social Forum: Union-Faith Group Partnership Must Be Two-Way Street
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Helen Gonzales on the AFL-CIO staff is attending the U.S. Social Forum June 22–26 in Detroit. She reports from a workshop on the importance of faith, labor and community alliances.
The global economic crisis has created a unique opportunity for the faith community and the union movement to work together to change the culture of greed and create a more just society, panelists said at a U.S. Social Forum workshop on faith, labor and community alliances on Thursday.
Saying the core principle of all major faiths is caring for our neighbor, Kim Bobo, director of Interfaith Worker Justice (IWJ), told the more than 60 people in the workshop that principle can be applied to nearly every struggle workers face.
Several speakers also emphasized that partnerships between faith groups and unions must be a two-way street. Often, they said, both sides talk about solidarity and mutual support, until the particular issue is settled, and then the sides go their separate ways.
FLOC Ready to Light Up Reynolds Shareholders Meeting
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Tomorrow, several hundred union, faith and community activists will rally and march at Reynolds American Inc.’s (RAI’s) shareholders meeting in Winston-Salem, N.C., in support of the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) campaign for justice for migrant tobacco farm workers.
The nation’s tobacco farm workers live in poverty, and many suffer from nicotine poisoning and exposure to deadly pesticides and harsh conditions in the fields, according to FLOC. In recent years, nine field workers have died in North Carolina tobacco fields, most of them due to heat stroke, the union says.
For nearly three years, FLOC has asked Susan Ivey, CEO of Reynolds American, the parent of R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., the nation’s second-largest tobacco company, to meet and work toward ending the abuses that occur in the tobacco fields. To date, RAI has refused to even speak with members of FLOC.
Tobacco Workers Demand Justice at R.J. Reynolds
Members of the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) and the Pilgrimage for Peace and Justice, a coalition of social justice groups, will walk through Winston-Salem, N.C., today to demand fair treatment for tobacco farm workers who suffer low wages and poor working conditions.
For nearly three years, FLOC has asked Susan Ivey, CEO of Reynolds American, the parent of R.J. Reynolds, the nation’s second-largest tobacco company, to meet and work toward ending the abuses that occur in the tobacco fields. To date, Reynolds has refused to even speak with members of FLOC.
Although Reynolds does not directly employ the farm workers on its contract farms, Reynolds sets the terms with its contract growers and profits from the farm workers’ labor. Read the rest of this entry »
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.
