The fields will be wet with morning dew, and, for the next few hours, said Raúl Jiménez, an organizer for FLOC (Farm Labor Organizing Committee) and a former farm worker, “you’re soaking wet, drenched in all these chemicals.”
Not just the chemicals on “the most pesticide-treated plants in the nation,” as Jiménez put it in an interview last month, but also the nicotine in the plants themselves. “You’re always exposed to it, you breathe it in, you touch it,” he said. The odds are good that at some point you’ll come down with Green Tobacco Sickness, which is caused by a high level of nicotine absorption through the skin. (Short term effects include dizziness, nausea, and dehydration – “so bad you think you’re gonna die.”)
You could wear gloves, but that would impede your ability to pluck the leaves from the bottom of the plants. You’re out there nurturing the plants by hand, rather than machine, in order to produce the highest-quality harvest, which brings a higher price for the grower. You bend over all day long, breaking off the leaves on the bottom, stashing them under your arm, leaving the top leaves to flourish.
“Your hands get black from the tar,” says Jiménez. Although regulations require wash stations (and bathrooms and drinking water) they are rare. “You have to be real careful not to touch anything.”
Tobacco plants flourish in the heat and humidity in North Carolina, which means that you are out there, too, in temperatures often above 100 degrees. Over the years several workers have died of heat stroke.
At the end of this day, you’ll go back to the “labor camp,” where toilets are lined up without partitions next to each other in a big room with sinks on the other side; where windows are few and small and have no glass; where you may have a mattress in a room with several other men – or you may sleep on the floor.
But the worst thing in all this long day is that, much of the time, you’re afraid – of deportation, of unemployment, of the crew leader, of letting down your family back in Mexico, or Guatemala – and you have no idea of your rights or your recourses.
In 2011, Oxfam America partnered with FLOC to research and publish the State of Fear report on human rights abuses in the North Carolina tobacco industry. This report has played a crucial role in recent efforts to raise the voices of farmworkers, and to get Reynolds Tobacco to engage in conversation with FLOC.
Following Oxfam’s request to supporters—in which more than 14,000 people called on Reynolds to meet with farmworkers—the company held its first face-to-face meeting with FLOC in 2012.
This was a huge step, but it’s just the beginning of the march toward real change and real justice in the fields. FLOC and partners want to keep up the pressure on Reynolds, and on some of the major chains that carry their products.
To honor International Human Rights Day, December 10, hundreds joined actions at Kangaroo stores in various cities in North Carolina to urge them to reach out to Reynolds about conditions in the fields. Kangaroo, the largest convenience store chain in the Southeast, could make a difference in the lives of thousands of tobacco farm workers.
]]>The poor conditions for farmworkers in this country exist, in part, because of the fundamental lack of enforcement of basic labor standards. Employers that do not feel threatened by labor law enforcement often take the risk of paying less than the minimum wage to save money. Businesses that wish to comply with the law but compete against such labor law violators feel pressure to violate the law as well or to pay the bare minimum. This spiraling down of labor standards must be thwarted.
]]>“Come into the sun, everyone. Stand in the sun with me,” Velazquez said, swooping his arms together the direction of the field in front of him.
Grudgingly, some of the hundreds of marchers who had gathered in Winston-Salem in support of farmworkers, eased out of the shadows into the field.
“This is what farmworkers are dealing with right now, right here in North Carolina,” said Velazquez, President and Founder of the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) referring to the heat, which at 88 degrees was 16 degrees above average for the day. “(The) workers are stooped over in the fields making the life of leisure for the people in (RJ Reynolds’) executive offices. It’s not only an injustice, it’s a moral disgrace.”
The endlessly energetic Velazquez, and hundreds of farmworker and FLOC supporters, were in Winston-Salem for RJ Reynolds’ annual shareholders’ meeting to introduce a shareholders’ resolution that would require the company to adopt a strict human rights policy. In addition to the resolution, FLOC is seeking a formal meeting with RJ Reynolds CEO Susan Ivey to discuss ways to improve the working conditions in tobacco fields.
Despite having little chance of being adopted, the shareholders’ resolution is an opportunity to bring the issue of farmworker justice directly to RJ Reynolds officials. This year, Oxfam America Campaign and Advocacy Advisor Irit Tamir asked Ivey and others to support a stronger human rights policy. Oxfam and its allies believe that the weak human rights policy adopted by RJ Reynolds’ in February does little to ensure that the workers who pick the company’s tobacco – merely encouraging the company’s contractors to improve tobacco picker conditions, not demanding it.
And those conditions are brutal. Tobacco workers face some of the toughest conditions in the industry, including racism, long hours of stooped labor, exposure to dangerous chemicals and annual incomes of less than $8,000. Though RJ Reynolds claims an ‘independent’ survey of tobacco workers by a company it hired reveals that tobacco pickers are satisfied with their working conditions, it’s doubtful the workers at the May 7 rally would agree.
In its effort to rectify these conditions, FLOC has repeatedly sought a meeting with Ivey, only to have those overtures ignored. FLOC is also making its case publicly at shareholder meetings and through the media.
RJ Reynolds adopted its existing human rights policy partly in response to that work. While simultaneously distancing itself from the workers who pick its tobacco, claiming that because they work for a Reynolds contractor, they aren’t Reynolds employees. While technically true, FLOC and Oxfam believe that Reynolds has the responsibility and the power to demand higher standards from its contractors, and only purchase tobacco from contractors that ensure safe and healthy working conditions for its workers.
Though the shareholders’ resolution was defeated, the FLOC campaign against RJ Reynolds still maintains its goal of meeting with Ivey, and the ultimate adoption of a human rights policy that truly enforces human rights.
What you can do:
The Canadian organization Rights and Democracy has developed an assessment tool that communities can use to answer these questions for themselves. The system is called the “Getting it Right” Human Rights Impact Assessment tool, and is designed so that local organizations and citizens can, with minimal training, carry out their own study of how their basic rights -- such as free speech, water, safe working conditions, shelter, and education -- are affected by the actions of governments and companies establishing mines, agricultural operations, factories, or oil and gas pipelines.
“A lot of companies will do an impact assessment on their operations, using an outside consultant, but these don’t always do much for the stakeholders in the community, or promote accountability,” says Chris Jochnick, director of Oxfam America’s private sector program. “Helping community members conduct their own human rights assessment strengthens their capacity to examine their situation, frame their issues, and engage with a company or government,” he says. “We think this will produce a more robust and balanced assessment than one done by outsiders.”
The Rights and Democracy assessment tool helps people document how their rights are supposed to be protected under national law, and the actual effects of an investment project on these rights. It helps community leaders create a team, plan out the work and specific rights to assess, carry out surveys and community consultations, validate findings, write reports, and meet with companies and governments to urge action to address the problems uncovered in the assessment.
Rights and Democracy commissioned five assessments to test the system starting in 2005. One of them looked at the effects of a metal refinery on women’s rights in La Oroya, Peru, concentrating on the rights to water, health, adequate housing, and working conditions. It was done by the Centro de Promoción y Estudios de la Mujer Andina. The organization concluded that lack of enforcement of environmental rules by the state was one of the main contributors to the poor public health situation in the city. The report also cites lack of commitment by the Doe Run Peru SRL company to improve the environmental performance of the plant.
“By looking at the health problems in La Oroya through a woman’s eyes, this assessment helped uncover a pattern of children’s and reproductive health issues that was clearly connected to lead poisoning,” says Gabrielle Watson, Oxfam America’s planning and learning specialist who helped develop the assessment tool with Rights and Development.
Oxfam America is helping two organizations carry out a Human Rights Impact Assessment. One is related to a proposed natural gas operation in Bolivia where the Centro de Estudios Aplicados a los Derechos Economicos, Sociales y Culturales (CEADESC) will carry out the study with local Guaraní indigenous communities that were denied their right to be consulted about the gas exploration activities in their territory. The other case concerns tobacco pickers in the United States, and will be carried out by the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC). FLOC will look at efforts by migrant and undocumented farmworkers to improve working conditions on tobacco farms.
Watson says the human rights assessments will help people take control of the type of development carried out in their name. “Local people are the experts about human rights impacts of private investment projects in their communities. This tool puts them in the driver’s seat in the search for safer, more equitable outcomes that are good for everyone.”
]]>“Massive government subsidies for large-scale cotton growers in the United States are unfair and hurt farmers in poor countries. The WTO confirmed today the injury caused by these subsidies and authorized Brazil to retaliate against the US,” said Gawain Kripke, policy director for Oxfam America. “American farm policy is broken and bloated, and now other sectors of the US economy may suffer as Brazil retaliates.”
Total direct support to cotton production hovered over three billion dollars in the 2008-2009 growing season, or an equivalent of 50 cents per pound of actual production, according to the International Cotton Advisory Committee.
“The global trading system depends on countries obeying rules and submitting to orderly dispute resolution,” said Kripke. “Thus far, the US has ignored the ruling of the WTO adjudication and continues large subsidies for cotton production. If the US continues this way, the integrity of the multilateral trade system is at stake.”
An Oxfam study found that with a complete removal of US cotton subsidies, the world price of cotton would increase by 6-14%, resulting in additional income that could feed an additional million children for a year or pay school fees for at least two million children living in extremely poor West African cotton growing households.
The longstanding dispute started in 2002. In 2005, the WTO ruled that US cotton subsidies harmed Brazilian cotton farmers and violated WTO rules, but the US did little to abide by the ruling and reduce its trade distorting subsidies. In September 2006, Brazil asked for a WTO “compliance panel” to determine whether the US has done enough to comply with the ruling and the WTO confirmed that the US has failed to reform its agricultural subsidies enough to comply. Today’s ruling confirms that Brazil is entitled to start retaliation procedures, and possibly cross-retaliate by lifting intellectual property protections.
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Almost a year after the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, or CIW, launched its campaign to get the fast food giant to join McDonald's and Yum! Brands in paying field hands in their supply chain a penny more for every pound of tomatoes they picked, Burger King relented.
On Friday—along with an apology for negative statements its employees made about CIW—the restaurant chain announced its plan to work with the coalition to improve wages and working conditions for Florida tomato harvesters.
For Burger King, a multi-billion-dollar corporation, the deal reportedly costs it just $300,000 a year. But for farm workers, who earn an average of 45 cents for every 32-pound bucket of tomatoes they pick, that penny represents a near doubling of their wages.
"Today we are one step closer to building a world where we, as farm workers, can enjoy a fair wage and humane working conditions in exchange for the hard and essential work we do every day," said CIW's Lucas Benitez in a press statement. "We are not there yet but we are getting there and this agreement should send a strong message to the rest of the restaurant and supermarket industry: Now is the time to join Yum! Brands, McDonald's, and Burger King in righting the wrongs that have been allowed to linger in Florida's fields for far too long."
For Oxfam America, which has long partnered with CIW and launched an on-line petition on its behalf, the agreement is proof that consumer pressure can bring about positive change. More than 37,000 people signed the petition calling on Burger King to work with CIW to improve the wages of farm laborers and enforce a code of conduct for human rights in the field.
"It once again proves these seemingly almighty corporations have to respond to consumer pressure," said Guadalupe Gamboa, and Oxfam program officer working with CIW. "Consumers want farm workers treated fairly and getting a just wage. And they want global corporations held responsible for acts of injustice in the supply chain."
Burger King got that message loud and clear—not only from fast food fans, but from an array of global activists concerned about the conditions in the hot Florida fields.
"We engaged Burger King at the highest levels," said Gamboa. "Oxfam America's president, Ray Offenheiser, sent a series of letters to the CEO of Burger King. The company also started to get letters from Oxfam affiliates in other countries. And Oxfam partner organizations in Mexico started to get active around the issue, too."
The agreement Burger King has endorsed goes beyond the penny-per-pound increase CIW and consumer activists around the country sought. It also aims to encourage the broad participation of growers by paying them a half cent extra per pound of tomatoes. That money will help them cover the additional payroll taxes and administrative costs associated with the wage hike.
"Today, we turn a new page in our relationship and begin a new chapter of real progress for Florida farm workers," said John Chidsey, Burger King's chief executive officer, in a prepared statement. "We also encourage other purchases and growers of Florida tomatoes to engage in a dialogue."
Whether that will happen is still unclear. In November, the Florida Growers Exchange, which represents producers who grow about 90 percent of the state's tomatoes, announced that its members had chosen not to participate in any pact in which a third party set wages for their employees. Reggie Brown, the executive vice president of the exchange, said he was concerned about the legality of the arrangement and its potential for violating anti-trust and racketeering laws. According to CIW, the exchange even threatened to fine members $100,000 if they participated in the penny-per-pound plan.
Brown was out of the country and not available for comment following Burger King's announcement. But maintaining its earlier position on the wage hike will likely be difficult for the exchange.
"We're sure the Florida tomato growers are decent, hardworking people who want to see the industry prosper," said Gamboa. "I think it's going to be harder for the exchange to hold the growers in line because the extra money they will get—the half cent which averages out to 16 cents for each buck of tomatoes—will allow them to participate in the wage hike without incurring extra costs."
And it's not just the growers—exchange that might find it hard to hold back the rising tide of justice. It could start to improve the conditions for workers at the bottom of every food supply chain.
"We are exuberant about this," said Gamboa. "We're probably at the tipping point. When you get three major fast food companies agreeing to accept responsibility for improving wages and working conditions, it sets a very important precedent that other food buyers and retailers will have to follow. It says that getting decent pay and respect on the job is a basic human right."
]]>Yum! Brands, Inc., one of the world's largest restaurant companies with 34,000 establishments, recently agreed to pay a penny a pound more for the tomatoes four more of its chains buy from Florida growers. The increase nearly doubles the amount workers can earn for each 32-pound bucket of tomatoes they pick and sell to Yum! The going price now is between 40 and 45 cents a bucket. This new agreement will hike that by 32 cents.
Yum! Brands' decision comes two years after one of its chains, Taco Bell, agreed to a similar hike in the face of intense national pressure. Others that will now be included in the deal are Pizza Hut, Long John Silver's, A&W All-American Food Restaurant, and KFC. In April, mega-chain McDonald's also announced an agreement to boost the pay of Florida pickers by a penny a pound.
"If two of the largest restaurant chains are doing this, it's only a matter of time 'til others follow," said Julia Perkins, of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, or CIW , which has spearheaded the drive for better pay and working conditions for tomato pickers. CIW is one of the local partners with which Oxfam America works.
"This is an important precedent that's being set," said Guadalupe Gamboa, a program officer in Oxfam America's US regional office. "And it also furthers CIW's strategy to go after other major buyers of tomatoes and eventually get them all to pay a higher price that will be translated into higher wages for a lot more farm workers."
During the winter months, about 90 percent of the fresh tomatoes consumed in the United States come from Florida, said Perkins. According to the Florida Tomato Committee, the state shipped more than 1.2 billion pounds of tomatoes in interstate commerce during the 2005-2006 growing season. During the peak season, Florida growers hire about 33,000 people.
CIW has been working with many of them since 1993 when it first began organizing in a borrowed room at a church. In 2001, it launched a national boycott of Taco Bell, which had long denied responsibility for the bad working conditions and below-poverty-level wages at the farms that supplied it with tomatoes. Students, religious groups, and labor organizations all got behind the boycott, galvanizing support for CIW's cause.
"It's a good model for other organizations to follow that are trying to improve wages and conditions for workers," said Gamboa. "It shows you can get concrete and positive results for the poorest workers in the country."
And there is no good reason for companies not to embrace the campaign.
"It's doable from a financial perspective, an administrative perspective, and it's good for your company's marketing," said Perkins, who has high hopes that other corporations will follow the lead set by Yum! and McDonald's. Burger King is on her list.
"Consumers have really gotten behind this," said Perkins. "Burger King has promised consumers you get to have it your way. It's just a matter of time before they have to make good on that promise."
]]>"This represents economic relief for farm workers and gives them real participation and a voice," said the coalition's Lucas Benitez.
"The significant thing is that McDonald's is the largest restaurant chain in the world and the second largest employer of workers in the United States," added Guadalupe Gamboa, a program officer in Oxfam's US regional office. "And so, for a little group like CIW to take them on and beat them is pretty significant. It shows the power of consumer pressure."
Starting in the 2007 growing season, McDonald's will pay an extra penny per pound for Florida tomatoes offered through its produce suppliers to its US restaurants. The farm workers will receive the increase directly for the tomatoes McDonald's buys. The agreement also lays out a plan for CIW and McDonald's to develop a new code of conduct for Florida tomato growers and calls for the creation of a third-party mechanism to monitor conditions in the fields and investigate workers complaints about abuses.
Typically, Florida field workers earn between 40 and 45 cents for each 32-pound bucket of tomatoes they pick—a wage that has not gone up significantly since 1978, according to CIW. At that rate, working a 12-hour day, laborers would have to pick nearly two and a half tons of tomatoes to earn the federal minimum wage of $5.15 an hour. With the penny-per-pound increase, workers can earn 32 cents a bucket more.
An Oxfam America report released in 2004, Like Machines in the Fields: Workers Without Rights in American Agriculture, documented the harsh conditions farmworkers endure and how big buyers, like institutional food services and fast food companies, are buying increasing volumes of produce at increasingly cheaper prices.
"Like machines, nearly two million workers in America's fields labor without rights, earn sub-living wages, and exist in dehumanizing conditions," said the report. "Already, farmworkers are among the poorest—if not the poorest—laborers in the United States."
Added Gamboa, "In the past 20 to 30 years, farm workers' wages have been stagnant. It may not sound like much, but for poor farmworkers in southwest Florida, McDonald's decision to increase by a penny a pound the amount it pays for tomatoes could translate into nearly a doubling of wages.
They have lost value in real dollars. But the profits earned by the retail industry have gone up tremendously, and it has been profiting from the sweat and labor of the workers."
And that has translated into profound hardship for field workers, whose average annual salary in 2005 was between $10,000 and $12,499, according to the National Agricultural Workers Survey. The federal government considers an individual earning less than $10,210 to be living in poverty. The income guideline for a family of four is $20,650 a year—more than the average farm worker household earns. That figure ranges from $15,000 to $17,499, according to the agricultural survey.
Since 1993, when CIW first began organizing with a small group of workers in a borrowed room at a church, the coalition has worked hard to address the injustices farm laborers face. The message is now getting heard—at the highest levels of corporate America.
"CIW has publicized the terrible conditions of farm workers," said Gamboa. "People who pick the food don't have enough to eat. They endure terrible living conditions with between 10 and 15 people in a single trailer. And in real terms, their wages have gone down in the last 20 years."
That was the reality CIW set out to change when, in 2001, it launched a national boycott of Taco Bell, another fast-food giant that purchases great volumes of tomatoes. The company had long denied responsibility for the bad working conditions and below-poverty-level wages at the farms that supplied it tomatoes. Students, religious groups, and labor organizations all got behind the boycott, galvanizing support for CIW's cause and putting intense national pressure on the company.
Two years ago—in March 2005--CIW and Taco Bell announced an historic agreement guaranteeing Immokalee tomato pickers a penny a pound extra for the produce supplied to the chain.
"We are laying the groundwork for real change," Benitez said at the time, "both in the concrete conditions of farmworkers' everyday lives and in the market itself."
On Monday, with the McDonald's agreement in hand, those farmworkers have marked a another victory in their long, slow struggle toward equity and justice.
"Today, with McDonald's, we have taken another major step toward a world where workers can enjoy a fair wage and humane working conditions in exchange for the hard and essential work we do every day," said Benitez. "We are not there yet, but we are getting there, and today's agreement should send a strong message to the rest of the restaurant and supermarket industry that it is now time to stand behind the food they sell from the field to the table."
]]>For that reason Oxfam America's duty is clear: We and our project partners must help reform government policies, laws, and social injustices that deny people the right to live a decent life. We do this by providing funding, training, and the moral support people need to make real, substantive and transformative changes. The courageous and visionary people who do this work are setting out to build a movement for social justice—and Oxfam America is one of the few organizations to which they can turn for the help they need.
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