Tobacco Workers’ Lives At Risk, Reynolds Gets Richer
The hardships heaped upon tobacco harvesters are too many to list. Between exposure to heat, pesticides, nicotine, and discrimination, the lives of hundreds of workers in tobacco-producing states like North Carolina are at risk. RJ Reynolds, which controls the tobacco industry and ultimately controls the conditions for farmworkers, is one of the largest tobacco companies, producing one out of every three cigarettes sold in the US.
With their immense wealth, Reynolds could easily make a difference, but has chosen not to respond to the pleas of workers. Farmworkers Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) has repeatedly requested that Reynolds CEO, Suan Ivey meet with workers and she has not responded. FLOC then requested that Reynolds Director Holly Koeppel take the lead in moving the corporation to work with FLOC in resolving this issue. She also has refused to confront the issue. Read more
Is Water a Privilege?
No, it’s not. Water is a basic human right. But some people in this country seem to think (or pretend to think) otherwise. I’ll start with an incident I heard about last week. A volunteer with No More Deaths, an organization that provides humanitarian aid to migrants crossing the desert in Southern Arizona, was found guilty of littering (yes, littering) after leaving fresh water jugs for migrants lost in the desert. Feetin2worlds reports:
[Walt] Staton, 27, a volunteer with No More Deaths, was cited by the Border Patrol for leaving water containers in the park south of Tucson. Staton, who faces up to a year in prison for the charges, told the Arizona Daily Star he will continue to place water in the desert. “We’re not asking permission from the United States to save people’s lives. We never have, because we know they’d say no,” Staton told the Tucson publication.
After a two day trial Staton”s attorney, William Walker, pointed out a glaring irony to this whole process, “What really surprised me, though, was . . . this trial must have cost the government more than $50,000 . . . they say there aren’t enough agents on the border, that they can’t stop terrorists from coming into the country . . . and then they spend all of this time and money prosecuting a humanitarian who is putting out water to save lives.” Read more
Tomato Pickers in Florida Battle Slavery
Tomato pickers in Florida have come a long way in securing workers rights, but the path ahead of them keeps stretching farther.
Immokalee is an area in Collier county, and is the state’s largest farmworker community. The region is predominately Latino (70%), with a high immigrant population where almost 40 percent of people live below the poverty line.
The majority of workers in Immokalee can’t afford a car, so they live in trailers within walking distance of a central parking lot where they can wait in the morning to find work. When and if they do get picked up, they are piled into a bus and driven anywhere from 10 to 100 miles to the field where they will work 10-12 hours under the blistering Florida sunshine. When they arrive, they begin working to fill buckets with unripened green tomatoes. Once the bucket is filled they run it to the truck, and each completed pail fetches 45 cents (on average). They are allowed to eat lunch, but they must do so very quickly, because in order to make minimum wage at today’s rate they have to pick two and a half tons of tomatoes in one day. Read more
Beyond Belief: The Exploitation of Mentally Disabled Iowa Turkey Workers
If Postville, Iowa is the poster story of meatpacking companies and immigration enforcement run amok, Atalissa, Iowa is the latest snapshot of horrific exploitation of vulnerable workers in the nation’s poultry industry.
In recent days the Des Moines Register and other Iowa newspapers broke the sordid story of the three-decade ordeal during which Henry’s Turkey Service, in concert with West Liberty Foods, employed mentally disabled workers to pluck and gut the company’s turkeys for America’s tables. For thirty four years workers were paid as little as 44 cents an hour. After deductions for room, board, and other “costs” the workers netted $60-70 per month; their Social Security checks, in turn went to the Texas-based company that owns Henry’s. West Liberty Foods washed its corporate hands of the matter via its contract with Henry’s—standard operating procedure by an industry that dumps its primary responsibilities on “contractors.” Read more
Don’t Bash Immigrants With Your Mouth Full
There is no one in this country who eats unless immigrant workers provide the food.
From the ground to the grocer, low-wage immigrants, refugees, and other workers of color are the very backbone of the nation’s food system. There is virtually nothing that is produced, picked, processed, packaged, and purveyed that does not have their touch. 62% of the workforce in the nation’s meatpacking and poultry processing industry is Latino/a and Black. 77% of the hired crop labor force is Latino/a, with 75% born in Mexico and 2% from other Central American countries. 40% of some 13,000 hired dairy farm workers in Wisconsin alone are immigrants. The largest employer of immigrants in the entire nation is at the other end of the food chain, in the restaurant industry. Read more
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