From the tobacco fields to the board room

Luis pointed out the new washing machine and telephone in the kitchen of the two-bedroom house where he and two fellow immigrant farmworkers stay six months a year while working on a vegetable farm just outside Creedmoor.

A single, bare lightbulb illuminated the wood-paneled kitchen as Luis spoke after preparing dinner on May 8. The washing machine and the telephone appeared in the past year and provide two concrete examples of how the Luis’ life has improved since he became affiliated with the Farm Labor Organizing Committee, or FLOC, five years ago. Luis, who declined to give his last name, said the three-year agreement between FLOC and the NC Growers Association, which was signed earlier this year, has given him and all his fellow union members the right to speak up when they feel they are being mistreated.

“Speaking for myself personally, I was afraid,” said Luis, speaking through a translator. “The growers were aggressive with us. They weren’t beating us but they were treating us roughly, yelling so we were fearful and timid. The union told us we shouldn’t be afraid. They said, ‘You are the ones working, doing their work. They are giving you the work so it’s important you be united.’”

In 2004, FLOC and the Growers Association signed an historic agreement that granted immigrant tobacco farmworkers a set of basic rights. The agreement gave farmworkers freedom of association — any worker can join the union — as well as grievance procedures that cover host of issues ranging from their recruitment in Mexico to issues involving unfair working conditions in the tobacco fields. Other worker benefits include injury pay, bereavement pay, a workers’ compensation system and a seniority system that helps eliminate discrimination against workers who file grievances.

Alexandria Jones, North Carolina outreach coordinator for the National Farm Worker Ministry, said Luis’ new washing machine and telephone is most likely an indirect result of the agreement between FLOC and the growers association, and conditions have definitely improved for immigrant farmworkers since the union struck the deal in 2004. “The North Carolina Growers Association should be commended for doing this in a state that is traditionally anti-union,” said Baldemar Velsquez, president of FLOC. “For the growers association to hammer out an agreement with a union takes a tremendous amount of courage.”

Luis said he realizes that most of his comrades working on other farms don’t have it as good as he does. He said housing conditions are “pretty bad” for most farmworkers and there are not enough state Department of Labor inspectors to ensure the problem is being addressed.

One direct benefit of union membership is travel reimbursement. Luis has been traveling from Mexico to the United States for the past three years without having to pay his expenses.

Before the union’s agreement with the growers association, an immigrant could spend upwards of $700 for travel to the

United States. Luis said he hasn’t had to pay for a visa or pay the contractor who hired him in Mexico. Jones said most immigrant farmworkers don’t have it as good as Luis. She said travel from Mexico can cost thousands of dollars. Most immigrant farmworkers have to borrow the money in Mexico and pay it back promptly or face serious consequences.

And undocumented workers receive no benefits to help them pay the cost of travel, Jones said. Velsquez said FLOC’s contract with the growers association covers 6,000 migrant farmworkers in North Carolina, and the union estimates there are 150,000 other migrant workers in the state who are undocumented and who suffer “abuse, dangerous working conditions and low wages.” FLOC estimates 25,000 to 30,000 migrant workers pick tobacco annually in the state.

But an agreement between FLOC and the growers association is only the first step toward securing a better life for the tens of thousands of Mexican immigrants that travel each spring to the state to cultivate and harvest tobacco, Velsquez said. The second step is convincing Reynolds American, the nation’s second largest tobacco company, to take an active role in improving conditions for tobacco farmworkers “who have built their wealth,” he said. Velsquez said Reynolds American controls a procurement system that they designed and they operate. The company has very strict contracts with their suppliers that restricts what their suppliers can and cannot do for the farmworkers.

“There’s inequity built into their system,” Velsquez said. “They allow these atrocities happen in the fields, but they have the power to change that. Any resources they can put into the supply line is going to benefit farmers and farmworkers. We know growers who are complying with all the labor laws to the best of their ability but it doesn’t get them any extra resources from Reynolds. Growers make the best effort and it’s very difficult to meet all the nuances of the law.”

Shareholders, proxies and civil disobedience

On the morning of May 6, about 40 people gathered on the sidewalk outside the Reynolds American building on Main Street in Winston-Salem to hold a prayer and strategy session. The 40 individuals, representing a coalition of activist groups spearheaded by FLOC, received their marching orders as they entered Reynolds American’s annual shareholder meeting as shareholder proxies.

Roughly 100 protestors marched through the streets of downtown Winston-Salem on May 6 to protest Reynolds American’s refusal to meet with the leadership of the Farm Labor Organizing Committee. The labor union is admant that the cigarette maker can improve conditions for immigrant tobacco farmworkers by putting more resources into its chain of production. (photo by Frank Eaton)

What transpired over the next several hours illustrates what happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object. Logic tells us that such a confrontation would have to end in a stalemate unless either the force or the object relents. The infiltration of the annual shareholders meeting by proxies sympathetic to FLOC’s cause represented the second time in as many years the union has implemented a strategy of proposing resolutions on behalf of farm workers to improve their lot. The first proxy to speak on behalf of immigrant farmworkers was arrested by off-duty Winston-Salem police officer MO Peterson, who was working as a private security officer for Reynolds during the stockholders meeting.

At 10:50 a.m., Ray Rogers emerged from the Magistrate’s Office at the Forsyth County Detention Center, bearing cuts and bruises on his arms, hands and nose. Rogers said he stood up at the portion of the meeting where Reynolds American elected its directors, and took issue with an open letter posted on the company’s website addressing farm labor issues.

“So I got up, all of a sudden, [Reynolds CEO Susan Ivey] goes on to the next item I say, ‘Wait a minute. I have a question, a two-minute question to raise before I cast a vote for election of directors,’” Rogers recalled. “She said, ‘Well, you can’t do it until the end of the meeting.’ At the end of the meeting, the vote is over. This is the point where I as a legitimate shareholder or proxy have a right to get up and ask a question.”

Rogers then began to read his statement aloud. He had read two or three sentences aloud before he said he was tackled by several security guards.

David Howard, a spokesman for Reynolds American, acknowledged that Rogers was removed from the meeting. Howard explained there was a 55-minute question-and-answer session at the end of the meeting allowed for investors and proxies to make inquiries of the board.

“Unfortunately, Mr. Rogers refused to wait for the question-and-answer session,” Howard said. Rogers was politely asked several times by the chairman and the secretary to sit down but he refused, Howard said, and “security officers we hired for the meeting removed him from the meeting.”

Howard also acknowledged that Reynolds American hires off-duty Winston-Salem police officers as security guards. Rogers said the hiring of off-duty police officers by private corporations presents a conflict of interest for the officers.

“It is a threat to the civil liberties of every person in this country to allow the police to moonlight, be paid by these corporations to do their bidding and represent themselves as police to get a private citizen to do something the company wants them to do even though they’re not violating the law and that is wrong,” Rogers said. “Now, if I was involved in some type of criminal activity, you’re darn right they should have come in and intervened, grabbed me and pulled me out of there. If I was carrying a weapon or if I was approaching the dais with some threatening gesture, but I wasn’t. I was simply there trying to exercise my rights as a proxy, and to raise a two-minute statement that their ground rules said you could.”

Rogers, founder and president of Corporate Campaign Inc., said Reynolds American uses off-duty police officers at shareholder meetings to “stifle dissent.”

Velsquez agreed that Reynolds American violated Rogers’ right to free speech. “Why are they trying to suppress people who are speaking up for those at the bottom?” he asked.

Like Rogers, Velsquez also took issue with the open letter posted on the Reynolds American website, and expressed his concerns during the shareholder meeting. In particular, Velsquez disputed a statement that FLOC is pressuring Reynolds to enter a collective bargaining agreement to raise funds for the union.

“They’re mistaken. We’re not asking for a collective bargaining agreement with RJ Reynolds,” he said. “They control the production chain. They control the pricing. For them to argue they have no control over the supply chain is ludicrous.

For them to say this is a money-making venture is [untrue].” Howard said Reynolds American’s position is clear. “The bottom line is, the company is not going to enter a collective bargaining agreement with FLOC,” Howard said. “The farm workers are not employees of RJ Reynolds. The North Carolina Growers Association has an agreement with FLOC. The growers association is the proper body to negotiate with.” Velsquez also cited other portions of Reynolds’ open letter as “misinformation.”

The letter states that FLOC membership has dropped from 4,000 to 640 and that workers may be canceling their memberships due to dissatisfaction with the union. The letter also claims that FLOC has been accused of using “deceptive tactics to recruit membership,” and 800 workers have filed complaints against FLOC with the Mexican consulate.

“They’re fabricating a lot of stuff,” Velsquez said. With respect to membership numbers, FLOC has about 6,000 members, but the numbers fluctuate from year-to-year based on numbers of agricultural workers recruited from Mexico, Velsquez said. The claim of 800 complaints filed with the Mexican consulate is simply untrue, he added.

Rogers never got to finish his statement at the shareholders meeting, but if he had the chance, he said he would have inquired if any of the board nominees were part of the Reynolds “leadership teams” that wrote the open letter.

“Do the nominees really believe FLOC’s actions against Reynolds is an issue of the union trying to make money rather than putting an end to the nightmarish working and living conditions, misery and exploitation suffered by farmworkers harvesting your tobacco?” Rogers said, reading from his statement. “I suggest that this letter, full of contradictions and lies, is an effort to divert shareholders and the public’s attention away from the greed shown by Reynolds executives.”

Velsquez said greed is the reason the tobacco farmers and farmworkers find themselves in an untenable situation. He cited the compensation package Reynolds executives voted for themselves during the May 6 meeting as evidence of that fact. “Those people who labor at the bottom of the supply chain are stuck there trying to subsist and to survive,” he said. “Many of those farmers are marginal and it’s unfair to place the burden on the farmer who is the direct employer of the farmworkers.

To say [the farmer] is responsible for that is absurd when the corporation was voting themselves awards up to $20 million. How many pounds of tobacco does it take to produce that $20 million and the farmers and the workers produce that? The people at the top to get more, and the people on the bottom get less; I think it’s immoral.”

Michael Szpak, a proxy sympathetic to the farmworkers’ cause, attempted to follow up on Rogers’ point during the shareholders meeting. Szpak said he tried to ask a question and he was immediately surrounded by security guards and ejected from the meeting. After his release from the county jail, Rogers headed over to the Winston-Salem Public Safety Center and filed assault charges against Reynolds American CEO Susan Ivey. Sgt. Jeffrey Stutts received the complaint according to police reports.

“Instead of me being brought before the court it should the people involved in this assault on me because I was assaulted.

It should be Ms. Ivey, the chair and the people who directed the gang of thugs to remove me from the meeting,” Rogers said. “I’m 65 years old. It’s not becoming to treat a senior citizen this way.” Rogers is scheduled to appear in court on trespassing and resisting arrest charges on July 17.

Organizing a protest

Moments after Rogers and the other proxies entered the Reynolds American building on May 6, Alexandria Jones went back to work, helping to organize the members of various coalitions of nonprofit groups that support the Reynolds campaign. The coalition utilized Lloyd

Presbyterian Church off 7th Street as a headquarters to mobilize volunteers to signboard in the downtown area during lunchtime before meeting at Winston Square Park to begin a protest march.

“What are we looking for? Justice! When do we want it? Now!” exclaimed a group of roughly 80 protest marchers in unison as they marched along the downtown streets of Winston-Salem around 12:30 p.m. A percussion group helped the marchers stay in rhythm. Protestors held aloft signs that read “Stop Oppression of Tobacco Workers” and “Meet with FLOC” and chanted slogans in unison as they passed by the RJ Reynolds and the Reynolds American buildings. Shortly after 1 p.m., the protestors arrived at Lloyd Presbyterian Church.

Nick Wood, a FLOC organizer, thanked farm workers and student groups for attending the rally. Wood also thanked the National Farm Worker Ministry and a group that traveled from Toledo, Ohio to show their support for farmworkers.

A number of speakers addressed the crowd, including Virginia Nesmith of the National Farm Worker Ministry. Nesmith served as one of the proxies at the shareholders meeting and delivered a report from the meeting.

“We were still able to very significantly raise the issue that farmworkers need a voice with the company, and the company needs to respond to that,” Nesmith said. Proxies introduced four resolutions at the shareholders meeting on behalf of farmworkers, Nesmith said. One of the resolutions related to human rights while another related to health issues and green tobacco sickness.

“While I spoke, we had about 35 people stand up and ironically, as I understand we have between 30,000 and 35,000 farmworkers who pick tobacco so they represented about a thousand farmworkers each who the company has chosen not to acknowledge as stakeholders in the company,” Nesmith said. “Most of the farmworkers couldn’t be at the protest for two reasons — they either lose a day of pay or they’re undocumented. If they were to come to a public setting and speak up, they certainly risk deportation, so we stood up for them.” Nesmith pointed out that the resolutions put forth received 15 percent of the shareholders’ votes, which means they can be raised again at next year’s meeting.

She said the huge disparity between company executives and the farmworkers at the bottom of the production chain became crystal clear when the board passed an omnibus compensation plan that allows directors to get up to $60 million in compensation.

“It would take a farmworker 3,700 years to make that much money,” Nesmith said. Nesmith said Reynolds American’s response — that they require their growers to comply with all labor laws — is an abdication of corporate responsibility.

Reynolds American, Nesmith said, chooses to look the other way when immigrant farmworkers suffer racism, harassment, abject poverty and poor health from extended exposure to lethal nicotine and pesticides. He added that Reynolds’ educational video on how to avoid green tobacco sickness was simply “unrealistic.”

“If they were to sit down and have a dialogue with farmworkers and work for representation for farmworkers, [the farmworkers] could say, ‘We need to take a break today. We need soapy water in the fields to wash our hands,’” Nesmith said. “The cure to GTS is when workers are able to represent themselves and speak up without fear. So sitting down with FLOC to determine how to deal with that process, to enable more workers to come into this process in a legal way and to remove the fear of undocumented workers — all those things Reynolds has the power to help with.” During a 2001 study conducted by the Wake Forest School of Medicine, researchers reported that 44 of 182 tobacco farmworkers suffered from green tobacco sickness over a 10-week period. The study was conducted at 37 different tobacco farms in Wake and Granville counties. Researchers found that green tobacco sickness is caused by acute nicotine poisoning resulting from absorption through the skin of nicotine from the green tobacco plants.

The highest incidences happen during harvest with symptoms such as nausea, vomiting, headache and dizziness. The study concluded green tobacco sickness is “a highly prevalent occupational illness among Latino migrant and seasonal farmworkers in North Carolina.”

At the May 6 rally, Velsquez took the dais and described the movement to protest slave-like hardships for tobacco farm workers as gaining strength.

Eventually, Reynolds American will have to acknowledge FLOC’s request to sit down and discuss an agreement between the company and farmworkers, he said. “It’s time for them to recognize the farmworker,” Velsquez said. “We keep knocking — somebody’s going to have to answer. Somebody, someday is going to hear us and that will be the day that Susan Ivey sits down and has coffee with the farmworker that built her wealth.”

The crowd roared its approval. Velsquez said if Reynolds leadership refuses to meet with FLOC representatives, the union will then organize a national boycott of its stakeholders’ products.

“There’s a lot of doors of entry,” he said. “If each one of their board members is important to them, each one of them is a door, so we’ve got a lot of doors to pick from. We’re just going to pick the best one. The key to a successful consumer boycott is choosing the target and getting access to the consumers who have that product that are most sympathetic to the farmworkers and I think that’s the majority of people in the United States.”

What would a consumer campaign look like?

Ray Rogers knows a thing or two about how to run a successful corporate campaign.

Rogers led the campaign to unionize textile workers at JP Stevens and Co. in the mid-1970s alongside Crystal Lee Sutton — the inspiration for the film character “Norma Rae.” Rogers is also the director of the Campaign to Stop Killer Coke, which claims Coca-Cola is guilty of labor, human rights and environmental abuses. He said the campaign has managed to get Coca-Cola products kicked off 52 university campuses as students have joined the consumer boycott.

“You’ve got to build something that’s powerful that can really raise the stakes economically and politically,” Rogers said. “You force them to take the low road of morality — do the right things for the right reasons. They’ve got far more to lose than to gain if they don’t do the right thing.”

Rogers said RJ Reynolds doesn’t want to take responsibility for the farmworkers, but they are clearly the only entity in the production chain that can help improve conditions for the people at the bottom.

Rogers said he and Velsquez have been collaborating on a strategy of targeting the board members of Reynolds American to achieve FLOC’s aims. “RJ Reynolds is bricks, mortar, machinery, cigarettes, but they don’t make policies and decisions that harm people and communities; people do. So you have to personalize your campaign.

That means you have to look at the executives and the board of directors and figure out how you can bring pressure on them as individuals,” Rogers said. Rogers pointed out that Susan Ivey serves on the board of Wake Forest University.

“We need to take this fight into Wake Forest big time and get those students calling for her to remove herself from the board,” he said.

Back on the farm

A farmworker who identified himself as “Juan” sat at a picnic table outside a powder-blue mobile home as the sun set on May 8. Juan lives in the mobile home with two other farmworkers at a tobacco farm outside Knightdale. Juan, who swatted at mosquitoes while he spoke, said it was more comfortable than sitting inside the mobile home, which has no air conditioning. A native of Durango, Mexico, Juan said he’s been coming to work in North Carolina as an H2A guest workers for the past 14 years. He joined FLOC three years ago but was not aware of the union’s campaign against Reynolds American.

Back in Durango, Juan is a farmer. “I grow corn, rice and beans, but everything is falling apart,” he said through an interpreter. “There’s not any rain so crops don’t produce anything. It’s hard because there is no work there.”

Luis, who has worked at his farm 11 years, said conditions are equally difficult in his home state of Michoacan, in Mexico. Luis said he believes FLOC’s campaign is very important for immigrant farmworkers and farmers alike.

“I understand the campaign would benefit both workers and growers. If they win this campaign, the growers can start growing tobacco again,” Luis said. In 2005, the grower Luis works for stopped cultivating tobacco because the price was too low. Luis said he also hopes that the H2A guest worker program could be extended to grant more visas to undocumented workers.

“If I had a way to support this program being extended I would do it because it’s much better to come with papers. It would be great if we could extend the work permit program beyond agriculture,” Luis said. Velsquez said the reality is that the only way for an immigrant to work in agriculture in the United States is through the guest worker program. He said FLOC will support an expansion of the program only if it includes labor rights for workers and a stipulation no existing workers will be replaced.

Luis said his greatest hope is FLOC can one day implement an employee pension plan. “Having better salaries is good, but if I had to choose, the pension issue is more important,” he said. Bo Glenn, a member of the Eno River Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, attended the May 6 rally for farmworkers.

Glenn is a Winston-Salem native. He believes a little historical perspective might help Reynolds American executives see that this issue isn’t going to just go away. “Obviously the major hurdle is the innate prejudice most people have for migrant farm workers,” Glenn said. “They’ve got to recognize that they’re just like farmworkers we’ve had in North Carolina for years. When I was growing up, most farmworkers were African-Americans and there’s a long history of poor farm working conditions. It’s a continuation of what’s been going on for decades, but hopefully now, they’re now recognizing economic justice is appropriate.”

Luis said the farmworker union will continue to grow in strength and will not relent in its fight for better working and living conditions.

“When someone is alone it’s more difficult for us to ask for something from the growers or whomever it may be,” he said. “But if we are united, it is easier.”

ABOVE: The Farm Labor Organizing Committee estimates that 25,000 to 30,000 migrant farmworkers travel from Mexico annually to pick tobacco on North Carolina farms. BELOW: A photo of Ray Rogers’ proxy identification card for the May 6 Reynolds American shareholder meeting in Winston-Salem. Rogers was arrested and ejected from the meeting when he attempted to make a statement about an open letter on the Reynolds website. (photo courtesy of FLOC)