Kristin Collins, Staff Writer Newsobserver.com December 1, 2008
An Ohio-based farmworkers union put R.J. Reynolds, North Carolina's tobacco giant, in its sights more than a year ago.
Now, as the campaign heads into its second year, union officials say they are more determined than ever to push the Winston-Salem cigarette maker into a deal that could unionize as many as 30,000 tobacco fieldworkers.
Earlier this month, union supporters hand-delivered hundreds of postcards signed by union supporters to members of the company's board of directors. They say it is the beginning of a push that will target board members and other companies that do business with Reynolds.
If those measures fail, they say, they will move on to a national boycott of the company's products, which include Winston, Camel and Salem cigarettes.
"If anybody in the country needs a union, it's these workers," said Baldemar Velasquez, president of the Farm Labor Organizing Committee, known as FLOC.
The union's five-year boycott campaign against the Mount Olive Pickle Co. resulted in a deal that unionized about 8,000 farmworkers.
Velasquez says tobacco workers are more vulnerable than other farmworkers, because the nicotine in the tobacco leaves can sicken and dehydrate them. Many also are in the country illegally, leaving them little leverage to complain about working conditions.
Reynolds representatives continue to refuse talks with the union -- despite protests staged outside their offices and at their annual shareholders meeting.
The company has agreed recently to meetings with pastors and other groups supporting the union. It also has begun distributing worker safety training videos to its farmers. But Reynolds spokesman David Howard said those steps don't indicate a change in the company's stance.
"We support fair working conditions for any worker in any industry," Howard said, "but the bottom line is that these workers are not R.J. Reynolds employees."
The company doesn't directly employ farmworkers. It buys tobacco from contracted growers, who hire their own field hands.
But Velasquez contends that major cigarette makers hold the power to change working conditions for farmworkers.
He says Reynolds should insist that its contract farmers use a legal visa program to bring in workers -- and that the company should help farmers cover the costs of that program. He says they should also help farmers provide decent housing, medical care and worker's compensation.
Velasquez spent several weeks over the summer working on a tobacco farm and living in a migrant labor camp, gathering information for what he said may be an extended campaign.
FLOC waged a five-year boycott against Mount Olive Pickle Co. before finally securing an agreement. The contract with that company, signed in 2004, resulted in the unionization of about 8,000 farmworkers who come to North Carolina each year with temporary visas -- virtually all of the state's legal farmworkers.
The union's North Carolina supporters say that success gives them resolve to stick with this campaign over several years, if necessary.
"If the campaign with Mount Olive Pickle shows anything, it shows that it's possible," said Alexandria Jones, head of the North Carolina office of the National Farmworker Ministry, a faith-based group that supports unionization.
FLOC also has negotiated similar agreements with other major companies, including Campbell Soup, Heinz and Vlasic. Velasquez spent eight years pressuring Campbell before signing that contract.
North Carolina farmers, for the most part, do not welcome the growth of unionization among their workers.
Graham Boyd, head of the Tobacco Growers Association of North Carolina, called the union's move against Reynolds a "money grab" intended to pad its own budget.
"It's nothing but a shakedown," Boyd said. "It's not about the workers or the conditions that the workers are in. It's about money."
Keith Parrish, who uses union workers on his Harnett County farm, said the union represents a further loss of control for the family farmer. The union now chooses which workers get to return each year, and Parrish says he has lost many of his longtime employees.
"We farmers are an independent lot," Parrish said. "We're being told every which way we turn now what to do, and it comes to a point that enough's enough."
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