Tobacco companies must act to stop migrant US farmworker abuse!

Every year thousands of migrant workers, many from Mexico, arrive to work in the US tobacco fields. They spend months in labor camps with deplorable living conditions, suffer from illnesses resulting from nicotine poisoning and exposure to dangerous pesticides and work long hours for sub-poverty wages. Tobacco companies can and must act to end these abuses.

The IUF-affiliated Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) has launched a major campaign to recruit the migrant farmworkers who travel every summer to North Carolina for the tobacco growing season. Through the "respect, recognition, raise" campaign FLOC hopes to win recognition and the right to represent tobacco workers, respect for farmworkers and fair wages.

Recent video footage shows a representative of the North Carolina Growers Association brutally assaulting a FLOC organizer.

FLOC president Baldemar Velasquez commented "The big tobacco companies must use their influence to put an end to the violence and poor working conditions in their supply chains. Help us in our campaign, send a message to big tobacco now." Click here to sign the FLOC urgent action petition. If you live outside North America, please select "other" from the "state/province" menu. [Please note: this petition is now closed]