Daniella Burgi-Palomino (pictured at lower left) is Oxfam’s program associate for our US regional office.

Fifteen miles. That’s how far I walked recently on a hot spring day—along with organizers from Oxfam partner the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC), union members, students, and community supporters—to raise awareness of the rights of North Carolina tobacco pickers on the annual Pilgrimage for Peace and Justice.

Photo: Oxfam America

Like many US farmworkers, North Carolina’s approximately 150,000 pickers often live in overcrowded and substandard housing and make an annual average income of less than $8,000. They also face severe negative health effects, absorbing the nicotine equivalent of almost two packs of cigarettes a day simply from picking the leaves on the fields… which puts a whole different spin on the term “second-hand smoke”.

Our journey began, appropriately enough, in a place called Tobaccoville. We began our walk before 9am outside of the main RJ Reynolds plant. Large trees and a long fence around the entire property blocked any sight into the inside workings of tobacco manufacturing, but when I took a deep breath, I couldn’t miss the smell of the tobacco in the air.

 Our group included organizers from other Oxfam partners Student Action with Farmworkers  and National Farmworker Ministry. We carried red FLOC flags and signs calling for RJ Reynolds to meet with FLOC to negotiate improved working conditions for tobacco pickers. We drew a few honks, but mostly stares as we walked along the narrow picturesque countryside road.

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Photo: Andrew Blejwas / Oxfam America

“It’s not our problem, it’s not our problem, it’s not our problem.”

That’s the frequent mantra of those who are in the position to create significant change—but won’t. And it’s a mantra being invoked again in the southeast United States. This time by Publix Supermarkets, which is resisting calls from the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW)—an Oxfam partner—to double the wages of tomato pickers.

Publix’s resistance might make sense if it were not for the fact that all it takes to double the daily wage of tomato pickers is paying one more penny per pound of tomatoes picked.

So when Publix officials say “CIW’s complaints should be addressed with the employers of the workers, not with retailers and their customers,” they are essentially saying “it’s not our problem.” But denying that it’s a problem is an easy way to deny ownership of a solution. Companies like McDonald’s, Burger King, and Whole Foods understood that they were in the position to put pressure on their contractors to improve working conditions in the fields. Those contractors don’t want to lose the business of large corporations. That gives those companies, and Publix, significant leverage.

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A prayer vigil in support of restaurant workers was held recently in front of Tony Moran's Restaurant in New Oleans.

Oxfam America’s Andrew Blejwas reports on the findings of a new study on the disparities restaurant workers face.

Finding good food in New Orleans is like catching a string of beads during Mardi Gras: stand in the right place and it’s likely to hit you in the face. From Creole to Cajun—and everything in between—the city’s food is as diverse and interesting as its population. And just as New Orleans’s food mirrors the diversity of American culture, the conditions facing restaurant staff in the city reflect American disparities broadly.

A new series of reports, Behind the Kitchen Door, outlines the dramatic racial, gender, and economic disparity among workers in Orleans and four other American cities: Chicago, Detroit, New York, and Portland, Maine. The reports are by the Restaurant Opportunities Center (ROC), an Oxfam America partner in New Orleans. Based on surveys of more than 2,500 workers, the reports reveal two main findings, according to Jose Oliva, ROC’s national policy coordinator: “One, the restaurant industry is resilient, even in the face of this Great Recession. The other is that these are not the kind of jobs we want to have in America when we come out of the recession.”

The reports reveal a number of startling figures about the jobs that are available: Read the rest of this entry »

Jonathan Coley stands outside the office of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers.

Jonathan Coley is a CHANGE leader for Oxfam America and a student at Samford University. Here’s his account of a recent visit to Immokalee, Florida, where many of the nation’s tomatoes are grown—and often picked under grueling conditions.

When you’re enjoying your sandwich or burrito at lunch, do you think about the hand that picked your tomatoes?

Despite working in one of the most dangerous industries in the United States, the average farm worker earns just $7,500 a year with few benefits and no overtime pay. Children as young as 12 work in the fields.

I knew many of these facts before I traveled to Immokalee, Florida, recently for the annual gathering of the Student/Farmworker Alliance. However, I was not prepared for the realities I confronted when I walked the streets of this little-known Florida town. Read the rest of this entry »

Many US farmworkers—like these North Carolina tobacco pickers—face low pay and hazardous working conditions, but a new bill called AgJOBS could help improve their situation. Photo: Liliana Rodriguez / Oxfam America

Sarah Zipkin is the project officer for Oxfam’s decent work program in the US. This is the second of two guest posts by Sarah about food, farms, and what it means to support workers’ rights in 2009.

Less than a week after I marched for workers in North Carolina–complete with tobacco leaf sign around my neck–I was back in Boston representing Oxfam at a pre-release screening of Food, Inc, a film opening soon that takes a disturbing look at the mechanized food industry in this country, from field to fork.

As I watched it, I was glad I’d eaten a veggie pizza beforehand, since I learned that a lot of our meat comes from mechanized slaughterhouses–often the site of inhumane conditions and questionable practices. I am already obsessed with looking over labels in the grocery store, but since seeing this film, I’m even more fixated. Now that I’ve actually started thinking about where our food comes from, I can’t help but wonder: what dark secrets hide behind those colorful packages?

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Sarah Zipkin on a visit to a farm in Mississippi.

Sarah Zipkin is the project officer for Oxfam’s decent work program in the US. This is the first of two guest posts by Sarah about food, farms, and what it means to support workers’ rights in 2009.

Last week, as I walked through the doors of the RJ Reynolds tobacco company headquarters in Winston-Salem, NC, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was having a flashback to another time. My parents told me about the grape boycott led by Cesar Chavez in the 1960s, and I read about farmworker rights in the Grapes of Wrath in high school–yet here I was in 2009, walking in a rally with a painted tobacco leaf hanging around my neck that said “Justice Now for Farmworkers!”

Today, a farmworker in this country makes around $13,000 a year and has a life expectancy of 49 years. (Yes, you read that right.) Hazardous working conditions, long hours, and a lack of health services take a toll on these workers, especially tobacco pickers–some even get physically ill. And this has been the reality for over 30 years.

That’s why 40 of us–students, people of faith, worker rights advocates, union leaders, and grandmothers–turned out on that balmy Wednesday morning in Winston-Salem. We were ready to stand up for farmworker rights at RJ Reynolds’ annual shareholders meeting, and to bring the voice of farmworkers to the company’s Board of Directors and CEO Susan Ivey.

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Demonstrators gather in suppport of justice for workers employed by Smithfield Foods. Photo by UFCW

When your job is to help kill and process about 32,000 hogs a day—as workers in Tar Heel, NC, do at the Smithfield Foods plant—there’s not much to cheer about. The work is grim, the pace is blinding, and injury is a constant threat. But as 2009 dawns, many of the approximately 5,000 workers at the world’s biggest pig processing facility are beaming. For them, life on the slaughterhouse floor is about to get a little better.

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Turns out it’s not only unhealthy to smoke tobacco—it’s also unhealthy to pick it. Check out these details from my colleague Coco’s story about the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) an Oxfam-funded group  that advocates for better working conditions for US tobacco workers. When FLOC president Baldemar Velasquez spent a day in the fields with tobacco pickers in North Carolina, he found that picking can be hazardous to your health:

Coated with nicotine that easily soaks through clothing and gloves, [tobacco leaves] are the source of “the green monster,”—a temporary sickness that strikes many workers laboring in the hot sun.

“Like poison ivy, you catch it through the skin. It’s like a serious flu. You start vomiting,” said Velasquez, adding that pesticides sprayed on the leaves can compound the effects of the illness. Farm workers wear long sleeves and pants to protect themselves as best they can. But when the leaves are wet with rain or dew, the nicotine sinks through quickly. On those days, workers will often don makeshift rain coats fashioned from garbage bags for a bit of extra protection. But there’s a personal cost to that, too: They’re sweltering.

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