Calls for Change: Demonstrators March to Reynolds American, Protesting Farmworkers' Conditions

Source from:  By Melissa Hall JOURNAL REPORTER October 29, 2007 10/30/2007

Summer days for Jesus Jimenez started about 5 a.m., when he went into a field near Thomasville to pick tobacco. There were times when he felt sick from the nicotine that he absorbed from the dew-covered plants. Nicotine sickness sent four fellow tobacco workers in Sanford to the hospital during the summer, Jiminez said through an interpreter. Jiminez was one of about 200 union representatives, farm workers and religious leaders who marched from Lloyd Presbyterian Church to the Reynolds American headquarters building downtown yesterday calling for better conditions for farmworkers. They called on Susan Ivey, the chief executive officer of Reynolds American, to meet with officials from the Farm Labor Organizing Committee about improving the plight of tobacco pickers. Marchers carried signs, waved flags and carried crosses bearing the names of farm workers who have died on the job. Wil Duncan, the special assistant to John Sweeney, the president of the national AFL-CIO, read a letter of support from Sweeney. "'When Susan Ivey won't meet with you she turns her back on all of us,'" Duncan said. He and other union members left Washington, D.C., at 7 a.m. yesterday to come to the rally. Rachel Lovis, a campaign organizer for the labor committee, said that the workers they represent are in the country legally to do work such as agricultural labor. The committee wants to organize workers who are not members of the N.C. Growers Association, a clearinghouse for seasonal workers for many farms. "Those workers don't have the protections that N.C. Grower Association workers have," including wage protection, health benefits and decent housing, she said. In 1999, the committee called for a boycott of another North Carolina company, the Mt. Olive Pickle Company Inc. It ended in 2004 when Mt. Olive signed a collective-bargaining contract with the union. Those workers were not employed by Mt. Olive, but worked for farms that the company contracted with. David Howard, a spokesman for Reynolds, said last night that Reynolds will not negotiate a collective-bargaining contract with the labor committee. He said that Reynolds has contracts with the farmers to grow tobacco and that neither the farmers nor the tobacco pickers are employees of Reynolds. "We are willing to talk with religious and community leaders to discuss conditions," Howard said. He said that if the farm workers want to join a union that is their prerogative and Reynolds does not have a problem with it. Rally organizers contacted Alfredo Miranda, the director of the Winston-Salem Hispanic Ministry, to find a place to have the rally. He suggested that they contact officials at Lloyd Presbyterian Church on Chestnut Street. Laura Spangler, the pastor of Lloyd, said that when she got the call from organizers she talked it over with church members and they decided to allow the rally. "Lloyd has a history of doing civil-rights demonstrations," she said. Enditem