Farm Labor Leader Spends Week in the Tobacco Fields

Source from:  blog.aflcio.org by James Parks, Aug 16, 2008 08/19/2008

Members of the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) in North Carolina harvest 26 different crops ranging from cucumbers to tobacco to Christmas trees. By far, harvesting tobacco is considered the worst, the riskiest and the dirtiest of the jobs. FLOC founder and president Baldemar Velásquez felt compelled to experience what the tobacco workers go through each day. So for a week in July, he worked as an unknown field laborer in an all-male group at a North Carolina farm to see firsthand the conditions of tobacco workers. Tobacco workers are paid between $7 and $9 an hour. Velásquez is donating the money he made to FLOC's fund for widows of union members. In his Point of View column "A Week in the Tobacco Fields" on the AFL-CIO website, Velásquez recounts through excerpts of his daily diary his experiences and emotions working with the men in the hot fields. Read the entire column here. Velásquez says he left the fields convinced that immigrant workers are getting a bum rap. During the week, I gained an even greater admiration and respect for the workers. While they often are portrayed by the talking heads on radio and TV as law breakers and terrorists, the reality is that those who can come with a visa to work do so. But the demand for agricultural labor exceeds the supply, so these workers come any way they can. The men I worked with were law-abiding and only came here to be able to support their families back home. In the Point of View, Velásquez recounts how he had to wear rubber boots and a roll of plastic bags fashioned as a poncho to keep the morning dew from soaking his clothes. The job, which began around 7 a.m., involved topping, suckering and weeding the plants. The flower had to be broken off the top and the suckers gleaned from the leaf. The suckers look like little shoots of romaine lettuce. Over the course of the week, Velásquez worried that he would catch the "Green Monster"-nicotine poisoning ingested through the skin. He found some light gloves with grips on them to protect his hands. He went through three pairs before the week was out. Although he avoided nicotine poisoning, after less than a week, his fingers tingled with numbness. I thought that it was from sleeping on them. On the way to the field, I told the men in the van with me about my hands being swollen. They looked at each other, and Shorty responded, "That's the way we all are." They said it would eventually go away after a week or so. Even with the plastic protection, my sleeves and gloves were soaked. After I remove the gloves my hands are usually pretty sticky from the nicotine that soaked through. Even though his hands were numb at times, Velásquez kept working just as did the other men. Days after he left the fields, the numbness remained. The most moving moment of the week came on his last day in the fields, when Velásquez, who was dubbed campesino, tabacalero (pure farm worker, tobacco worker) by one of the men, arranged for the Rev. Nelson Johnson, an African American minister in Greensboro, N.C., to come and bless the men and their families. He came to the fields. It was a powerful experience. He arrives prior to lunch, and right out there in the middle of the tobacco field we all prayed. When we finished, I noticed Caballo and Rudy [two of the workers] with tears on their faces. Rudy told me tonight that "when he got to blessing the families in Mexico, I'm a man but I couldn't hold back my emotions because this is why I do this and also because this man who is not of my race would come and pray these words.…It made me feel like somebody out there is listening to us and we're not forgotten." Enditem