Toilets in a labor camp (Oxfam/FLOC)

Toilets in a labor camp (Oxfam/FLOC)

Working and living conditions for workers on North Carolina tobacco farms are nothing short of appalling, as portrayed in a new report (PDF) by Oxfam America and the Farm Labor Organizing Committee. Interviewers visited more than 100 labor camps in 5 key North Carolina tobacco farming counties and conducted 86 full interviews with 103 people, speaking to hundreds more along the way. Additionally, they interviewed growers, government officials, and manufacturers.

The North Carolina tobacco workforce is believed to include a higher proportion of undocumented workers than estimates of agricultural work nationally; in line with that, the vast majority of workers Oxfam and FLOC interviewed were undocumented; a few were working on H-2A visas or had permanent legal residency or citizenship.

These vulnerable workers face dangerous conditions on the job, disgusting and unsanitary conditions in their camps, and low wages.

"Of the 103 interview participants, 22 (about 1 in 4) reported that they were paid less than the minimum wage, one as low as $6 per hour. 51 workers were paid at minimum wage, and only 11 were paid more than the minimum wage."

For more than a third of workers interviewed, lunch was the only break they got during the work day; only a third reported having access to toilets while in the fields.

"Sixty-one of the 86 workers interviewed said there was water in the field, but several said they were only allowed to drink it at certain times. Seven workers told interviewers that the water provided was dirty, hot, or often ran out during the day. Three workers said water was only provided sometimes, and three said water is not provided and they have to bring their own."

Without adequate protective gear, workers are exposed to large amounts of nicotine absorbed through their skin—up to the equivalent of 36 cigarettes on a day when it has rained and the plants are wet. Many suffer green tobacco sickness. "Common symptoms they reported included nausea, vomiting, headaches,

skin irritation, weakness, dizziness, fatigue, difficulty sleeping, hallucinations,

and a feeling like being intoxicated."

skin irritation, weakness, dizziness, fatigue, difficulty sleeping, hallucinations, and a feeling like being intoxicated." Workers were often exposed to pesticides and lacked adequate hand-washing facilities.

In the living facilities provided by employers, workers faced inadequate toilet and shower facilities, inadequate or absent laundry and cooking facilities, lack of privacy, infestations of bugs and rodents, and worn out or missing mattresses.

Child labor is common.

With such pervasive abuses, there needs to be in industry-wide reckoning with labor issues, and a dramatic increase in government oversight at both the state and federal levels. As we see time and time again, workers who are vulnerable for whatever reasons—immigrant status, language, race or ethnicity, gender, desperation—get exploited by employers and industries all too willing to take advantage of vulnerability. Giving workers more rights, including the right to organize into unions or gain a collective voice through non-union organizing, and enforcing the rights they have, are the only way to stop these abuses. Growers and manufacturers and other employers aren't going to do it just out of the goodness of their hearts.

(h/t AFL-CIO Now)