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Child Labor in Tobacco

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The tobacco companies persist in employing children to harvest tobacco. Not in Malawi and China. In Virginia and North Carolina.

Various North Carolina farmers partnered with R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company illegally hired children under 13 years old to harvest their tobacco crops, a report released Wednesday stated.

The recent audit commissioned by the tobacco company found that 40 percent of its contractor farms employed underage workers, therefore violating the Federal law on child labor, including 16 percent of minors under the age of 16 who were illegally performing hazardous work.

Baldemar Velasquez, president of the Farm Labor Organizing Committee, AFL-CIO (FLOC), says he’s not surprised by the audit results.

“We’ve been telling the company for eight years now that there are serious labor violations happening all over Southern tobacco fields, including on Reynolds farms. Imagine what the audits would have found if they were allowed to talk to more workers and ask more in depth questions about the workers’ experiences,” said Velasquez. “Rather than working with us to solve the issues, Reynolds has continuously denied that these conditions exist and has tried to sweep labor issues under the rug.”

The big tobacco companies promised in 2014 to stop hiring people under the age of 16, but since it’s not an actual priority, it’s not happening. This is in our own backyard and is completely unacceptable. A Human Rights Watch report brought attention to the problem in 2014, leading to the companies’ promises. But since then, it hasn’t received much publicity.

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