By STEPHEN BARTLETT
Kentucky Field Organizer for FLOC
The Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) (with whom I work part time as KY Field Organizer) is launching on April 9, 2018 an important boycott campaign (of VUSE e cigarettes) aimed at pressuring Reynolds Tobacco corporation to walk its talk of labor rights and help bring the Big Tobacco industry toward a comprehensive agreement that will guarantee the basic right of farmworkers across the tobacco supply chain in North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee and Kentucky, to organize without retaliation. (This will also help family farmers raising tobacco get a better price for their product.)
As I have visited farmworkers across the state of Kentucky, although many of them are H2A workers with contracts, I have seen how difficult it is for farmworkers to exercise their labor rights. They are tied to an individual employer who has all the power over whether they will work the following year, and can fire them with little or no consequence if they question their pay, or low work hours, or working or living conditions in general. Farmworkers need the right to organize and to push back on this system that would keep them vulnerable, sometimes unfairly exploited and quiet.
I am looking for point persons in Kentucky to help organize 1) an initial visit to an area Circle K outlet to ask the manager of that store to remove VUSE e cigarettes from their shelves, 2) possible subsequent vigils, pickets, street theater, etc... to pressure that outlet to remove this item or to pressure their superiors in the corporation to do so more widely, and 3) to take part in online store reviews if they do not move in the direction we are asking them to move in.
Here in Louisville we are aiming to launch this campaign on both April 9 (to commemorate the brutal and tragic assassination in 2007 of FLOC Monterrey Mexico staffer Santiago Rafael Cruz) and on Friday, April 13 at two area Circle K outlets respectively. I anticipate there might be folk in Lexington also who would be willing to do so! (I remember your inspiring solidarity with the tobacco workers in Paint Lick!!)
Please let me know if you can join us for these actions in Louisville! Or start planning for an action for Lexington.
Email: estebanbartlett@gmail.com or call/text 502 415 1080. We anticipate that groups could do an action once a month for an hour at an area Circle K outlet, until we achieve our goals. We have groups in dozens of cities mobilizing for this. This will really work!!
Peace through justice, Hasta La Victoria.