They are against child labor , I am also supposed to have a lunch / break room , Portable bath rooms , eye wash station , records of legal employment ,employee living conditions ( None living on my farms ) records of chemicals and a room just for them ,
protective clothing and gloves , signs posted of any place I use certain chemicals , sign with tobacco sickness on it and what to do , good safe stripping rooms and barns ,workers insurance ,and the list goes on .
I have had to go to mandatory classes on all this crap . I also have to have my chemical license which involves a day to get it .
I have bad news for them when they get here there is no signs posted as my tobacco is pretty much organic . What chemicals I use on big tobacco's crop is used immediately and I have none to have to store .
Can you imagine having a port a potty at the tobacco fields , or dragging workers from the fields to a break room just to sit 15 minutes .My truck or a wagon along with tobacco workers vehicles sit at the tobacco patches and are easy to sit in or on . Pop , water and a snack will be set up on the wagon .
I have heard that several farmers was told they had to build new and better stripping rooms in order to get or keep a contract .
Lots of times I furnish lunch and my work hands eat the same food at the same table as I do . I strip and work in the same stripping room and barns more than hired work hands do .
I treat my workers as good or better than others . I furnish pop and snacks along with gator aid .
Now with child labor , They don't want farm family kids working any on the farms . They told us that kids younger than 18 was not allowed to work but so many hours and could not use any dangerous machinery or lift any heavy size loads . I have no young children but when my son was younger around 14 he helped a lot and grew up loving to farm and making his own money .I didn't slave drive him but he had chores to do . He helped set my tobacco which is fairly easy work . He also had his own small tobacco crop . Now days young kids are not suppose to set tobacco .
It is some of these rights groups that has started all this .( Same as anti- smoking groups ) But most of the problems lays across in other countries and not the USA . But PM has to make it clear they are checking all of their contracts for labor laws violations , just to keep their hands clean and lawsuit free .They are putting the blame on the farmers . The fact is that if they paid a decent price to where family farms could make a good living and afford to hire outside help and not have to get by using any free family hands they can find .
A lot of family farms have to get by how ever they can to survive , use what we have , fix what we've got or sell out and leave .A lot of farmers did leave after the buyout .
If you are a farmer and had land , money equipment and cattle handed to you then they have it made, but farmers like me who has had to buy every nut bolt , tractor and piece of land has a harder time of surviving in the farming business .
Sorry for the rants
protective clothing and gloves , signs posted of any place I use certain chemicals , sign with tobacco sickness on it and what to do , good safe stripping rooms and barns ,workers insurance ,and the list goes on .
I have had to go to mandatory classes on all this crap . I also have to have my chemical license which involves a day to get it .
I have bad news for them when they get here there is no signs posted as my tobacco is pretty much organic . What chemicals I use on big tobacco's crop is used immediately and I have none to have to store .
Can you imagine having a port a potty at the tobacco fields , or dragging workers from the fields to a break room just to sit 15 minutes .My truck or a wagon along with tobacco workers vehicles sit at the tobacco patches and are easy to sit in or on . Pop , water and a snack will be set up on the wagon .
I have heard that several farmers was told they had to build new and better stripping rooms in order to get or keep a contract .
Lots of times I furnish lunch and my work hands eat the same food at the same table as I do . I strip and work in the same stripping room and barns more than hired work hands do .
I treat my workers as good or better than others . I furnish pop and snacks along with gator aid .
Now with child labor , They don't want farm family kids working any on the farms . They told us that kids younger than 18 was not allowed to work but so many hours and could not use any dangerous machinery or lift any heavy size loads . I have no young children but when my son was younger around 14 he helped a lot and grew up loving to farm and making his own money .I didn't slave drive him but he had chores to do . He helped set my tobacco which is fairly easy work . He also had his own small tobacco crop . Now days young kids are not suppose to set tobacco .
It is some of these rights groups that has started all this .( Same as anti- smoking groups ) But most of the problems lays across in other countries and not the USA . But PM has to make it clear they are checking all of their contracts for labor laws violations , just to keep their hands clean and lawsuit free .They are putting the blame on the farmers . The fact is that if they paid a decent price to where family farms could make a good living and afford to hire outside help and not have to get by using any free family hands they can find .
A lot of family farms have to get by how ever they can to survive , use what we have , fix what we've got or sell out and leave .A lot of farmers did leave after the buyout .
If you are a farmer and had land , money equipment and cattle handed to you then they have it made, but farmers like me who has had to buy every nut bolt , tractor and piece of land has a harder time of surviving in the farming business .
Sorry for the rants
