Tobacco union fights for better working conditions on the plantations

Smoke signals from Malawi

Tobacco union fights for better working conditions on the plantations

With increasing consumption in the industrialized countries took the first government of independent Malawi (1964) entirely on tobacco as an export commodity. Today, 70 percent of foreign exchange earnings are achieved with tobacco. Malawi is therefore in practice the weal and woe of the tobacco industry depends.

Malawi lives from tobacco. Here, the small country between Zambia and Mozambique is one of those countries, which is smoked in the least. Only with the British colonial rule of the tobacco came into the country. The tobacco is exported mainly to the EU (44 percent) and the U.S. (13 percent). "Philip Morris" and "bat" are the largest buyers of tobacco from Malawi.

The wholesale trade is almost entirely in foreign hands. The U.S. Rohtabakaufkäufer "Universal Corporation" and "Alliance One International" control through its subsidiaries in Malawi practically the country's economy: Both companies to buy some 91 percent of raw tobacco, three local dealers share the remaining nine percent. Both in a report by the World Bank and by the Malawi Anti-Corruption Bureau to the two U.S. companies accused of cartel-like price fixing.

Malawi is one of the poorest countries in the world. According to UN reports in 2006 about 76 percent of the population had less than 1.50 € per day. Of approximately five million active workers are between 600 000 and employs two million in the tobacco sector. "The small landless tenants and workers are being exploited really" lifts the Secretary General of the Union of Tobacco Workers (TOTAWUM), Raphael Sandramu out, "You are working without written contracts, and they did not have enough to eat," The proportion of child labor is last. indeed been declining, yet at times almost 80 000 children work in the tobacco crop. Due to the high pesticide use, they suffer - as well as adults - to intoxication. Since the crop is very labor intensive, the family remains little time for subsistence farming.

From a net exporter of food Malawi has become an importer. Requirements of structural adjustment programs, the International Monetary Fund prescribed in return for loans absolutely prevented, in the past, the necessary investments for the expansion of the food sector. The agricultural exports of dumping from the U.S. and the EU did the rest to push back the indigenous food products grown on.

With the support of developed countries in agriculture already under President Banda (1964-1993) was converted almost entirely to tobacco cultivation. However, the global tobacco market promises no longer the export earnings of previous years. The global over-production of tobacco has led to falling prices.

As the price of tobacco in 1992 drastically dropped, the then President Muzuli turned even the tobacco users in industrialized countries. "The more you smoke, the more tobacco plant, we can" Still expect the World Bank and FAO, that tobacco is the short and medium term, the main pillars of Malawi's economy remains.

With the improvement of living conditions for tobacco workers, expects Sandramu not summarily. Of "Marlboro freedom" may be on the tobacco plantations of the question. During the famine years 2001/2002 and 2005, thousands died of tobacco farmers. The chronic poverty in the country and very little alternative sources of income are the main reasons that landless workers continue to seek every year working in the tobacco sector. At each plantation owners need all the means of production such as seeds, pesticides, fertilizers and tools are purchased. The tenants and their families during the production period but provided with food on a loan basis, but the annual income of the producers at the moment is so small (about 250 €), that often neither the means of production from, or the loan can be repaid. Sun tenants and workers are obliged to work in the next season back on the plantations.

The TOTAWUM represents the only organization in the tobacco workers compared with the landowners and the government. Meanwhile, the union counts 23 000 members, of which nearly 9500 women. "But many tobacco workers," the opinion, Secretary Sandramu ", it brings them only lose out when they organize a union, as compared to plantation owners who are working against the union."

A petition to the Justice Department wants the union to ensure that the Parliament for over a decade advising on ice underlying bill to protect tobacco workers in September and adopted. "Many parliamentarians themselves are plantation owners, so the presentation was" never discussed in Parliament, suggested Sandramu. In the bill, it goes mainly to the introduction of written employment contracts, access to interest-free loans, to adequate shelter and clean drinking water to the plantations.

Support is the union of the development campaign "Smoke Signals," from Germany. Want to have parliamentarians of the German Bundestag Raphael Sandramu promised in early June that they will get in touch with their colleagues in Malawi and help the government in Lilongwe want it, if this agricultural switch from tobacco to other products. Whether this is more than hot air, remains open.