Tobacco.org

Kazakhstan: Migrant Tobacco Workers Cheated, Exploited  

Many migrant tobacco workers in Kazakhstan have been cheated and exploited, and some trapped into forced labor, Human Rights Watch said in a report issued today. Kazakh farm owners employ the migrant workers for seasonal work. The farm owners in turn contract with and supply tobacco leaf to Philip Morris Kazakhstan, a subsidiary of Philip Morris International, one of the largest tobacco companies in the world.

The 115-page report, "Hellish Work: Exploitation of Migrant Tobacco Workers in Kazakhstan," documents how some employers confiscated migrant workers' passports, failed to provide them with written contracts, did not pay regular wages, cheated them of earnings, and required them to work excessively long hours. Human Rights Watch also documented frequent use of child labor, with children as young as 10 working, even though tobacco farming is especially hazardous for children. The report was based on interviews in 2009 with 68 people who were working on tobacco farms in Kazakhstan or who had recently worked there.

Jump to full article »

Smoking in cars should be outlawed to protect children, says BMA  

The British Medical Association has called on ministers to ban smoking in cars to protect children from breathing in toxins. Photograph: Bernhard Classen/Alamy

Smoking should be banned in cars to protect drivers and passengers – especially children – from breathing in toxins far worse than those found in smoky bars, the nation's doctors have demanded.

The British Medical Association (BMA) is urging ministers across the UK to extend the ban on smoking in public places introduced in 2007 to all vehicles in a further effort to protect people's health.

Children are at particular risk from secondhand smoke in cars because they take in more of the chemicals from cigarettes than adults and may not be able to refuse to travel in a smoky car.

The BMA called for a ban after reviewing previously published research studies into cars and smoking.

Jump to full article »

• VIDEOS: Kazakhstan: Philip Morris International Overhauls Labor Protections  

Philip Morris International's public commitment on May 9, 2011 to protect the rights of tobacco workers in its global supply chain is an important first step, Human Rights Watch said today. Rigorous independent monitoring will be crucial to realizing full protections for workers, Human Rights Watch said.

Philip Morris International (PMI), one of the largest tobacco companies in the world, published a statement on its web site acknowledging "many challenges" remaining to the protection of workers on farms in Kazakhstan supplying tobacco to its subsidiary, Philip Morris Kazakhstan (PMK). The company committed to rectifying labor abuses on tobacco farms in Kazakhstan and also announced plans for a labor practices code to be carried out throughout its global supply chain.

"Philip Morris International's commitments to ensure protection of workers, including migrant workers, in Kazakhstan and in more than 30 other countries, is profoundly significant," said Jane Buchanan, senior Europe and Central Asia researcher at Human Rights Watch. "Effective monitoring will be key to making sure PMI is never again in the dark about abuses anywhere in its supply chain."

The May 9, 2011, statement from Philip Morris International accompanied the publication of a report by Verité, an independent non-profit organization that monitors labor abuses. The company commissioned the report in 2010 to examine labor conditions on farms in its tobacco supply chain in Kazakhstan.

In 2009, Human Rights Watch documented the abuse and exploitation of many migrant workers employed by farm owners in Kazakhstan who are under contract with and supply tobacco to Philip Morris Kazakhstan (PMK).

Jump to full article »

HRW says Philip Morris is working to improve working standards for labourers in Kazakhstan 

U.S. tobacco giant Philip Morris International has made tentative strides in improving the working conditions of manual labourers on its suppliers' farms in the Central Asian nation of Kazakhstan, Human Rights Watch said Tuesday.

Charges that Philip Morris benefited from child exploitation and forced labour laid out in a HRW report in 2009 brought criticism from rights groups and U.S. politicians, prompting the company to review its policies.

Philip Morris announced this week that it would work with the international non-governmental group Verite in a bid to improve labour conditions.

"Philip Morris International's commitments to ensure protection of workers, including migrant workers, in Kazakhstan and in more than 30 other countries, is profoundly significant," said Human Rights Watch researcher Jane Buchanan.

Jump to full article »

• HRW says Philip Morris tackling Kazakh labor abuse  

U.S. tobacco giant Philip Morris International has made tentative strides in improving the working conditions of manual laborers on its suppliers' farms in the Central Asian nation of Kazakhstan, Human Rights Watch said Tuesday.

Charges that Philip Morris benefited from child exploitation and forced labor laid out in a HRW report in 2009 brought criticism from rights groups and U.S. politicians, prompting the company to review its policies.

Philip Morris announced this week that it would work with the international non-governmental group Verite in a bid to improve labor conditions.

"Philip Morris International's commitments to ensure protection of workers, including migrant workers, in Kazakhstan and in more than 30 other countries, is profoundly significant," said Human Rights Watch researcher Jane Buchanan.

Jump to full article »

Kazakhstan Increases Tobacco Duties 

The Kazakh parliament has approved a bill which will raise substantially the excise tax levied on cigarettes..

The Kazakhstan senate (upper house) has completed a second, final, reading of the law "On introducing amendments and addenda to some legislative acts of the Republic of Kazakhstan on issues of taxation"

The tax will rise 25% each year between 2011 and 2014 - from 20% of the pack price now to 49% in four years. Last year smoking in some public places, especially restaurants and bars was banned, and advertisements for tobacco products have been banned since 2007.

Jump to full article »

• Kazakhstan enacts big cigarette tax hike to discourage smoking 

Parliament has enacted a 245 percent increase in Kazakhstan's minimal cigarette excise tax to try to get more smokers to kick the habit.

The tax will jump 25 percent a year between 2011 and 2014 - from 20 percent a pack now to 49 percent in four years.

The tax increase and other steps have led to Kazakhstan become the leader in anti-smoking efforts among former Soviet countries. Last year parliament took the bold step of banning smoking in public places such as restaurants and bars.

Anti-smoking groups, health-care organizations and social-service organizations are happy about the tax increase, although it falls short of the 54 percent Russian levy and the 75 percent rate in many developed countries.

Jump to full article »

• Kazakhstan plans to outlaw popular tobacco made from chicken droppings 

Police in Kazakhstan say they plan to ban a popular and mildly narcotic form of tobacco made from chicken droppings as part of a drive to improve health standards.

Officials said Thursday that though the concoction, known as nasvai, does not contain any illegal substances, it can cause cancer and various infections.

Jump to full article »

Chairmen Request Information From Philip Morris About International Labor Practices Publications 

Chairmen Henry A. Waxman and Bart Stupak sent a letter to Philip Morris International requesting information on its labor practices in Kazakhstan and other Philip Morris International markets.

Jump to full article »

BAGNALL: Big Tobacco and kids  

However, moving from children as tobacco producers to children as tobacco consumers, one can see where the concept of morality seems oddly elusive. If Philip Morris International doesn't want children in a producing role, it's hard not to think it wouldn't mind them as consumers. In 2008, PMI's Indonesian unit was forced to cancel its sponsorship of a concert by teen-favourite Alicia Keys after the singer complained about the potential targeting of young people, the Observer, a British newspaper, reported this week. As the Observer pointed out, PMI is not alone in trying to attract young consumers. Imperial Tobacco and Japan Tobacco International also work the concert circuit, offering reduced-price products to the fans, many if not most under the age of 18. .. .

Advertising aimed at minors is illegal in Canada, too. Yet as the CBC reported this year, teen smoking remains a big problem in Quebec, where an estimated 650 teenagers start smoking every week. In Canada, lower-priced contraband cigarettes, a market governments have failed to control, make smoking more affordable for young smokers in Quebec and Ontario.

Meanwhile, tobacco companies' latest foray into new, i.e., younger, markets involves fruit-flavoured cigarillos, sold individually, and cigarettes. Canada, faster off the mark than the U.S., has already banned them. Late last year, Philip Morris was part of a group demanding the Obama administration challenge Canada's law as a violation of its World Trade Organization obligations, Reuters reported.

Philip Morris, perhaps not the firm friend to children it would like us to think.

Jump to full article »

Tobacco giant Philip Morris sold cigarettes made using child labour  

Tobacco giant Philip Morris has been forced to admit that child workers as young as 10 have been subjected to long hours working on tobacco farms with which it has contracts in the Central Asian state of Kazakhstan.

According to a report by Human Rights Watch, migrant workers at the farms, mostly from neighbouring Kyrgyzstan, were subjected to conditions that often amounted to forced labour, as employers contracted by tobacco farms that sold their produce to Philip Morris International had their passports confiscated and were often made to do additional work for no pay. The company, which sources tobacco from Kazakhstan for cigarette brands sold in Russia and other former Soviet states, said it was taking "immediate action" to stop the abuses.

In many cases families were expected to pay back unrealistic debts to intermediaries who had arranged for their journeys to Kazakhstan, in schemes that bear all the hallmarks of people trafficking. The report also documented 72 cases of children working on the farms.

Jump to full article »

VIDEO: Tobacco Giant Philip Morris is Hooked on Child Labor (Video)  

While Philip Morris may seek to demonstrate good corporate citizenship, the report suggests that the exploitation of migrants in Kazakhstan is just a regular part of doing business in this part of the world. (Meanwhile, the ongoing conflict in neighboring Kyrgystan portends further regional destabilization and mass migration.)

On this side of the planet, pressuring individual employers--say, through a boycott--might deter certain corporate abuses. But the network of companies surrounding Philip Morris is, as Alternet's Byard Duncan notes, extremely complex and perhaps near impossible for consumers to undermine. Migrants' struggles reflect the deep entanglement of global economic inequality and the power of the market.

So the cash crop that helped engender modern capitalism continues its reign. This chapter of tobacco's rich history of exploitation demonstrates, once again, that this stuff is pretty hard to quit.

Jump to full article »

Tobacco Workers In Kazakhstan Face Exploitation, Child Labor 

The girl is one of the dozens of farm workers who was interviewed by the New York-based NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW) during fact-finding missions it conducted in 2009 in Kazakhstan's Enbekshikazakh district. Some 120 kilometers east of Almaty, it is the site of nearly all of the country's tobacco cultivation -- and according to HRW, the site of widespread exploitation of mainly Kyrgyz migrant workers and their children.

HRW's Rachel Denber

The HRW report, titled "Hellish Work," documents wage violations, forced labor, debt bondage, excessively long working hours, the absence of written contracts, exposure of workers to pesticides, lack of clean drinking water, and illegal labor by children as young as 10 on the tobacco farms.

Rachel Denber, HRW's deputy director for Europe and Central Asia, says that one abuse often leads to another. "The payment structure is such that migrant workers get paid once at the end of the season by the volume of tobacco that they produce," she notes. "And that incentivizes child labor because these migrant workers travel with families and they need to get as many hands on the tobacco as possible."

Jump to full article »

• Lawmakers Seek Overseas Labor Data From Tobacco Company  

Leaders of a Congressional investigation panel on Friday asked the global tobacco giant Philip Morris International to produce any information from the past three years regarding child labor, forced labor or unsafe working conditions in its overseas markets.

The request from the Committee on Energy and Commerce followed a report in The Times on a human rights group's finding that P.M.I., the maker of Marlboro products overseas, benefited from at least 72 instances of child labor in tobacco fields in Kazakhstan.

The committee asked for all documents since Jan. 1, 2007, "relating to any allegations of abusive labor practices in any of your company's production markets, including child labor, forced labor, illegal withholding of passports, unsafe working conditions, and unsanitary living conditions, and the company's efforts to prevent such practices."

The letter on Friday was signed by the committee chairman, a longtime tobacco fighter, Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California, and the chairman of the subcommittee on oversight and investigations, Bart Stupak, Democrat of Michigan.

Jump to full article »

Philip Morris Kazakh Suppliers Used Forced Labor, Group Says 

Philip Morris International Inc., the world's largest publicly traded tobacco maker, bought tobacco from farms in Kazakhstan that trapped workers into forced labor, Human Rights Watch said.

Employers at the farms confiscated migrant workers' passports, didn't pay regular wages and used child labor, the non-governmental organization said in a report on its website today. The report was based on interviews with 68 farm workers in 2009. Philip Morris said it has strengthened its child labor policies and is stepping up training of employees about migrant- worker rights.

"We found six families who were trapped in situations amounting to forced labor," Jane Buchanan, author of the report, said on the group's website.

Jump to full article »