UK lawyers sue bat over abuse

Hundreds of Malawian labourers working in tobacco farms have filed a landmark lawsuit against British American Tobacco (BAT) and its subsidiaries in the High Court in London.

The labourers, their wives and children, some as young as three years old, allege that the tobacco companies are liable for negligence and have been unjustly enriched.

The lawsuit was filed in the High Court on Friday, December 18 2020, by human rights lawyers from a law firm Leigh Day, according to a published statement on the firm’s online publication.

The lawyers said they filed the claim against BAT, Imperial Brands and their parent companies and subsidiaries on behalf of several thousand impoverished tenant tobacco farmers, their wives, children working on small tobacco farms in Malawi.

It is claimed, according to the statement, that the companies’ actions, for the sake of maximising profits, have resulted in years of  systemic exploitation of poor and illiterate workers, trafficked from the south of Malawi to tobacco farms in the central and northern regions.

“BAT plc’s pre-tax profit in 2019 was more than £8.3 billion [over K9 trillion], and Imperial plc’s pre-tax profit was more than £1.6 billion [over K1.7 trillion]. But the workers at the bottom of their supply chain in Malawi earn little to nothing for their work, living in terrible conditions trapped on the remote farms in serious food poverty,” it reads in part.

According to the statement the tenant farmers accuse BAT and Imperial of knowingly facilitating unlawful and dangerous conditions, in which the farmers and their children have to build their own homes foraged from mud and thatched, live on a daily small portion of maize and work 6am to midnight seven days a week.

“As BAT and Imperial know, or ought to know, the farmers have no choice but to make their own children work from the age of three just to achieve the output needed to secure a marketable harvest,” reads the statement by Leigh Day.

It further reads that the tobacco farmers are only paid after harvest, but when their farming costs and loans have been deducted from their minimal wages, they can be left in a vicious circle of indebtedness.

“The farmers’ pitiful pay is also a result of the way the tobacco industry in Malawi works to keep the real price of tobacco below the country’s minimum government pricing meaning that the price paid for tobacco is some of the lowest in the world at less than $2 per kilogramme,” it reads.

The tenant farmers’ agreement to grow tobacco is frequently procured by the use of illegitimate economic pressure, violence or threats of violence, it is claimed.

“For the entirety of the tobacco growing season from September to July, the farmers and their children work extremely long hours in extremely hazardous working conditions, with a high risk of personal injury.

“[They also] live in insanitary and degrading living conditions and to endure grave food insecurity. [They] are subjected to hazardous and unsafe working conditions and exposed to high levels of toxic pesticides and fertilisers without proper protective measures,” the statement reads.

The conditions in which they live and work, the statement says, breach the definition of forced labour under section 3 of the Malawian Employment Act No. 6 of 2000 and under Article 27(3) of the Constitution of Malawi.

One of the lawyers at Leigh Day, Oliver Holland said in the statement: “Our clients are living in terrible and unsanitary conditions on the tobacco farms in Malawi, toiling for many months in the hope they will be paid at the end of the season but often receiving nothing at all while the tobacco companies are making huge profits from the tobacco grown on these farms.

“This is a classic example of modern day slavery where multinational companies are exploiting those in the developing world in conditions that are tantamount to slave labour.”

Martyn Day, another lawyer at Leigh Day, said: “It is entirely depressing that here in 2020 two of Britain’s largest multinationals are profiting from the use of child labour. Selling cigarettes and other tobacco products is enough of a curse on society but to do so on the back of the work of children is truly shocking.”

The Guardian of the UK reported earlier about the abuse farmers and their wives and children face in tobacco farms in Malawi, a publication that compelled the human rights lawyers at Leigh Day to take up the case.

In a follow-up story last year, the paper reported that the human rights lawyers were preparing a case against BAT on behalf of more than 350 child labourers and their parents in the high court in London.

The lawyers, according to the report, expected that the number of the claimants may shoot to 15 000.

According to the letter of claim, last season most of the claimants earned no more than £100 (about K77 300 at the current exchange rate) to £200 (K154 600) for 10 months’ work for a family of five.

Like other big tobacco companies, BAT has distanced itself from the farmers by commissioning a separate company, Alliance One, to buy a stipulated amount of tobacco leaf each year.

Alliance One signs contracts with land-owning farmers who then recruit tenant farmer families to work the fields.

But the lawyers argue that responsibility for the conditions of the tenant families rests ultimately with BAT, which decides the price it will pay for tobacco leaf.

BAT officials could not be reached for their reaction to the lawsuit, but in an earlier statement, the company said it took the issue of child labour seriously and “strongly agrees that children must never be exploited, exposed to danger or denied an education”.

Human Rights Defenders Coalition (HRDC) chairperson Gift Trapence, in an interview yesterday, commended the Malawian tobacco farmers and their families for filing the lawsuit in the High Court in London.

He also commended the human rights lawyers for taking up the matter on behalf of these vulnerable families, adding that no any form of abuse must be accepted.