Name: Derek Baxter
Location: Charlottesville, Virginia
Fellowship: Legal Aid Justice Center
Role: Staff Attorney

As a 21 year-old undergraduate student at the University of Virginia, attorney Derek Baxter experienced an epiphany of sorts that shaped the course of his legal career.

It happened during his senior year. While volunteering with a Salvation Army project to feed the poor, Baxter realized that several people who were seeking food worked as full-time employees of the university. He remembered seeing them on campus, working in the cafeteria or cleaning the dormitories. The image had a lasting effect on him.

“They just couldn’t live on their small salaries,” recalled Baxter, a Fairfax, Virginia native. “The idea in this country is that we’re the land of opportunity where you get a job and everything is going to be fine. Well, these people were trying hard and they still weren’t able to make it on their wages.”

By the time Baxter arrived at New York University School of Law, his career path had already been determined. “I knew I wanted to do something for worker rights. And I knew farm workers were at the lowest rung of the economic ladder, working long hours in terrible conditions.”

While at NYU Law, Baxter volunteered with the New York State Farm Bureau. Returning to Virginia after graduation, he took jobs with Piedmont Legal Services and later at the Charlottesville Albemarle Legal Aid Society (CALAS), organizations that offered free legal services to low-income families and immigrant workers in the region. Baxter joined CALAS through a New Voices fellowship in 2000.

“When the New Voices fellowship opportunity came up, I jumped at it,” he recalled. “It created an opportunity where there wasn’t one. [CALAS] didn’t have the money to hire additional staff at the time, but they had a great idea to help migrant forestry workers and I wanted to be a part of it.”

During Baxter’s fellowship, CALAS changed its name to the Legal Aid Justice Center (LAJC), but continued to offer free legal services to immigrant workers and advocate for their fair treatment. The LAJC also offered workers advice on how to resolve their workplace disputes.

Baxter’s efforts focused primarily on migrant forestry workers who worked for major timber companies that manufactured paper and furniture in the Southeastern U.S. His responsibilities included initiating litigation for workers and educating them about their rights in the workplace.

“The paper companies have machines to cut down the trees, but they generally prefer people to plant each seedling,” said Baxter, referring to one of the more common and labor-intensive forestry jobs. He said thousands of migrant workers plant pine trees every year in the South, most of them Mexican or Guatemalan immigrants. “They typically worked 70- to 80-hour weeks, earning close to minimum wage, and never got paid overtime,” he added.

Since the migrant workers he served were transient and usually didn’t have cars or telephones, Baxter and his colleagues occasionally traveled to meet these workers in person.

“I think when we went into their communities in Mexico or Guatemala, it earned their respect and people took us a lot more seriously because of that,” he said. “The most rewarding thing for me was working with the clients themselves, but one of the side benefits is that we educated literally thousands of forestry workers about their rights.”

Baxter and the LAJC filed lawsuits against such multinational timber companies as International Paper, Georgia Pacific and Champion. The lawsuits allege that these companies are responsible for compensating workers. The paper companies have countered that worker compensation is the responsibility of contractors – the forestry industry’s middlemen.

“The paper companies are at the top of the food chain. The contractors are in the middle, and below them, you have the workers,” Baxter explained. “We focused at the top because these are major, multibillion-dollar companies that, in reality, take all sorts of control over the workers. It’s not a hands-off situation.”

Baxter hopes favorable judgments in LAJC’s lawsuits will spur the paper companies to adopt fair labor practices. “If a major multinational timber company changes its practices, maybe the whole industry will see that and follow suit,” he said. As an Alumnus, Baxter now works for Barr and Camens, a Washington, DC firm specializing in labor litigation.