Farmworker Union to Hold New Election, Two Years After Controversial Vote

Members of the second-largest farmworkers union in the U.S. will elect leaders on September 21 and 22. It’s a rerun of an election two years ago, following accusations that many members were effectively disenfranchised in that vote.

The Farm Labor Organizing Committee agreed to the new election in a voluntary compliance agreement with the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) last year. The union has 1,500 members in North Carolina, Virginia, and Ohio. Its primary collective bargaining agreement, with the North Carolina Growers Association, covers 9,000 farmworkers scattered across 750 North Carolina farms. The workers travel to the U.S. from Mexico on H-2A guestworker visas, which allow them to work on farms for several months each year.

To vote in the previous election, held in September 2022, workers were required to travel in person to the union’s convention in Toledo, Ohio—more than 600 miles from the eastern North Carolina fields where FLOC members working under the union contract spend the summer and fall months cultivating and harvesting tobacco, sweet potatoes, cucumbers, and berries.

FLOC had offered transportation to the convention, but only to those members able to attend for the full two days, which would have required most to miss a day of work, according to Civil Eats, which reported on the vote.

A RARE CHALLENGE

FLOC is one of just a few farmworker unions in the U.S.; the only one larger is the United Farm Workers. Farmworkers are excluded from the National Labor Relations Act, which protects the right to form a union.

To overcome that obstacle, over its nearly 60-year history, FLOC has waged groundbreaking campaigns, including years-long boycotts, to win tri-party collective bargaining agreements between farmworkers, growers, and big corporations like Campbell’s Soup, Heinz, and Mt. Olive Pickles. Since 2007, the union has been campaigning to win a similar agreement with tobacco giant R.J. Reynolds, now a subsidiary of British American Tobacco.

But some FLOC members and longtime organizers argue the union has prioritized relationships with growers at the expense of vigorously prosecuting members’ grievances. That led to a rare challenge at the 2022 FLOC convention, when President Baldemar Velasquez, who has led the union since its founding in 1967, faced a slate led by a top FLOC organizer, Leticia Zavala.

The challengers, running on the It’s Our Future slate, were pushing for more enforcement of the North Carolina contract as well as greater attention to health and safety. “When we were on the ground as organizers, it was the disconnection between the leadership and the members,” Zavala said in an interview. “The shift in concern for the growers versus the workers was very apparent.”

FLOC leadership argues that growers are constrained by “price limitations imposed on them by their buyers,” and that growers have been shutting down and cutting workers, resulting in what it said was a loss of about 1,000 jobs covered by the collective bargaining agreement since the pandemic began.

“There has been no ‘shift’ within FLOC, but rather a refocusing on what made FLOC what it is, and that is pressing the retailers and manufacturers for sustainable agreements with growers through supply-chain agreements,” the union said in a written response to Labor Notes.

According to Civil Eats, the 2022 vote was the first contested election in the union’s six-decade history.

Velasquez’s slate won handily, 135 to 21, Civil Eats reported. But the challengers—who had pushed for the convention to be held in North Carolina to allow more members to participate—contested the election at the DOL, with a long list of allegations including that the FLOC failed to give adequate notice of the vote and used staff resources to back Velasquez’s campaign.

They charged that the location of the vote meant that few farmworkers working under the union contract could participate, leading to an election disproportionately influenced by the votes of associate members, supporters of the union who pay $30 a year to join FLOC. Farmworkers working under the union contract cannot sign up for the $30 annual dues rate, but must pay 2.5 percent of their wages ($300 to $600 a year) to be a member in good standing.

Many associate members are not active farmworkers; Velasquez told Civil Eats that among the voters were 20 of his family members.

FLOC argues that the associate membership program is crucial because the union relies on community support in its campaigns, and that it also allows workers in the process of organizing to participate in the union. Workers who earlier this year won the FLOC’s other current collective bargaining agreement, covering 40 workers at Battleboro Produce, a North Carolina packing shed, started out as associate members.

“Our associate membership is a crucial component of our organizing strategy which furthers our mission to build power for migrant and immigrant workers,” the FLOC told Labor Notes. “With H-2A members only being in the U.S. for a few months out of the year, it is critical that we maintain yearlong support for our larger corporate campaigns to continuously build momentum.”

HEAT

The FLOC’s contract with the North Carolina Growers Association provides unique protections for farmworkers on H-2A visas. Under the contract, workers are able to return to the U.S. each season based on their seniority; they can choose from among more than 700 farms if they want to change where they’re working during the season; and they have a grievance mechanism and “just cause” standard for discipline.

It’s Our Future members said that while the contract was groundbreaking when it was first signed two decades ago, enforcement is lacking. It particularly falls short in addressing deteriorating conditions in the fields in recent years where farmworkers have died from Covid-19 and heat-related causes, said Zavala, now a co-coordinator for It’s Our Future, which is now a nonprofit organization.

“There hasn't been a season since the pandemic where bodies are not sent back to Mexico,” she said.

The death last year of José Arturo Gonzalez Mendoza, a Mexican farmworker who collapsed while working in a sweet potato field with a heat index in the high 90s, highlighted the risks farmworkers face on the front lines of climate change.

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“We as farmworkers feed everyone, we grow the crops, we risk ourselves in order for food to reach everyone’s tables,” said Felipe Montán, a FLOC member and outgoing president of It's Our Future.

In May, FLOC announced it was implementing stronger heat protection guidelines through the collective bargaining agreement with the NCGA, which says that “workers have the right to take rest breaks as needed.”

For its own part, It’s Our Future launched an official health and safety committee in July—building on the organization’s previous work—to highlight the deadly heat in the fields and workers’ lack of access to clean drinking water and prompt medical attention.

In a meeting at the time in Wilson, North Carolina, It’s Our Future members shared that in addition to heat exhaustion, they lack access to basic amenities where they live, risk snake bites to use outdoor bathrooms at night, and often get stuck covering some of their own travel costs to and from Mexico; H2A workers are legally entitled to reimbursement for these costs.

Other frustrations include unsanitary restrooms, intimidation by supervisors, and having to pay the growers as much as $15 a plate for poor-quality meals.

DENIED OPPORTUNITY TO VOTE

A DOL investigation concluded last year that FLOC denied members “a reasonable opportunity to vote” in the 2022 convention. “The location of the polls and the length of time for voting were unreasonable for members who did not live or work close to the polls,” wrote the DOL.

FLOC and the DOL’s Office of Labor-Management Standards, an agency tasked with overseeing disputes over union officer elections, reached a voluntary compliance agreement, which required a new election to take place by the end of September 2024.

FLOC said it entered into the agreement without admitting to any allegation that the union did not comply with the laws, and said it did so “solely to avoid time consuming and costly litigation which would be detrimental to the best interests of FLOC’s membership.”

FLOC framed its choice of location in the 2022 elections as a question of its members’ grit and conviction, noting that its conventions have traditionally taken place in “northwest Ohio, the region where FLOC originated.” The union is headquartered in Toledo.

“In the 1990s and 2000s workers sacrificed one or two days of work to drive from Mesick and Standish, Michigan [where the union represented pickle workers] the three to four hours to attend in Toledo, Defiance, or Fremont, Ohio,” FLOC told Labor Notes. “To build a committed and determined activist membership our battle cry, whether it was a strike, picket line, march or demonstration, was ‘show up or forever hold your peace!’”

But farmworkers in the fields, exposed to heat and other safety risks, are already compelled into a posture of sacrifice, Zavala said: “They're sacrificing their lives, they're sacrificing weekly by paying dues out of their pocket.”

MORE VOTING LOCATIONS

In the new election, there will be five in-person voting locations, including three in North Carolina, one in Toledo, and one in Martinsville, Virginia. Members may also request absentee ballots.

Two slates are running: the Baldemar Velasquez slate, headed by Velasquez, and the Los Trabajadores Primero (Workers First) slate, led by rank-and-file farmworkers Luis Zamora Vasquez for president and Juan Ramos Ambrosio for vice president. Both work under the North Carolina Growers Association contract. Ambrosio and Vasquez have both previously served on the board of It’s Our Future.

Former FLOC Vice President Justin Flores, now a volunteer at It’s Our Future and running on the Los Trabajadores Primero slate for an executive board position, told Labor Notes they are running to make overdue change to FLOC’s leadership.

“The way that Baldemar ran this union in recent years—siding with growers on almost every issue and against members—shows it’s time for a change,” said Flores. “It’s time to pass the baton over to the next generation.” Flores was fired by Velasquez in April 2022 for supporting the previous challenger slate, as were two other staffers.

It is unclear how many members working under the FLOC contract with the NCGA will be eligible to vote. The union’s LM-2 for 2023 lists 396 H-2A members in North Carolina out of an estimated 9,000 H-2A workers covered under the contract. FLOC’s membership numbers have declined following the passage of a North Carolina law in 2017 restricting farmers from deducting dues from union members’ paychecks.

Associate members will still be able to vote in the new election. It’s Our Future worries that this means non-farmworkers will again decide the outcome.

Will the FLOC’s members keep Velasquez, the only president the union has ever had, in power, or elect new leaders to take the union into its next chapter? We’ll find out soon.

For more details on the 2022 election, see Grey Moran’s article, “A Contested Election Is Fracturing a Farmworkers’ Union,” Civil Eats, January 30, 2023.

José Pérez-Zetune contributed to reporting for this story.