FLOC signed the contract with the growers in more than 1,000 farms and also with Mount Olive Pickle Company, the nation’s second-largest pickle company. The agreement with Mount Olive increases wages for farm workers over the next three years.

Under the agreement, the 60 growers who contract with Mount Olive will also receive a price increase for their produce.

This is the largest union contract for farm workers in North Carolina’s history, and the first in the nation for seasonal workers. The victory was the result of “persistence,” union organizer Brendan Greene told the Militant. The struggle included pickets at stores, marches, and wide publicity about the conditions farm workers face at the hands of the growers. Until now FLOC has represented about 4,300 farm workers in Ohio and Michigan. The new agreement gives the farm workers’ union a foothold in the South.

FLOC’s website describes the job conditions farm workers face in the fields. “A serious climate of control,” the union says exists in “the overwhelming majority of farms in North Carolina—from restricting visitors, to intimidating workers with threats of firing, blacklisting, deportation, and threats of violence against workers and their families in Mexico.” This is “far more serious than housing, or even wages and field sanitation violations,” FLOC says, and is “often what prevents workers from leaving to seek other opportunities.”

The growers association, using a federal program, brings in seasonal workers to pick cucumbers. The U.S. Department of Labor issues H2A work visas to these workers to come to the United States for a limited period of time and work in the fields. Under federal regulations, these workers are to be paid at least $8.06 an hour. FLOC’s agreement with the growers covers only a fraction of North Carolina’s farm workers, many of whom are undocumented workers.

One provision of the agreement FLOC signed allows union organizers to oversee recruiting and hiring in Mexico and to be present where workers are hired to ensure that hiring is done according to seniority and that workers are not blacklisted for union activities.

Through the grower’s hiring program workers are charged a fee for the visa. Bribery is often used under this federal program to get certain people hired, according to Greene.

After signing the pact with the growers, FLOC started sending organizers to every farm employing workers the growers association brings in as “guests,” to ask them to sign union cards, said Baldemar Velasquez, president of FLOC, in a union press release.

A number of medium and large capitalist farmers have indicated they may opt out of the federal “guest worker” program to avoid having to fulfill the terms of the FLOC contract and instead shift to hiring undocumented workers.

David Rose, who farms tobacco and sweet potatoes, for example, employs 30 workers each year whom he hires through the growers association. Rose says he may switch now to using “illegal immigrants,” like other farmers, according to the Raleigh News Observer.

Stan Eury, head of the growers association, said that “no farmer will be forced to cooperate with union organizers,” the Observer reported, but he will “encourage farmers to allow union organizers to talk with workers.”  
 
 
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