Historic victgory for undocumented
N.C. farm workers win union contract
By Peter Gilbert
Raleigh, N.C.
Ending a long, bitter struggle and a five-year boycott,
undocumented Mexican farm workers in North Carolina have won a
union contract with the Mt. Olive Pickle Company and the North
Carolina Growers Association. The contract covers the most
workers of any in North Carolina's history--and it is the first
union contract in the United States to specifically cover
undocumented farm laborers.
About 8,000 workers, representing almost all the states of
Mexico, will now be represented by the Farm Labor Organi zing
Committee, a longtime progressive union that is currently an
endorser of the Million Worker March.
The negotiations culminated in two separate contracts, both
signed in mid-September. One is with the growers' association
to recognize the union and its specific demands. A separate
contract obligates Mt. Olive, the biggest purchaser and the
wealthiest party, to increase the price it pays growers by 10
percent over three years. Under the contract this price
increase will be passed along as a 10-percent wage increase to
the workers. Mt. Olive will also pay 3 percent more to growers
who provide workers' compensation.
The workers are hired in Mexico by the NCGA under the
federal H-2A temporary work visa program, with the promise of
$8.06-an-hour wages and about three months of work. They live
in unsanitary work camps on about 1,000 cucumber farms. There's
a shortage of bathrooms and no kitchens at all; all food must
be purchased at the company store.
Several workers have died in these camps and in the fields
in recent years from heat exhaustion and exposure to
pesticides. Injured and sick workers are fired with no
compensation. The conditions of these camps vary little from
the experience of sharecroppers a century ago or of the slaves
earlier.
The new contract provides for FLOC to have a union hiring
hall and union representatives in Mexico to oversee the hiring
process and to implement a new seniority system. In the past,
union supporters' names have been kept on a list of workers to
be barred from these jobs. Now union membership, coupled with
seniority, will move workers to the top of the hiring list.
While the newly signed contracts do not remedy all the
problems these workers face, the union allows them to address
these issues from a position of strength. FLOC has already
begun meeting with the company and the growers' association to
demand improvements in housing and health care for the workers,
full disclosure and education on the use of pesticides, and
moves to end the criminal actions of Mexican police who work
with the recruiters. A grievance procedure and union
representatives in all the work camps will further help improve
conditions.
The significance of this vic tory cannot be overstated.
Organi zing undocumented migrant farm labor in a Southern
"right-to-work" state had seemed like an impossible task. But
the spirit of the workers and the community's demands for
justice overcame the obstacles.
The wage increase will also apply to Mt. Olive workers in
Ohio, who are already FLOC members. Improve ments in conditions
at these work camps and increasing pressure on the growers'
association will also affect conditions at other farm labor
camps across the South.
FLOC President Baldemar Velasquez said: "This agreement will
set an important standard to the rest of the agricultural
industry. Everyone else almost exclusively utilizes
undocumented workers and the conditions of those workers are
tragic and shameful."
Many of these workers, after the three-month cucumber
season, move on to Flo rida to pick tomatoes, more cucumbers
and citrus, and work the cane fields. Cur rently farm labor in
Florida, another "right-to-work" state, is not organized. Now
FLOC has a ready-made organizing committee among the Mt. Olive
workers.
Reprinted from the Sept. 30, 2004, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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