North Carolina’s migrant farm workers won a voice on the job in September following a six-year campaign that centered on a national boycott of Mt. Olive Pickle Co., the nation’s second-largest pickle company. In spearheading the campaign, the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) reached an agreement with the North Carolina Growers Association, enabling as many as 8,000 workers on more than 1,000 farms throughout the state to form a union without employer interference.
Under the agreement, workers will receive at least one-half day of rest per week in a freedom-toworship clause, a full day’s pay for a day when a worker is injured, a grievance procedure, a seniority system, three days paid funeral leave and other new rights. FLOC now has ended its boycott of Mt. Olive after it signed the pact and agreed to pay the farmers slightly more for their crops.
Life-threatening working conditions on some farms
Before a pickle becomes a pickle—deliciously salty and marinated in spices—it’s a cucumber, growing low to the ground amid prickly vines and leaves. In North Carolina, the thousands of workers who pick cucumbers are mostly migrants from Mexico who travel to the state three days by bus—or with smugglers—before harvest time. Some hold H2-A visas issued by the U.S. government, designating them agricultural guest workers who undertake physically demanding, low-paying jobs. Others, who are undocumented, work in the shadows of the industry.
On the farms, the workers face abusive and sometimes dangerous conditions. They don’t get breaks to drink water or use the restroom. Isolated on the farms without access to transportation or kitchen facilities, they are forced to buy overpriced food from company stores. All that is changing under the new agreement with the North Carolina Growers Association. Workers have the right to demand medical attention and workers’ compensation, decent wages, a seniority system and a grievance procedure.
In the past, workers have feared speaking up about unsafe conditions such as being exposed to pesticides. One worker, Raymundo Hernandez, died in 1995 from such exposure, say leaders of FLOC. Workers who pull tobacco often experience “green sickness” when they are first exposed to the nicotine in the plants. But, union leaders say, because workers are indentured to their smugglers and rely on employers for their H2A visas or their livelihood, they have not fought against these injustices. Those who lose their jobs could be sent back to Mexico and labeled as troublemakers, effectively barring them from working in the United States and earning the money they need to support their families.
“I hope the union helps all Mexican workers get a better life, better housing, better pay—everything,” says Eduardo Zavala, a migrant worker from Loreta, Zacatecasm, Mexico. “I hope it keeps going.”
Religious and community allies key to creating support for farm workers
The pickle boycott worked because FLOC built a nationwide network of support among unions, students, community groups and religious congregations, says FLOC President Baldemar Velasquez. Supporters of the farm workers met with grocers, urging them to stop stocking Mt. Olive pickles, and sometimes rallied at stores that carried the brand. As a result, more than 200 Krogers, Farmer Jacks and Meijers supermarkets pulled the pickles from their shelves. “Unions have to reach out beyond themselves, to nontraditional allies,” Velasquez says.
The United Methodist Church became a crucial ally. In May, the church’s General Conference, the governing body for 8 million Methodists worldwide, backed the boycott of Mt. Olive products—the first time since 1988 the church endorsed a consumer boycott. The General Conference’s decision also was significant because the president of Mt. Olive, William Bryan, is Methodist. “When [Bryan’s] own church condemned” the workers’ lack of a voice on the job, “that caused considerable consternation at home,” Velasquez says.
The most innovative provision of FLOC’s agreement with the farmers’ association allows the union to work in Mexico to ensure the new rights are enforced for the workers whom the growers bring to the United States. FLOC is opening an office in Nueva León, Monterrey, Mexico, near the U.S. consulate where visas are issued, so new workers can sign up with the union. “By the time they get to North Carolina, they will already be union members,” says Velasquez.
FLOC leaders say their historic agreement with North Carolina growers proves the importance of a voice on the job for all workers, regardless of their country of origin, immigration status or ethnicity.
“When I worked in the fields, I was legal,” Velasquez says, thinking back 40 years ago to his days as a farm worker. “That didn’t keep us from being exploited,” he says. “You’ve still got to organize. Our job is to protect workers, in our own country and in other countries.”
