he Farm Labor Organizing Committee, AFL-CIO (FLOC), is a union of migrant farmworkers in the eastern United States founded by Baldemar Velásquez. Baldemar is a highly respected national and international leader, not only in the farm labor movement, but also in the Latino and immigrant rights movements.
Baldemar was born in 1947, and grew up in a migrant farmworker family based in the Rio Grande valley of Texas. Every year, his family would migrate to the Midwest and other regions to work in the fields planting, weeding, and harvesting crops like pickles, tomatoes, sugar beets, and berries. They traveled in trucks and old cars, and often lived in barns and converted chicken coops. The family eventually settled in Ohio, and Baldemar worked in the fields seasonally through his high school years to help support the family. He continued his education and received a BA in Sociology from Bluffton College in 1969, the first member of his family to graduate from college.
Incensed by the injustices suffered by his family and other farmworkers, Baldemar founded the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) in 1967. The basic issue was the right of farmworkers to have their own voice in the conditions that affect their lives. He began organizing migrant and seasonal farmworkers in Northwest Ohio, living on bare necessities and on occasion being arrested for leafleting in migrant labor camps.
As he struggled for justice for farmworkers, Baldemar realized that it was the agricultural corporations, rather than the growers, who control the conditions which affect farm laborers. The focus of FLOC became changing the structure of the agricultural industry through three-way negotiations among the major parties involved in agricultural production (farmworkers, growers, corporations).
In 1978, Baldemar led over 2,000 FLOC workers on strike, the largest in agricultural history of Midwest, who demanded union recognition and a multi-party bargaining agreement. The following year, FLOC held its first constitutional convention as a labor union, and the workers voted to boycott Campbell Soup in their call for negotiations.
FLOC and their supporters struggled for eight years to win justice for farmworkers. In 1983, Baldemar led a 600-mile march of 100 farmworkers from Toledo, Ohio, to Campbell's headquarters in Camden, N.J.
Such actions and the pressure of supporters through the boycott eventually convinced Campbell Soup that the issue was not going away. Farm labor elections were held under the supervision of an independent labor relations board, the Dunlop Commission, and in 1986, FLOC signed three-way contracts with Campbell Soup and its tomato and pickle grower associations in Ohio and Michigan.
These contracts changed the structure of the agricultural industry, so that farmworkers have an equal and direct voice in those conditions that affect their well-being. The FLOC movement has made labor history in bringing in different components of the industry into negotiated agreements.
This victory was soon extended with Heinz and other major food-processing corporations in the Midwest, as well as fresh-market producers. Under union contracts, some 8,000 workers, many who had worked under an exploitive "share-cropping" arrangement, received employee status, and wages and benefits more than doubled. New housing in migrant camps and other conditions also significantly improved. Another important gain is that under grievance procedures, FLOC workers also have a direct voice in their day-to-day working conditions.
In 1998, FLOC began organizing farmworkers in North Carolina, the other major region in the U.S. where pickles are produced. After organizing thousands of farmworkers and a 5-year boycott of Mt. Olive Pickles, FLOC signed contracts in 2003 with the North Carolina Growers Association, which included workers involved with not only pickles, but also sweet potatoes, tobacco, Christmas trees, and other crops.
These contracts also set labor history, not only by changing the agricultural system but by also bringing in H2A "guest workers" under union contracts. Formerly, these workers had little say in who employed them or in the conditions of their work. Now through their union, they have their own direct voice, and are now directly involved in labor negotiations, grievance procedures, and building structures to address issues like transportation from their home areas in Mexico, health care, and immigration policies.
Since most FLOC members are immigrant workers, they have called upon their union to help defend their rights. FLOC has thus become a grass-roots leader in the immigrant rights movement, organizing the immigrant community to defend their rights, building a broad network in the larger society to support immigrants in realizing their rights, and advocating policies to ensure the human, civil, and working rights of immigrants.
Baldemar has also seen how international structures and policies directly affect the lives of migrant workers not only in the U.S. but other regions of the world where the same crops are grown for the same corporations in a global economy. Thus, FLOC has initiated cooperative dialogues with labor unions in Mexico and other countries in response to multinational corporations moving some operations across borders. One such effort has led to the establishment a U.S.-Mexico Commission of labor groups to oversee joint organizing and negotiation efforts among farmworkers producing for the same corporations.
FLOC is continuing these efforts with agricultural workers in other regions. Baldemar's vision and convictions continue to drive the efforts of FLOC in winning justice for migrant workers. He has become a recognized grass-roots leader and diplomat in the farm labor movement, immigrant rights movement, and social justice movements in the U.S. and around the world. His creativity and commitment to justice and human dignity have led to recognition by many labor, government, academic, and progressive organizations, including a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellowship, a Development of People Award by the Campaign for Human Development of the, U.S. Catholic Conference, an Aguila Azteca Award by the Government of México, and an Honorary Doctor of Social Science by Bowling Green State University and an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters by University of Toledo.
It is people like Baldemar Velásquez who have throughout human history led the way to social changes which benefit the common person. At one rally for farmworker justice, he pointed to children of migrant families, and pointed out that without discrimination this one could grow up to become a doctor who discovers a cure for cancer, that one could grow up to become a teacher who develops a love of learning among students, and so on. It is through achievements that realize the vision of such leaders as Baldemar that each of us can all can benefit from human societies that draw upon the potentials off all its members.
Hasta la Victoria!