On Sunday, August 6, nearly 50 farmworker members of It’s Our Future/ El Futuro Es Nuestro (IOF) gathered in Goldsboro, NC to determine next steps for the organization. Board members ran the meeting, led by president Felipe Montán. Vice President Eli Porras joined the meeting from Mexico via Zoom, as his “crossing date” has been postponed multiple times by the NC Growers Association. 

It’s Our Future began as a reform caucus within the farmworker union FLOC, but IOF has grown and established itself as its own worker-led organization with its own priorities. IOF leaders made it clear from the outset that the purpose of the August 6 meeting was to discuss the work of IOF and determine priorities, not to respond to the recent US DOL call for a new FLOC union election. Coordinators still do not have any further information about parameters or how the election is to be conducted. (IOF will certainly keep supporters informed on any new developments.) 

Determining Priorities: During the meeting, workers voted on which priorities IOF should focus. By far, the top three issues were: Mistreatment by growers, Kitchen access & living conditions, and H2A recruitment of “Activos.” As discussed in the July 2023 IOF newsletter, the “Activos” issue refers to workers being accepted- or not- for H2A guestworker contracts in NC when they are still in Mexico. The FLOC union contract was supposed to ensure seniority in recruitment for union members, but those members who have been critical of FLOC leadership have met resistance getting recruited and becoming “Active” workers, despite years (or even decades) of successful recruitment in the past. 

The meeting also included awards for the IOF TikTok Challenge, in which winners received gift baskets of supplies themed around pesticide protection and healthcare. 

More than 20 farmworker supporters volunteered to drive workers from labor camps in remote rural areas. IOF is so grateful for those drivers who helped make the meeting possible. Triangle Friends of Farmworkers (TFF), now coordinated by Justin Flores, is the group organizing drivers. This is always a great need, so please join TFF for updates on how to support farmworker organizing and to get involved! Contact Justin to join: flores.justin.nc@gmail.com. 

We all know this summer has brought a brutal heat wave. If just walking from air-conditioned houses to air-conditioned cars can produce a sweat, imagine working in the fields under the hot sun for 10-14 hours per day.  Agricultural work is one of the nation’s most dangerous jobs, in part due to the heat, and there are tragic consequences for failing to protect workers. 

IOF has anecdotal evidence of at least four heat-related farmworker deaths in North Carolina so far this season. IOF Coordinators Leticia Zavala and Maria Mejia are helping families of the deceased communicate with attorneys, in the cases where this is needed. Most of the families are still waiting for the bodies of their loved ones to return to Mexico so that they can make funeral arrangements. 

NC Public Radio station WUNC recently interviewed Leticia and IOF Board member Abel Cruz, in addition to other worker safety advocates, about the extreme heat and the risk to workers. Abel is 37 years old and has been traveling to NC to work in the fields for 17 years. He told the reporter, "We’ve cut [tobacco] sometimes to the point of going limp. Sometimes you don’t feel your feet. They won’t respond. Because when you’re really dehydrated, that’s when we lose our faculties."

As the WUNC story points out, only five states have heat standards for outdoor workers, and North Carolina is not one of them. For nearly two years, the US Department of Labor (USDOL) has been in the rulemaking process to set heat-specific workplace standards across the country. But it’s unclear how long it will take for these standards to become reality. For now, the USDOL emphasizes that employers have a duty to protect their workers. 

However, Leticia states, "there's no oversight of what goes on in agriculture, really. And it's usually up to ourselves for us to fight some of the issues on the ground," making the work of IOF that much more important.

Read more from this important story. 

Following persistent advocacy and requests by IOF workers, the leadership of the FLOC union has finally released a copy of the union’s Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) translated into Spanish, and some workers have reportedly received a copy in the past week. While many workers have resigned their FLOC membership, other IOF members continue to retain their membership and have continued to push for needed changes inside FLOC, including more transparency and access to the union contract which covers them. 

A new CBA was negotiated in 2022 between FLOC and the NC Growers’ Association, and even IOF representatives who were still FLOC staff at that time never saw the contract. In addition, no Spanish-language version of FLOC’s previous CBAs had been distributed in at least eight years, despite member requests. 

One of IOF workers’ key demands of FLOC has been increased transparency within the union and increased accountability to dues-paying worker members. Gaining access to the contract which covers them is a bare minimum, but it is significant progress nonetheless, and this progress only happened thanks to IOF pressing for disclosure of the CBA to members in a language they can understand.