The Virginia Worker

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The following report comes from The Virginia Worker correspondents SNR and Sal Rojo on the recent struggle within the Farm Labor Organizing Committee between the It’s Our Future caucus and FLOC President Baldemar Velasquez

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MARTINSVILLE – On a sweltering hot day early in July, a meeting was held in the back of the Cleopatra Beauty Salon. The space was decked out with “Virginia for Baldemar” banners – Baldemar being the 56-year long union president of the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC). 

FLOC is the only farmworker union operating in the eastern half of the US, pioneering collective bargaining agreements for H-2A Visa migrant workers coming from Mexico. 

The meeting was promoted as a rally to support two Virginia immigrant women FLOC members under attack from nefarious forces within FLOC. 

Baldemar claimed the opposition was threatening these women for participating in the last FLOC convention where Baldemar was challenged for the first time for leadership. These two members are facing a defamation lawsuit filed by Leticia Zavala – the former vice president of FLOC and current leader of the reform caucus called It’s Our Future (IOF). 

Charter buses brought in Baldemar and FLOC members for the meeting, mainly from Toledo, Ohio where FLOC is headquartered. 

A hired cameraman accompanied them as they exited the bus and filed into the back of the salon to start the meeting. The current FLOC leadership sat at a head table facing the membership and proceeded to discuss the issue at hand. 

Baldemar translated much of the presentation from Spanish into English laying out the situation for these two FLOC members, who were present for the meeting. He introduced each member as they one-by-one read their testimonies to the cameraman about the alleged harassment and intimidation they had experienced leading up to the contested FLOC convention.

After this, Baldemar announced FLOC would be restarting the Womens Committee that has been long dormant to focus on FLOC women member issues as part of his commitment to supporting immigrant women struggles.

He further emphasized to the members present on the importance to get current in their dues because the last FLOC convention was not only contested for leadership, but also the legitimacy of the election results as well. He was preparing his membership for a new FLOC election, this time to be monitored by the US Department of Labor.

Despite this meeting being portrayed as a rally to defend two women immigrant FLOC members, much of the focus was on repudiating the IOF caucus, with Baldemar insisting IOF leaders weren’t fired from FLOC as retaliation for challenging his 56-year reign, but because of “insubordination”. 

One of the IOF leaders filed for unemployment in North Carolina after their firing from FLOC. The North Carolina Department of Commerce determined their termination wasn’t because of their job performance, but because it was politically motivated, ruling in favor of the fired organizer. 

Legal Battles

On August 2nd the trial opened at the Martinsville Courthouse between Baldemar and his two defendants versus Leticia Zavala over defaming Zavala. 

Zavala emphatically denies Baldemar and the other womens’ claim that she ever threatened or harassed them in the leadup to the last FLOC convention. The basis of the defendants’ claim stems from a letter Zavala says Baldemar wrote and got three women to sign onto. 

Zavala also says that in the leadup to the FLOC convention she and IOF leadership were receiving messages from FLOC members that members would get visas in exchange for voting for Baldemar. 

The court hearing has been continued until October as Baldemar’s legal team seeks more information on the witnesses Zavala is bringing forward.

The two Virginia women named in the defamation lawsuit are not actually migrant farmworkers, but are small business owners or work elsewhere, which raises a larger issue within FLOC regarding its union membership. There are two categories of union membership in FLOC. 

One category is for migrant H-2A farmworkers coming from Mexico who operate under the collective bargaining agreement between FLOC and the North Carolina Growers Association. These union members pay 2.5% of their annual salary as dues into the union. 

The other category of FLOC union membership are “associate members” who can be anyone without qualification so long as they pay a one-time fee of $30 dollars annually. This is the category of union membership the women in the defamation lawsuit fall into. 

This category of union membership is also the majority of support and votes Baldemar draws from, which includes many of Baldemar’s family and also the likes of former mayor of Toledo, Democrat politician Carty Finkbeiner. There was word farmers were paying dues for people to be associate members to favor Baldemar. Baldemar has even gone on the record saying “you’re never going to build a union with just migrant workers”.

Zavala and IOF leaders were the lead FLOC organizers in North Carolina, which is the only location FLOC has an active collective bargaining agreement and where the majority of farmworker FLOC union members are based. 

It was this base of the FLOC membership who were disenfranchised during the last FLOC convention, probably because Baldemar knew they would vote in favor of the IOF slate. Which raises the question, why is there so much support for IOF among farmworkers in FLOC? 

The Old Guard vs The New Guard

As has been documented in other articles, there is a difference of orientation between Baldemar and the IOF leadership, especially in regards to dealing with farmers and how they treat farmworkers. 

Baldemar and his supporters have made it known they want to work with farmers to the detriment of farmworkers. Baldemar unilaterally pushed for a wage freeze on farmworkers back in 2018, had told staff to not give farmers any trouble and not to submit too many grievances. 

Team Baldemar frames IOF leadership as hostile to the farmers saying “She [Zavala] is very committed to dealing with every little complaint that comes along, attacking the growers, and I think Baldemar’s vision, which is broader, is we have to help these small farmers survive, so we have to work with them, not against them. And I think that’s basically the conflict and the two theories of how they should be proceeding.”

Baldemar’s orientation is indicative of the standard business union model which seeks to collaborate with bosses at the expense of workers, which in practice means subordinating the interests of the working class to the capitalist class and their drive for profit. As the saying goes, which side are you on? Team Baldemar has made it clear, as has the majority of US union leadership.

On August 6th It’s Our Future held their first farmworker meeting of the year in Goldsboro, North Carolina. With the assistance of volunteer drivers from across the southeast US, H-2A Visa migrant workers were picked up from across farms in North Carolina to attend this meeting and focused on what their main issues are and what can be done to address them.

The three top issues voted on were abuse by farmers, housing conditions in the labor camps where workers are warehoused, and “activos”. 

Breakout groups were held where farmworkers sat in each group discussing exactly how these three issues played out. Each group had a representative report back to the larger body. Their experiences were heartbreaking. 

Various workers reported incidents where for one reason or another they couldn’t continue their shifts and rather than give workers rides back to their labor camps the farmers forced them to stay in the fields until all the work was done, which could be up to seven hours. 

There is a lack of consideration by the farmers towards workers in their exposure to extreme heat. There were reports of workers dying. There were also reports of workers getting injured, breaking bones and being forced to continue to work, a lack of proper training, as well as dealing with verbal abuse from the farmers and their crew leaders.

This extends to the conditions of the labor camps workers are stuck in. The state of the housing units were reported to be old and in bad condition. One worker reported that they have to share a small house with 22 other workers crammed together like canned sardines. 

Another worker said after working 15 seasons at the same farm the farmer still had not fixed plumbing in their camp and that workers have to get up an hour early just to retrieve water. Many workers have to buy their own bottled water because the water provided by farmers isn’t clean or safe. And when workers complain about conditions they face retaliation, which can include being blacklisted from farmwork in future seasons. This leads us to the issue of “activos”.

Activos are farmworkers who submit their paperwork to contractors in Mexico, yet cannot get through the bureaucracy to be selected to work on a US farm. One worker reported that in prior years workers used to be able to go to an office and file the paperwork easily, whereas now contractors will not accept any paperwork from farmworkers unless a US farmer specifically asks for them by name to return to their farm. 

One farmworker joined the meeting via phone from Mexico because he was facing this exact issue as an activo. This worker, an active member in FLOC and IOF, who lodged complaints against farmers, believes the reason they weren’t allowed back in the US for this growing season is because of their activism. 

Many workers believe contractors and farmers between Mexico and the US are conspiring to exclude FLOC and IOF members from working on US farms. That’s what team Baldemar is trying to collaborate with.

As IOF leadership and farmworkers brainstormed on solutions, one of the biggest calls to action was to press Baldemar and FLOC leadership for copies of the union contract with the North Carolina Growers Association. 

Workers don’t know what the terms of the contract are, what rights they are entitled to, and what legal recourse they can take based on the terms of the contract. The contract has not been translated into Spanish by FLOC. 

They also are left in the dark about negotiations between FLOC and farmers for new contracts. It was unclear if there are even any bylaws within the FLOC constitution which regulates contract negotiations, if there are negotiation committees workers can join, etc. What became apparent is that the FLOC constitution was actually constructed to give a tremendous concentration of power to the union president, Baldemar. 

There was a night and day difference between Baldemar’s rally and IOF’s. The July 9th Rally was centered on Baldemar circling the wagons around his continued leadership, despite saying he wasn’t going to run for reelection in the union all the way back in 2017. 

The IOF August 2nd meeting was centered on farmworkers, their issues, and how to address them by the rank and file union members against the various forces exploiting them. The new FLOC election has yet to be set, the terms of the new election are still being decided, and the defamation lawsuit between IOF and team Baldemar is still ongoing. 

Time will tell if IOF will gain control over FLOC or if they will have to break free and form a militant, rank and file union driven by the farmworkers independently. 

Regardless of the outcome, it’s apparent that IOF is on the rise and will continue to organize and fight for farmworkers. The same cannot be said for FLOC and Baldemar.

This struggle by the rank and file workers to wrest control of their union from an entrenched and ossified union bureaucracy in FLOC is indicative of a larger, historic trend of workers both in established unions and outside them to fight for proper representation, recognition of the class struggle between workers and the boss class, and a militancy which can’t be contained to backroom deals between the six-figure salary union bureaucrats and capitalists.

This is the only hope in our society to radically transform our current dismal collective reality towards working class power, a new standard, and a brighter future for all.

Viva IOF!

For Workers Power!