International Labor Rights Forum

 

ILRF is honoring FLOC for its innovative work organizing U.S. tobacco workers and holding tobacco companies responsible for poor working conditions. 

 

FLOC, led by the charismatic Baldemar Velasquez, is an affiliate of the AFL-CIO organizing thousands of migrant workers across the Midwest and South. Under Velasquez’s leadership, FLOC was founded and won its first collective bargaining agreement among migrant farmworkers in Ohio picking tomatoes for Campbell’s Soup in 1967.  FLOC has set international precedents in labor history, including being the first union to negotiate multi-party collective bargaining agreements, and the first to represent H2A international guest workers under a labor agreement.

 

FLOC has led a six-year campaign against RJ Reynolds Corporation, one of the largest tobacco corporations in the world, and its primary shareholder British Tobacco. These entities use their power to set the terms and prices for the farmers who grow their tobacco, leading to pervasive problems of child labor, long hours of stoop labor in harsh conditions, physical and verbal harassment, abject poverty and debt, exposure to lethal nicotine and pesticides, and denial of basic labor and human rights protections. FLOC has arranged yearly demonstrations outside the annual Reynolds shareholder meeting, field visits for U.S. congressional representatives and British parliamentarians, convenience store campaigns and other innovative strategies in its battle with Reynolds Corp. 

 

For more information on FLOC, please visit: www.floc.com