A look back at 2013: A year of progress!
2013 was jam packed with membership meetings, marches and rallies, contract administration and building solidarity in the labor movement, topped off with a very successful Constitutional Convention!
Here are few of our favorite highlights:
- Continuing our fight to ensure that Reynolds American guarantees the right to organize to all farmworkers in its supply chain, consumers rallied to pressure convenience store chains that make billions from tobacco sales to step up and tell Reynolds about the concerns of consumers. At Kangaroo Express, 7-Eleven, and Wawa, consumers held pickets and rallies at dozens of store locations throughout the country. Labor activists in Europe joined the fight, convincing British American Tobacco (BAT), a company that owns 42% of Reynolds, to tell the tobacco giant to sign an agreement with FLOC. Read more about consumer actions.
- In October, nearly 400 union members attended FLOC’s 12th Constitutional Convention. Delegates read, debated, and passed 16 resolutions which will give the elected FLOC leadership guidance on what issues are most vital to the farmworker movement. In a unanimous vote, delegates passed a resolution to continue the Reynolds Campaign and to launch a massive sign-up campaign to organize 5,000 new tobacco farmworker members in the 2014 harvest season. You can read more about the convention here.
- In August we were proud to host AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Liz Schuler for a Camp Solidarity visit, along with five members of the United Steel Workers, representatives from the NC AFL-CIO, President of Farmworker Justice, Bruce Goldstein, and other FLOC allies.