Position: Field Organizer
Location: Northern/Central TN through Central Kentucky (Springfield/Clarksville-TN – Hopkinsville/Sparta, KY region: Location flexible
The Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) is both a social movement and a labor union. Our immediate constituency is migrant workers in the agricultural industry, but we are also involved with immigrant workers, Latinos, our local communities, and national and international coalitions concerned with justice. FLOC was founded in 1967 to organize for economic, legal and human rights for farmworkers in the Midwest, and now represents more than 10,000 farmworkers in Ohio, North and South Carolina. In 2007 FLOC began a campaign targeting Reynolds American, Inc., the second largest tobacco company in the US, for their complicity in the abuses of farmworkers who harvest their company’s tobacco. FLOC continues to raise awareness of these problems and build support among farmworkers and community allies until Reynolds acknowledges their role in ensuring fair wages and safe and healthy living conditions for all farmworkers harvesting tobacco. Recently, farmworkers in Kentucky and Tennessee began joining the union, seeking to fix many labor and human rights violations faced in the tobacco sector in that region. FLOC organizers from NC and OH have traveled to these areas to begin to discuss an organizing campaign with new FLOC members. Initial visits showed a large amount of labor violations and interest in addressing them. FLOC is now seeking to hire an organizer for the region.
General Position Summary: Field Organizer will visit labor camps, present information on union, build membership, recruit volunteers, organize know your rights trainings, identify issues important to members, build strategies to engage members and allies in campaigns to win collective bargaining rights and improve work conditions.
Qualifications: Flexible schedule, willing to travel and work evenings and weekends; able to travel for 1-2 week periods; fluent Spanish is required; demonstrated commitment to social justice/labor rights issues; must have valid driver’s license and a car and be willing to drive for work (mileage reimbursed)
How to apply: Applications will be accepted until position is filled. Please send a cover letter and resume to Justin Flores at jflores@floc.com.
Compensation: Position details, including location, schedule, full/part-time status are negotiable. Additional information can be provided after discussion of the position details.