Wednesday, October 10, 2018

North Carolina farmworkers

In 2017 the North Carolina legislature, controlled by Republicans, passed a bill prohibiting farming operations from collecting union dues from workers and blocked any legal settlements requiring a farm to enter into a collective bargaining agreement.  

A federal judge blocked the law for now, but here is what the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Jimmy Dixon, a long time turkey farmer, said:  “I would do anything to keep us from becoming unionized to the extent that some of the other areas are.  I think it’s counter-productive.”

The bill applied mostly to the Farm Labor Organizing Committee, a union whose members are mostly guest workers from Mexico, traditionally the easiest workers to exploit.


Info for this post came from an article by Martha Waggoner and Gary D. Robertson, “Judge Blocks Law That Stops Farmworker Union Activities,” Lancaster Farming (Sept. 29, 2018), p. A23.

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