A bill that would prevent workers from documenting unsafe working conditions and animal cruelty on farms or any industrial operation workplace using video cameras is being pushed through the Indiana Legislature. 

This is a cross-post from A View from Left Field blog by Gregory Junemann, president of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers (IFPTE).

At its meeting in August, the AFL-CIO Committee on Civil and Human Rights was given a presentation from the committee’s chairperson, AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker, on her recent trip to meet with the immigrant farm workers in North Carolina. Sister Holt Baker had been invited to visit the workers by Baldemar Velasquez, the president of the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC). I, along with the other members of the AFL-CIO Executive Council, was invited by Brother Velasquez to travel to North Carolina to meet with the immigrant workers. I proudly accepted, and I made the trip late last month.

Farm workers and their allies delivered nearly 5,000 letters from consumers around the country to convenience chain Kangaroo Express at its headquarters in Cary, N.C., this week. The letters call on its chairman of the board, Edwin Holman, to visit the tobacco fields and see firsthand the harsh working conditions of those who toil for Reynolds American.

Jennifer Kauffman, AFL-CIO Immigration Policy & Training associate, sends us this. Labor and civil rights activist and icon Dolores Huerta, co-founder of the United Farm Workers of America, was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, for her lifelong work fighting for economic justice and workers’ rights.

After more than four years of pressure from the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) and other worker advocates, several of the largest tobacco companies, tobacco growers and workers are close to sitting down to discuss the issues of freedom of association without fear of retaliation, wages, housing, forced labor and other issues.

A Florida potato grower and its labor contractor have been accused of labor trafficking and taking advantage of workers, according to a federal lawsuit filed yesterday in Jacksonville by Florida Legal Services and Farmworker Justice. The suit was filed in the U.S. District Court, Middle District of Florida, on behalf of two farm workers who say they were victims of labor trafficking and other violations of federal and state labor laws while employed in 2009 and 2010 by Bulls-Hit Ranch & Farm, a potato grower in Hastings, Fla.

AFL-CIO Media Outreach fellow Jennifer Angarita contributed to this report.

Today, on what would have been César Chávez’s 84th birthday, students, workers and immigrants joined together to pay tribute to the legacy of Chávez.