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.

For months, consumers and the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) have been urging Kangaroo Express, the largest convenience store chain in the Southeast that sells tobacco products, to encourage Reynolds American to develop with FLOC a written agreement guaranteeing freedom of association and collective bargaining for thousands of tobacco farm workers in North Carolina.

Hundreds of farm workers and their supporters are protesting at Reynolds American’s shareholders meeting in North Carolina today. The Farm Labor Organizing Committee’s Justin Flores says it’s part of an ongoing campaign to improve horrendous working conditions for tobacco field workers.

Brenda Loya in AFL-CIO Media Affairs sends us this from North Carolina, where she is on a fact-finding trip to witness the brutal conditions endured by tobacco workers.

We joined a diverse delegation of 25 activists, students, labor and community leaders and traveled to farm labor camps in Dudley, N.C.., to witness firsthand the appalling and abusive conditions of tobacco farm workers.

In North Carolina, the tobacco industry is running roughshod over workers’ rights—and their most fundamental human rights, according to a recent report, “State of Fear: Human Rights Abuses in North Carolina’s Tobacco Industry,” issued jointly by the Farm Labor Organizing Committee and Oxfam, the global relief organization. FLOC represents more than 6,000 farm workers in the state.