About

El Futuro es Nuestro arose out of an election campaign within the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC).  Workers covered under the first and only H2A Collective Bargaining Agreement grew dissatisfied with the representation of the long time president and founder Baldemar Velasquez. In 2021, workers decided that they needed to take back the union in order for it to function as a true member-led organization.  Read more about our history.

Our work is focused in Eastern North Carolina, where labor-intensive crops utilizing a high percentage of contracted labor include blueberries, cucumber, tobacco, and sweet potato. These counties include: Sampson, Wilson, Nash, Harnett, Johnston, Edgecombe, Wayne and Duplin, Greene, and Lenoir counties. In addition, many of our members work in the Christmas Tree harvest in November in Western North Carolina.

Agricultural work continues to be one of the most dangerous, least paid, and least protected industries in the United States. For over 30 years, workers have been paid just 50 cents per 40-pound bucket of sweet potatoes picked, typically with mandated quotas. There is consistent wage theft in the industry. Green Tobacco Sickness, causing nicotine overdose through absorption, is one example of one of the many deadly health concerns faced by workers, as well as heat stress which has caused multiple fatalities in recent years, and machinery injuries in the Christmas Tree harvest.

Marino has worked as an H2A worker for over 10 years.  Marino has participated in organizing efforts both with farmworkers in the US, and in his home community, where he has pushed for transportation improvements and resources for his community and people of indigenous background. 

Marino believes that his traditions and beliefs should be protected, as should the opportunity to participate in democratic policies and organizations.  He is a devout Christian and puts God first in all his actions.  He believes that we all have a responsibility to do good for others.   

Victor was one of the original promoters of DALE, an immigration protection for some workers who have worked for abusive employers.  He organized a group to benefit from this new resource and has continued to advocate for workers.  He is a great soccer player and spends his free time supporting other workers in need.  

 Martin was one of the original members of the first contract with the NC growers association.  He often speaks of all the dreams and intentions that workers had when the union first started organizing.  He has always participated in events and led a delegation of union members to OH to participate in the convention of 2022 in order to vote in the first contested election of FLOC.  He continues to be an advocate of worker organizing efforts and pushing for benefits under the H2A program.  

Maria Mejia started her organizing struggle as a teen while working in a Maquila in her home country Guatemala, organizing over 300 workers to file grievances collectively about working conditions.  She expanded her organizing into food workers later into meat packers, janitors, service workers, immigrant workers and fast food workers.  She has supported worker movements in Honduras, Nicaragua and El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, and the United states.  She is an expert in creating collectiveness with workers, agitating and promoting actions of workers.  She later joined the Farm labor Organizing Committee, and was one of the leaders in the development of the democratic caucus that founded El Futuro es Nuestro.  She is a dynamic team member and was highlighted in Enlace Newspaper as an important woman in the farmworker movement.  Her strict discipline, focus and determination are a powerful necessity to the farmworker movement in NC.   

Leticia Zavala was born in Zacapu, Michoacan in 1979.  At the age of six, her family migrated to the United States and immediately started following the migrant stream from Florida to Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania. In her teenage years, she became a member of the Farm Labor Organizing Committee, FLOC, as her family was working on a union farm. With the support of a  migrant education foundation, she obtained a scholarship that helped her pay her way to college, and she graduated with a bachelor’s degree with a major in Sociology from Florida Southern College.  After college, she got a call to return to the fields as an organizer and she joined the ranks of the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) once again.  Since then, she has worked with immigrant communities in Mexico and North Carolina pushing to improve working and living conditions of agricultural workers.  She is a member of Colectivo Binacional de Mujeres Migrantes, and part of the immigrant advisory council for the city of Zacapu, Michoacan. In 2017, Leticia was elected to serve on the executive board of the Farm Labor Organizing Committee, and she led FLOC’s organizing efforts in North Carolina for many years. In 2022, she joined an effort of FLOC members to take back the union for rank-and-file workers, and Leticia  ran in the first contested election of the Farm labor Organizing Committee. Days after the election, Leticia was fired.  Thirty farm workers joined together to found El Futuro es Nuestro / It’s Our Future,  A farmworker led nonprofit that is leading the way to improve working and living conditions for farmworkers in North Carolina.