Labor organizing has experienced a resurgence of late for many service workers, but not so for agricultural workers. Through the collective impact efforts of many individuals, from many walks of life, California’s Agricultural Labor Relations Act of 1975 was passed, the first of its kind in the US to protect farmworker rights. Adopted at the height of the United Farm Workers movement led by César Chávez, it served as a vehicle to galvanize their Union, empowering tens of thousands of workers who realized the potentiality of organizing for the first time. Unfortunately, the promise of that law was never realized and progress since then has been a mixed bag. Over the years, Union activity in the fields dissipated and the organization would never again appear so powerful and well-organized as it did in the time surrounding the Delano grape strike.
The wages and conditions of the largely undocumented farmworkers of California are not necessarily significantly better than they were decades ago. Challenges vary from farm to farm, such as sexual harassment, low wages, or unsafe working conditions. However, some progress continues to be made, indicating gradual evolution toward better protections for the workforce who grows the food we rely on. The New York Farm Laborers Fair Labor Practices Act, signed into law by former Governor Andrew Cuomo, took effect in January 2021. It requires permits for migrant farm worker housing, overtime pay, at least one day of rest per work week, workers’ compensation, paid family leave, and the right to organize. In 2022, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed into law a bill guaranteeing additional farmworker union voting right protections such as confidentiality.
Elsewhere, increasing climate change-related heat waves and fires in the Pacific Northwest have wreaked havoc on a farming way of life and the lives of farm owners and migrant field workers, spawning the need for new health protections. Brutal triple-digit heat for days on end caused deaths of day laborers, resulting in Oregon and Washington establishing new worker safety regulations starting in August 2021. These include mandatory access to shade, cool drinking water, rest breaks, and wellness checks. The rules also require temporary housing to be maintained at a maximum temperature of 78 degrees Fahrenheit.
The states of Washington, Minnesota, and California have similar rules. Hazardous air quality caused by wildfires also threatens the health of outdoor workers, particularly those with asthma or other health conditions. The Oregon mandate requires employers to provide filtration masks to workers if the air quality index reaches unsafe levels. Continuing droughts and fires also ruin crops or make it impossible to continue growing food at all. In 2021, Meyer Orchards of Medford Oregon, a four-generation family farm in operation for 111 years, was forced to throw in the towel. They chopped down their entire 115-acre orchard of pear trees — the drought made it too costly to irrigate any longer.
Today, many organizations have taken up the causes of food justice and farmworker rights. In 2011, Mily Treviño-Sauceda and Mónica Ramirez, working from Oxnard, California, formed the National Farmworkers Women’s Alliance, or Alianza Nacional de Campesinas, to champion the nation’s 700,000-plus vulnerable women working in the agricultural industry. These women suffer from unequal pay, exploitation, violence and sexual abuse, and reproductive health problems stemming from pesticides. In 2017, they helped launch the Time’s Up legal defense fund, to support women working low-wage jobs. This is a story of the power of love and solidarity to empower disparate people to join forces.
Treviño-Sauceda and Ramirez were planning to contact women in the entertainment industry in conjunction with sexual harassment allegations against Harvey Weinstein and others. Some supporters urged that the letter should criticize the Hollywood movement for leaving out female farmworkers in a broader discussion of women’s right to freedom from sexual harassment. Instead, the letter took a tone of empathy and allyship on behalf of many underrepresented workers including janitors, hotel and domestic workers.
Source:nextcity.org
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