On February 11, 2010, U.S. Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis announced  reinstatement of protections for imported farm workers that were slashed from the nation’s agricultural guest worker program during the last days of the Bush administration in early 2009.

The Bush administration's changes to the H-2A agricultural guest worker program, which took effect on January 17, 2009, dramatically impacted wages and working conditions for foreign agricultural workers. Under the Bush rules, agricultural employers could more easily access cheap foreign labor with little government oversight. MORE

It took more than 30 years, but more than 1,400 workers at D’Arrigo Bros now have a contract and enjoy some basic employment privileges most workers take for granted. Under the UFW contract, workers get five paid holidays each year – including Christmas Day and Thanksgiving. Paid holidays for farm workers are, for the most part, unheard of. Under the contract signed with D’Arrigo, workers and their families are entitled to health insurance that includes vision and dental that is 100 percent paid by the employer. Looking toward the future, the contract includes negotiated healthcare increases for the next three years so workers don’t have to worry about unexpected increases in healthcare premiums. More

In addition to back-pay, under the new contract the workers will receive an 18 percent pay increase over the four-year contract and the workers will have the same seniority and classifications they did at the time they were discharged.

The contract also covers sub-contracted employees who will be paid wage rates equal to those a UFW employee. Sub-contracted employees will also be entitled to the grievance and arbitration procedure for disputes which arise.

Following a four and a half years of negotiations, the groundbreaking contract was ratified by the dairy and farm workers on July 8 and entered into effect on July 15, 2007, with Threemile Canyon Farms LLC, Boardman, Oregon.T he agreement is the first of its kind in Oregon.

“Just as we remember our past,” said Arturo Rodriguez, UFW President, “we recognize that this agreement blazes a new agricultural path into the 21st century. The UFW is proud of our members and this new partnership, building respect for farmworkers. We look forward to working with Threemile Canyon Farms and joining in the promotion of their fine agricultural products.  This agreement lays the groundwork for a new period in Oregon’s agricultural heritage providing stability for growers and fairness for farm workers. We honor our entire membership, native-born and immigrant, men and women in this is a new era of cooperation and mutual benefit for both the farm and them”.   

This year’s freeze is a flashback of the freeze that devastated citrus workers in the San Joaquin Valley in 1998. Back then though, it was even harder--we had to fight just to have farm workers recognized as part of those suffering from the impacts of the freeze. Our hard work in 1998 paid off--for the first time in history farm workers were able to receive government relief after a natural disaster. We also distributed food and helped workers receive financial aid from various public agencies.

We know our fight to help citrus freeze farm workers in 1998 set the tone for how things would be done this time around.  And, tremendous progress has already been made, including Governor Schwarzenegger issuing a state of emergency--including for farm workers--within the first two weeks of the freeze (instead of taking months to achieve like in 1998).

His office also declared the UFW Foundation, the UFW’s sister organization, a “leading organization for citrus freeze efforts”.  On Friday, his office authorized $1.75 million in emergency funding to help freeze victims in Tulare, Fresno, Kern, Riverside and Ventura counties with rent, mortgage and utility assistance for the months of February and March. 

On a federal level, the U.S. Department of Agriculture also recently declared 18 counties federal disaster areas in need of federal relief as a result of the freeze. Legislation to aid farmers and farm workers devastated by the mid-January freeze was formally introduced in the House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate on Wednesday, February 7. The UFW had already been working proactively with Senators Boxer and Feinstein to ensure progress was being made. Even before the legislation was introduced, I was also at the nation's capital lobbying on behalf of farm workers and their families. As history has shown us, the harder we work, the more we achieve.

In March President Bush declared CA a federal disaster area and the Fiscal Year 2007 Emergency Supplemental bill, now on the senate floor includes millions in emergency assistance for California farmers and farm workers impacted by January’s freeze.

For the UFW, this year’s freeze is a flashback of the freeze that devastated citrus workers in the San Joaquin Valley in 1998. Back then though, it was even harder--the UFW had to fight just to have farm workers recognized as part of those suffering from the impacts of the freeze. The hard work in 1998 paid off--for the first time in history farm workers were able to receive government relief after a natural disaster. The UFW also distributed food and helped workers receive financial aid from various public agencies.

We know the fight to help citrus freeze farm workers in 1998 set the tone for how things would be done this time around.  And, tremendous progress has already been made, including Governor Schwarzenegger issuing a state of emergency--including for farm workers--within the first two weeks of the freeze (instead of taking months to achieve like in 1998).

His office also declared the UFW Foundation, the UFW’s sister organization, a “leading organization for citrus freeze efforts.”  On Friday, his office authorized $1.75 million in emergency funding to help freeze victims in Tulare, Fresno, Kern, Riverside and Ventura counties with rent, mortgage and utility assistance for the months of February and March. 

On a federal level, the U.S. Department of Agriculture also recently declared 18 counties federal disaster areas in need of federal relief as a result of the freeze. Legislation to aid farmers and farm workers devastated by the mid-January freeze was formally introduced in the House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate on Wednesday, February 7, 2007. The UFW had already been working proactively with Senators Boxer and Feinstein to ensure progress was being made. Even before the legislation was introduced, UFW president Arturo Rodriguez was also at the nation's capital lobbying on behalf of farm workers and their families.

A neutral arbitrator certified that a majority of workers at Threemile Canyon Farms signed union authorization cards indicating their desire for the United Farm Workers of America to represent them.

As a result, the Arbitrator certified the UFW as the representative of the Dairy and Farm Workers at Threemile. Certification of majority status for the union includes workers at the Columbia River Dairies and RDO Bos Farms (dairy and farming operations) and covers approximately 250 workers. Threemile and the UFW have begun Labor Contract negotiations.

Following our November card check election victory at nearby Threemile Canyon Farms,  the UFW was certified the winner of a card-check election at nearby Willow Creek Dairy in Boardman, OR. on February 2, 2007  The workers are excited at the prospects of better pay and medical benefits for their families following the ratification of the contract.
 

Just before Thanksgiving 2006, a delegation of more than a dozen fired Charles Krug-Mondavi workers turned in a petition signed by more than 18,000 Americans pledging to boycott all Charles Krug and C.K. Mondavi wine labels. 

The contract between the United Farm Workers and Charles Krug-Mondavi expired and the company has refused to return to the bargaining table to re-negotiate an agreement. Petitioners say they are "dismayed to hear that Krug-Mondavi fired all its workers just after the Agricultural Labor Relations Board informed the company the state was filing a formal complaint for violating the law by refusing to bargain. You had no legal or moral right to fire these workers."

Two children of a Kern County farm worker whose 2005 death from extreme heat helped convince Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to issue the first state regulation in the nation to prevent heat illness will receive a $160,000 death benefit or payments of $448 every two weeks until the youngest child reaches age 18 under a settlement to be announced Friday in Bakersfield.

Constantino Cruz Hernandez, 24, was one of four Central Valley farm workers—three in Kern County—who died in July 2005 of exposure to extreme heat. Cruz Hernandez was working for a farm labor contractor in a tomato field near Shafter on July 21, 2005. The conveyor pulled by a tractor on which he was placing tomatoes was running too quickly, forcing workers to labor at a fast pace in temperatures of more than 100 degrees. Cruz Hernandez was admitted to Kern Medical Center after he was stricken, but was released the next day. At home he collapsed, his heart stopped and he was pronounced dead at a Delano hospital on July 31, 2005.

On Aug. 2, 2005, members of the Cruz Hernandez family joined Gov. Schwarzenegger and UFW President Arturo Rodriguez at a state Capitol news conference where the landmark state head regulation was announced. Among other things, the new regulations provides for water, shade, and allows workers to take a paid break whenever the worker believes they are suffering from heat illness

Renewing efforts to allow immigrant farm workers the legal right to permanently stay in this country and continue to work in agriculture, Principle Authors U.S. Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-CA.), Larry Craig (R-ID), and Edward Kennedy (D-MA) in the U.S. Senate have come together to reintroduce the AgJobs Bill (formerly, S. 359, H.R. 864) and U.S. Representatives Howard Berman (D-CA) and Chris Cannon (R-UT) in the U.S. Congress.  Sponsored by the UFW, this bipartisan measure would provide earned legalization for approximately 1 million immigrant farm workers who work in the agricultural industry. 

"With a change in Congress and in true bipartisanship, there is an opportunity to take the first steps to address our nation’s broken immigration system and provide earned legalization for our nation’s immigrant farm workers," said Arturo S. Rodriguez, President of the UFW.  "The need is great for Congress to begin making real reform, take action and improve the lives of the very people who perform some of the most important work in this country – feeding America and securing our food supply."

Negotiated for five years between the UFW and the agricultural industry, AgJobs has been endorsed by more than 500 organizations, including business, labor, religious, Latino and immigrant rights groups.  In May 2005, AgJobs legislation was included in the Comprehensive Immigration Reform bill passed by the U.S. Senate. 

AgJOBS would allow for undocumented farm workers to earn the right to permanently stay in this country by working in agriculture for about three-to-five years. In order to be eligible for temporary legal status, a farm worker will need to perform agricultural employment in the United States for 150 work days during the 24-month period ending on December 31, 2006. This year’s version of AgJOBS also provides legal status to spouses and children of eligible farm workers.

In 2006 the UFW won a new contract at agricultural contractor Global Horizons. We also won elections at Threemile Canyon Farms and San Martin Mushroom Farms and anticipate soon being certified as the winner at Artesia Dairy. We expect these election victories will result in contracts soon.

We renegotiated and improved contracts at Coastal Berry North & South, Monterey Mushrooms Watsonville & Morgan Hill, Ariel Mushrooms, Airdrome Orchards, Hibino Farms and General Vineyard Services. Eight more renegotiations are in progress.

In 2005, dozens of key UFW union contract successes include the largest strawberry, rose, winery, tree fruit and mushroom firms in California and the nation (at Coastal Berry Co., Jackson & Perkins, Gallo of Sonoma and Chateau Ste. Michelle, Excelsior Packing Co. and Pictsweet and Quincy Farms, respectively). These gains have come despite fierce grower resistance to farm worker organizing. A state court lawsuit filed by the union exposed how the strawberry industry illegally financed anti-UFW “worker committees” in an attempt to stymie union organizing during the mid- and late 1990s. Farm worker striker Rene Lopez, 19, was shot to death Sept. 21, 1983, just after voting in a state-conducted union election at Sikkema Dairy near Fresno.

In 2006 the UFW  continued a campaign in the San Joaquin Valley where thousands of grape pickers and other farm workers flocked to our Delano union hall for weekly organizing meetings. Volunteers joined Camp Justice, staying in tents right outside the hall to be in the fields by dawn to sign up even more.

This campaign was part of a major UFW organizing campaign that began in 2004 among Central Valley table grape workers by summer 2005 produced industry-wide pay hikes and a near win in one of the largest private-sector union elections in the nation during 2005, at Giumarra vineyards.

New laws and regulations aiding farm workers the UFW won since 1999 range from seat belts in farm labor vehicles and fresh protections for workers cheated by farm labor contractors to an historic binding mediation law and new pesticide protections. The UFW also convinced Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2005 to issue an emergency regulation preventing further heat deaths of farm workers and all outdoor employees which was made permanent in 2006 thanks to UFW pressure. In 2006 the UFW won legislation guaranteeing unemployment benefits for seasonal workers in Washington state.