Let me once again thank Representative Howard Berman, who for years has been one of the farm workers' leading advocates in Congress on labor and legalization issues.

Last fall, the nation's agricultural employers and our United Farm Workers negotiated an historic compromise agreement on legislation that undocumented farm workers could use to earn temporary and eventually permanent legal status for themselves and their families.

That compromise won broad bipartisan support among lawmakers from both houses of Congress in December during the lame-duck session. It almost passed except for strident opposition from Texas Republican Sen. Phil Gramm.

Three weeks ago, the growers betrayed the compromise by sponsoring a new bill by Republican Sen. Larry Craig of Idaho. It is a fraud that would bar many farm workers from legalizing their status.

Today, Sen. Edward Kennedy and Representative Berman have introduced separate but identical measures in the Senate and House that are fair and reasonable bills to legalize undocumented farm workers and address grower concerns about the existing H-2A temporary foreign worker program.

Sponsored by the UFW and other farm worker advocacy groups, the Kennedy and Berman bills would:

* For the first time, extend farm workers the sacred rights under federal law to organize and join a union--rights industrial workers have enjoyed since 1935.

* Our legislation would allow undocumented farm workers to qualify for permanent residency after performing 90 days of agricultural work in each of three out of four years. Under the Craig bill, workers would have to complete 150 days a year in each of four years during a six-year period, which would deny legalization to many, if not most, of them.

* Under the Kennedy and Berman bills, growers would continue to pay temporary foreign workers imported under the H-2A program the adverse affect wage rate--"average" wage paid workers in a state, which is often more than $7 an hour. The Craig proposal would instead pay what growers call a "prevailing wage," which is usually no more than the federal or state minimum wage--$5.15 per hour or $6.25 an hour in California, respectively.

* Our legislation would prohibit H-2A imported foreign workers from being used as strikebreakers.

* And our bills would include H-2A workers under the federal Migrant and Seasonal Worker Protection Act, the basic U.S. law protecting domestic farm workers. The Craig bill continues the discriminatory exclusion of H-2A workers from this statute.

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