[ In the face of lax enforcement by Biden’s Labor Department,
labor organizations have stepped up to protect farmworkers.]
[[link removed]]

FEDERAL INVESTIGATIONS INTO LABOR LAW VIOLATIONS BY FARM EMPLOYERS
FALL TO RECORD-LOW  
[[link removed]]


 

James Anderson
January 8, 2024
Barn Raiser
[[link removed]]


*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

_ In the face of lax enforcement by Biden’s Labor Department, labor
organizations have stepped up to protect farmworkers. _

Members of WeCount, an organization of outdoor workers demanding
workplace protections against extreme heat, chant before a news
conference, Tuesday, July 18, 2023, at the Stephen P. Clark Government
Center in Miami., (Wilfredo Lee, AP Photo)

 

Sixty years after Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta founded the National
Farm Workers Association, agricultural workers—especially
migrants—continue to be subjected to widespread abuses, including
wage theft and dangerous working conditions, due to lax enforcement of
labor regulations, concerted efforts by employers to skirt the rules
that are in place and a political-economic system that favors
employers. Despite these challenges, labor organizations have helped
farmworkers stand up for themselves and together with other workers,
with some success.

Although migrants working temporary and seasonal jobs on farms are
legally protected by the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour
Division (WHD) under the H-2A visa program
[[link removed]], legal
protection does not necessarily translate into workplace protections,
especially absent a union presence.

“Farmworkers are obviously tremendously vulnerable to all manners of
exploitation,” says Elizabeth Strater, director of strategic
campaigns with the United Farm Workers [[link removed]] (UFW).
“They’re working in geographic isolation. They’re more likely to
be migrants. They’re more likely to be undocumented.” She adds
that farmworkers are often housed on the private property of an
employer, and that isolation severely limits their ability to reach
out to advocates or file complaints themselves.

An August 2023 report
[[link removed]] by
the Economic Policy Institute highlights the economic exploitation
[[link removed]] endured
by agricultural employees and the lack of federal investigations into
pervasive violations. Agricultural investigations by the WHD have
declined by more than 60% since 2000, and they have continued to
plummet during the Biden administration, falling even further behind
the record-low levels during the Trump administration.

The EPI report emphasizes that “severe understaffing” at WHD
allows farm employers to avoid investigations despite rampant
violations, a point confirmed by two WHD spokespersons who asked to
remain anonymous. With only 810 investigators on staff at the time of
the EPI study, and WHD responsible for enforcing labor standards
across the 11 million establishments and 165 million workers in the
U.S., the agency investigates less than 1% of farm employers each
year.

When the WHD does investigate, investigators find wage and hour
violations 70% of the time. While large agribusinesses with fleets of
accountants and lawyers can subvert the fragile system of protections
in place, small farm employers also account for widespread abuses,
some of which may be attributed to a lack of knowledge of how to
comply with competing laws and requirements. 

According to the EPI report, violations of the H-2A visa program
account for nearly three-quarters of all back wages owed to
agricultural workers and civil money penalties (CMPs) assessed to farm
employers under Biden’s administration. The CMPs are additional
fines assessed to employers by the WHD to deter wage and hour law
violations.

One significant culprit contributing to H-2A violations and the abuse
of agricultural workers is the farm labor contractor (FLC). FLCs,
according to the EPI report, are “nonfarm employers that act as
staffing firms for farm employers,” and these contractors “account
for the highest share of wage and hour violations in agriculture and
roughly half of all violations in the two biggest farm states,
California and Florida.”

According to a WHD spokesperson, the number of FLCs participating in
the H-2A program has increased substantially in recent years, and they
can influence the types of violations the Department of Labor uncovers
and the amount of time it takes to conclude cases. The EPI report
underscored the need to focus enforcement on employers most likely to
run afoul of hour and wage laws—namely, those who hire via the H-2A
program, as well as the FLCs.

The UFW’s Strater explains that recruiters often find workers from
indigenous communities in Mexico and Central America. “Once the
workers are inside the country, the employer—which is often [a
FLC]—has almost total control over these workers’ lives,
[including] their housing, their access to food and transportation,
their access to medical care, even their access to drinking water,”
she says.

“The only way [FLCs] can survive is by cheating the people,” says
Baldemar Velasquez, president and founder of the Farm Labor
Organizing Committee [[link removed]] (FLOC), a labor union
affiliated with the AFL-CIO that represents farmworkers in the Midwest
and North Carolina.
 

Baldemar Velasquez co-founded and is president of the Farm Labor
Organizing Committee, AFL-CIO.  (North Carolina State AFL-CIO)
“Those are your violators… [E]ven if you nail them—and we’ve
sued several of them—they’re usually networks of families, so the
business just changes names and [is] given over to another family
member,” Velasquez says. “They’re very elusive. They don’t
have any fixed assets that you can hang on to. This is a huge
enforcement issue. And the only way you’re going to solve that
problem is not allow independent farm labor contracts to recruit
foreign workers.”

Velasquez says that farmers who own and cultivate the land should be
the only employers who can bring in guest workers. At present,
FLC-hired workers cannot raise concerns with the owner of the land.

Shortly after the EPI published its report, the Department of Labor
(DOL) proposed new rules
[[link removed]] that
could improve protections for agricultural workers, who have long been
excluded from protections afforded other workers under the National
Labor Relations Act. The proposed changes are intended to help prevent
employers with a history of workplace violations from receiving new
temporary workers and protect workers from employers who misclassify
H-2A employees as non-agricultural employees. 

DOL also proposed a rule that would prohibit employers from
retaliating against workers who file labor-related complaints or
testify in labor proceedings. It also would protect efforts to form,
join or aid a labor organization and afford workers the right to
picket or participate in a secondary boycott.

If the proposal becomes law, employers would be required to allow H-2A
workers to invite or accept guests in worker housing and permit labor
organizations some access to that housing too. That rule change
proposal could nullify a June 2021 decision
[[link removed]] by
the brazenly partisan Supreme Court that overturned a California
law on the books for nearly half a century permitting union
organizers to speak with farm employees on private land outside of
working hours.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) standards
also apply to agricultural labor
[[link removed]]. OSHA allows states
[[link removed]] to administer their own workplace
health and safety plans. Although those state plans are supposed to
meet federal standards, they do not always receive plaudits from labor
advocates. The Service Employees International Union recently asked
OSHA to revoke its approval
[[link removed]] of
South Carolina’s plan, for example, arguing the state program fails
to adequately protect workers.

Since complaints from workers or advocates are often what trigger
investigations by OSHA and to some extent by the WHD and other federal
and state agencies, the vulnerable status of many farmworkers can
result in fewer complaints, fewer investigations and ongoing,
unchecked violations. Douglas Parker
[[link removed]], the assistant
secretary of Labor for Occupational Safety and Health, acknowledged
[[link removed]] that,
despite higher fatality rates, the complaint rate for agricultural
workers is appreciably lower than it is in other industries. 

While OSHA has recommendations
[[link removed]] for preventing
heat-related health hazards on the job, Parker and others recognize
those are not sufficient to protect people employed in the
agricultural sector. The agency is now working on establishing a rule
regarding extreme heat.

But as Strater points out, this involves issuing an advanced public
notice of rulemaking to let people know about the intent to change
labor law and then allotting time for input from a plethora of
businesses—a process she said takes nine years on average to reach
completion.

Although his union has not been able to negotiate collective
bargaining agreements with the staffing firms, FLOC’s Velasquez can
point to some success from organizing, which he sees as an effective
way of negotiating agreements to protect farmworkers in the H-2A
program.

“The master contract we have in North Carolina covers 675 farms,
from the mountains to the coast,” he says, “and last year, we
processed over 1600 complaints from workers because they can complain
without fear of retaliation; they’re protected from that. We’ve
cleaned up the abuses on those farms.”

His union has also negotiated portability for workers. If a hurricane
destroys the crops on one farm, those farmworkers aren’t left
without a job because they can transfer to another farm that needs
workers.  

Strater points out that employer outsourcing, like what’s done
through FLCs, harms working people beyond the agricultural sphere.
“That’s something farmworkers have in common with a lot of
low-wage workers,” she says. “When you have the subcontractors,
it’s a race to the bottom.”

This commonplace “fractured employment model,” says Strater, is
another way that large employers impede organizing. Yet, other
organizers see this divide-and-conquer strategy as a potential source
of cross-sector solidarity.

Last September, UFW president Teresa Romero and other union members
showed up at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport to support cabin
cleaners, baggage handlers and other service workers. Echoing
conditions and concerns that have catalyzed farmworker organizing, an
American Airlines flight attendant and member of the Association of
Professional Flight Attendants said
[[link removed]] airport
workers have had to endure excessive heat without clean water access
on the job and many are not paid a living wage.
 

Teresa Romero, center, speaking with Arizona farm workers and Phoenix
Sky Harbor International Airport service workers on September 19,
2023.  (United Farm Workers)
“If union farm employers can figure out how to keep workers safe
from heat while working outdoors in rugged, remote locations, there is
absolutely no reason corporations making billions can’t keep their
workers safe at the airport,” Romero said prior to the rally
[[link removed]].

Strater says UFW organizers correspond regularly with climate justice
advocates and they collaborate to address dangerous conditions driven
by heat waves as the climate continues to warm.

The UFW also collaborates with organizations
[[link removed]] focused
on issues related to immigration and important to immigrant
populations.

“I would say we spend at least as much time in conversation with
immigrant justice groups as we do with labor justice groups,” she
says, stressing that immigration status issues cannot be separated
from farmworker labor issues.

Despite the struggles faced by agricultural workers due to inadequate
legal protections and the woefully insufficient investigations cited
in the EPI report, Velasquez and Strater see cause for some
optimism.  

Velasquez highlights the effectiveness of a methodical, grassroots
campaign geared toward establishing a legally-binding framework that
allows workers to hold an employer’s “feet to the fire.” FLOC
organizers try to bring together a “cadre of people,” he says,
helping them build protections around the conditions they face. The
union focuses on immigrant populations living in rural areas with
families working in agriculture that provide a permanent population
base year-round, which is not always the case with transient migrant
workers. 

“The concept of community organizing, what we call a ‘community
union,’ is very effective,” he says, adding that FLOC has helped
individuals in immigrant communities establish agreements with local
authorities so that those found without documentation do not get
deported or reported to federal authorities.

Velasquez says FLOC provides support to unions representing workers in
processing facilities and other areas outside FLOC’s jurisdiction,
and his union has received assistance from them. FLOC has also helped
the Teamsters and the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) with
organizing, he says.  

Currently, the UFCW represents agricultural workers in California
[[link removed]] and in New York in conjunction with
RWDSU
[[link removed]],
the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union
[[link removed]].

“We believe a lot in solidarity, labor solidarity,” Velasquez
says. “And because we’re [a] rural organization, we’ve been able
to help other unions organize workers [outside] our jurisdiction
because they’re Spanish speaking—they’re immigrants, they’re
migrants.”

Beyond the work of the UFW and FLOC, Strater praises a “policy
powerhouse” union for agricultural employees based in
Oregon—_Pineros Y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste _(PCUN
[[link removed]]). PCUN, which was founded by farmworkers in 1985,
works to empower farmworkers and working Latinx families. One of the
union’s major achievements came in 1998 when it negotiated
Oregon’s first farmworker collective bargaining agreement
[[link removed]].

Says Strater: “They really punch above their weight.”

_[JAMES ANDERSON is from Illinois but now resides in Riverside,
California. He has taught college courses as an adjunct professor and
his work has appeared in a number of outlets. He's a member of the IWW
Freelance Journalists Union. You can read more of his work
at waywards.substack.com [[link removed]].]_

_Your independent source for rural and small town news._

_Barn Raiser [[link removed]] connects local and
national perspectives through a network of writers and contributors
who live in and care about rural and small town communities. By giving
voice to shared concerns, and by reporting on local organizing
strategies, Barn Raiser [[link removed]] will leaven
the commons with local connections._

_Reposted with permission under a BY-NC-ND 3.0 US Creative Commons
license._
 

* Farm Workers
[[link removed]]
* Farms
[[link removed]]
* rural workers
[[link removed]]
* farm labor
[[link removed]]
* Labor Department
[[link removed]]
* U.S. Labor Department
[[link removed]]
* Rural organizing
[[link removed]]
* farm organizing
[[link removed]]
* Labor Organizing
[[link removed]]
* AFL-CIO
[[link removed]]
* UFW
[[link removed]]
* United Farm Workers
[[link removed]]
* FLOC
[[link removed]]
* Farm Labor Organizing Committee
[[link removed]]
* community organizing
[[link removed]]
* climate justice
[[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

 

 

 

INTERPRET THE WORLD AND CHANGE IT

 

 

Submit via web
[[link removed]]

Submit via email
Frequently asked questions
[[link removed]]

Manage subscription
[[link removed]]

Visit xxxxxx.org
[[link removed]]

Twitter [[link removed]]

Facebook [[link removed]]

 




[link removed]

To unsubscribe, click the following link:
[link removed]