Friend,
C�sar Ch�vez, who died 28 years ago this week, devoted his life to farm laborers' rights. He led strikes, spearheaded marches and inspired a boycott effective enough to force agribusiness to recognize farmworkers' rights.
But almost three decades after his death, the work that Ch�vez championed is far from finished. Across the country, farmworkers are often prevented from exercising their rights to organize, negotiate and demand change.
Here's just one example: In 2017 we sued the state of North Carolina on behalf of the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC), a labor union representing migrant farmworkers. FLOC v. Stein sought to block the implementation of a new state law that would prevent farmworker unions from deducting union dues from their members' paychecks, among other discriminatory measures. We filed the lawsuit with the ACLU Foundation and the ACLU of North Carolina, the North Carolina Justice Center and the Law Office of Robert J. Willis.
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North Carolina is a "right-to-work" state where union membership is voluntary. In essence, the state was banning the automatic payment of union dues from the paychecks of voluntary union members. This ban is more than a nuisance; it could financially undermine FLOC, because so many of its members are guest workers with limited access to U.S. bank accounts, credit cards and other means for regularly paying dues. Without these paycheck deductions, membership in FLOC would become difficult or impossible for thousands of farmworkers.
The law's primary sponsor was state Sen. Brent Jackson, who owns Jackson Farming Company and was once sued for wage theft by Latino farmworkers who were helped by FLOC. The only legislator to speak in favor of the anti-worker provisions in the bill on the House floor, state Rep. Jimmy Dixon, was also a farm owner.
In March, a district court struck down one of the bill's onerous restrictions on the union's ability to negotiate settlements - but preserved the prohibition on deducting union dues from paychecks.
Litigation for farmworkers' rights is often an uphill battle in the U.S., in large part because the landmark National Labor Relations Act of 1935 specifically excluded farmworkers and domestic workers - a racially discriminatory ploy to attract the support of segregationist legislators. C�sar Ch�vez fought that uphill battle with great success. Today, we are honoring his legacy by continuing the battle.
S� se puede,
Your friends at the Southern Poverty Law Center
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