UFW Signs Guest Worker Deal

The agreement is a significant example of the UFW's acceptance that foreign laborers are an inevitable part of U.S. agriculture, and completes the shift from Cesar Chavez's strong anti-immigrant positions.

The UFW was founded in the 1960s as an ardent foe of the old bracero farm guest worker program with Mexico.  Cesar Chavez often criticized the INS for failing to enforce immigration laws because he saw foreign labor as competition for union workers.  Things went so far that his brother, Manuel, manned the notorious "wet line" at the border to intercept entering immigrants and turn them back to Mexico - forcibly if necessary. 

In 1986, however, the UFW helped supported amnesty with the passage of the Immigration Reform and Control Act. The UFW has also joined farm groups to lobby Congress to pass AgJobs to address the immigration and labor crisis in agriculture. Even if they achieve passage of that proposal, the UFW and growers say, legal workers would eventually move out of the fields, and others would be needed, which happened in 1986 after amnesty. The growing pressure for immigration enforcement has created a labor shortage, and more and more growers are utilizing the H-2A program.

The federal H-2A program allows growers to sponsor workers for short periods and requires them to provide housing. It is rarely used in California – the nation's biggest food producer – in part because undocumented workers are so plentiful. Employers complain the program doesn't admit workers fast enough to meet harvest needs. The union's goal, according to the UFW, would be to get involved in the H-2A program to stop abuses that riddle recruitment in Mexico and after workers arrive in the United States. UFW officials said the union plans to seek out employers, especially in California, willing to sign transnational contracts that guarantee rights in Mexico during the recruitment process and in the fields here. The government of Michoacan would help find interested workers, and the UFW would match companies with workers with skills that are needed.

Jack King, government affairs director for the California Farm Bureau, said farmers "face a different world in contracting labor in the future." "I expect there will be a lot of groups forming to bring workers into the United States," King said. "I guess we would welcome the UFW as well."

Growers in the Southeast and Midwest are the chief employers of H-2A workers now. A labor union that operates in those regions, the Farm Labor Organizing Committee – or FLOC – already represents H-2A workers on both sides of the border. In 2004, it signed transnational contracts with growers associations in North Carolina and other states representing 7,000 Mexican H-2A tobacco and produce workers. FLOC leader Baldemar Velasquez – who has talked with the UFW about transnational contracts – said, "The key is whether workers are empowered to defend themselves during all parts of the process," from recruitment to work. "That's what makes this agreement the cleanest operation for any of these guest worker programs in the United States." FLOC's work helping Mexicans become U.S. guest workers has proven dangerous. FLOC's Monterrey, Mexico, office received threats from people they suspect viewed them as competition. A year ago, their Monterrey-based organizer was murdered in the union office, Velasquez said. Mexican police arrested a suspect with a history of human and drug smuggling. Manuel Cunha, president of the Nisei Farmers League in Fresno, predicted that most farmers won't be interested in working with the UFW to bring in workers under union contact. However, he said, as times change, "like any of us, I think it's smart of the UFW to communicate with those countries" that farmworkers are likely to come from.

COUNSEL TO MANAGEMENT:

As we have reported for over a year, unions will ultimately seek to use the H-2A program as a tool to increase organizing and union membership.  The deal signed by the UFW is the first step towards agricultural "hiring halls," where union-recruited workers are dispatched based upon union success.  The UFW and other farmworker advocates have aggressively pursued class action litigation against employers using the H-2A program, including allegations of wage and hour and other workplace violations, and will likely offer growers the promise of security against litigation in exchange for a union workforce.  Employers who wish to remain union free must be sure to have alternative and compliant recruiting alternatives so that they are not reliant upon unions to provide their workforce.  Any employer using the H-2A program must be meticulous about compliance and recordkeeping as protection against shakedown litigation and pressures that unions will undoubtedly bring to bear against employers who resist unionization.