California Gov. Gavin Newsom just signed into law Assembly Bill 2183, making it easier for the state’s farmworkers to vote in union elections. The law allows them to vote by mail instead of at election sites which are often on growers’ property.
A smaller union of farmworkers in Washington state, Familias Unidas por la Justicia, or Families United for Justice, has been organizing for the past nine years. Five hundred workers, all Mexican indigenous immigrants, borrowed successful strategies from the United Farmworkers union in California and carried out a strike and a 3.5-year boycott against the agribusiness company Driscoll’s. The strike and boycott ended in a 2016 vote by workers to unionize, making it the first newly formed farmworkers union in 30 years.
Between The Lines’ Melinda Tuhus spoke with Edgar Franx, political director of Familias Unidas union, who talks about how the Washington state law known as the Little Norris-LaGuardia Act permitted non-union workers to organize and eventually gain recognition. He also discusses current health and safety issues for farmworkers with the steep rise of dangerous temperatures in the field caused by climate change.
[Web editor’s note: The audio version of this interview was shortened to fit the time constraints for radio broadcast.]
EDGAR FRANX: In Washington state there’s a rule, a law, called the Little Norris LaGuardia Act, which in essence grants the right of farmworkers to take union-concerted activity without having to be formally recognized, and this is because of farmworkers not being recognized under the National Labor Relations Act. They don’t have a lot of the rights that other workers in other sectors have. Agricultural workers aren’t covered under some of the same protections and labor laws.
But we had the Norris LaGuardia Act, which really let the workers here organize themselves and function as a union even though they weren’t technically recognized because they didn’t have a contract. But that didn’t stop the organizing from the farmworkers. They held elections, they voted their E board, executive board, and their president and vice president, and eventually were able to do a series of actions and nationwide campaigns to bring attention to what was happening to farmworkers in Washington state. Yeah. It took 3.5 years, but we were able to get the employer to sit down and negotiate a contract. At that time that was a pretty big deal for us.
MELINDA TUHUS: Edgar Franx, I know extreme heat has become an even bigger problem for people who work outside, including farmworkers, due to the climate crisis. What have your workers noticed?
EDGAR FRANX: Yeah, for the last five or six years there’s been a noticeable change in the climate here. Obviously with workers that are out in agriculture that have to work 10-12 hours a day in the heat or in extreme cold, there is still is inadequate rules or protections in place in the state here because of how fast the climate has been changing, and I think that’s come to a head these last couple of years because of how temperatures have risen so drastically. Now it’s not uncommon to have 100-degree days for a sustained period of time. Maybe it was more normal in the central and eastern part of the state. On the western part of the state, it was more moderate temperatures; now it’s common. That, and the increased presence of wildfires in places that have never historically had wildfires, like the Olympic Peninsula and the rainforest we have here caught fire for the first time in recorded history a couple years ago. So, not only with the heat, but we’re dealing with the effect of the wildfires and the smoke, that presents a health danger to agricultural workers and everybody that lives here in the state.
MELINDA TUHUS: Yeah, I remember visiting the rainforest; it’s hard to imagine it catching fire. So what, if anything, has the union been able to do to protect workers?
EDGAR FRANX: Well, we’ve been trying to pressure the governor to declare a climate emergency, to move resources into fighting the reality that we’re all witnessing right before our eyes, that Washington needs to do its part to take leadership and stop the emissions and create programs and all these other things that are needed for the workers and communities that are going to be affected by climate change. And workers and industries that are going to be affected by climate change. And again, agricultural workers directly impacted by climate and their environment, we want the governor first to declare that emergency and another one is to adopt adequate rules that can protect workers out in the fields, you know, handing out personal protective equipment or making sure workers are protected, enforcing guidelines. There was an emergency rule passed last year to implement these protocols to protect farmworkers, such as taking a preventive 10-minute break if you feel heat sickness.
However, those protocols didn’t kick in until the temperature reached 100 degrees, and for us that was very unacceptable and very insulting. And this year there were emergency rules and protocols that were in place again, but the trigger point were still at 90 degrees, which we still think is very hot. So we’ve been recommending and organizing to make sure that workers’ needs and voices are being listened to, so we’re recommending that a lot of the rules and protocols get implemented when it’s at 75 degrees; once it reaches 80 degrees that workers should be given hazard pay along with the protocols, and once it reaches 90 degrees that everybody should just be allowed to go home and paid for those hours that they missed, if they missed any hours.
For more information, visit Familias Unidas por la Justicia farmworkers union at familiasunidasjusticia.com and on Facebook at Facebook.com/FamiliasUnidas. Visit the National Farmworkers Ministry at nfwm.org/farm-workers/farmworker-partners/familias-unidas-por-la-justicia/.
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