UFW signs pact with Mexican state for guest workers on U.S. farms
By Susan Ferriss - sferriss@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
6:11 am PDT Friday, April 18, 2008
The United Farm Workers union has signed an agreement with a Mexican
state to help recruit guest workers to labor on U.S. farms legally =96
and under union contract.
"If this is something that's going to be utilized more in the future,
then we've got to get in on it," UFW President Arturo Rodriguez said
of the H-2A guest worker program. "We're looking for enlightened
employers who are willing to sit down and do this with us."
The agreement was signed in early April in the western state of
Michoacan, which has a long history of migration to California and is
governed by the leftist Party of the Democratic Revolution.
The agreement is a significant example of the UFW's acceptance that
foreign laborers are an inevitable part of U.S. agriculture. The union
was founded in the 1960s as an ardent foe of the old bracero farm
guest worker program with Mexico.
In 1986, however, the UFW helped farmworkers obtain legal status
during an amnesty. Over the last decade, the UFW has also joined farm
groups to lobby Congress to pass a bill allowing farm laborers to
receive conditional legal status and then green cards if they continue
to work in agriculture for three to five more years.
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.
Growers also say they're worried that federal agents will crack down
on illegal immigrants in the near future and leave them without
workers.
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 =96 the nation's biggest food producer =96 because undo***ented
workers are so plentiful. Employers complain the program doesn't admit
workers fast enough to meet harvest needs.
The union's goal, Rodriguez said, 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.
Rodriguez 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 =96 or FLOC =96 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 Velas-quez =96 who has talked with the UFW about
transnational contracts =96 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.
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