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Farmworker Movement in the 21st Century

The Farmworkers Movement has continued into the 21st century, and has included an emphasis on environmental issues. While there is intersection between both the labor rights and environmental justice efforts within the larger farmworker movement, there have been splits and differences between the two areas. Some critics of the environmental groups which work on similar issues to farmworkers organizations have claimed that they focus on “natural wildlife” rather than on the farmworkers themselves who are exposed the chemicals which are harming the environment.

Labor

Organizing efforts within the farmworker community have continued to focus on labor rights and other labor related issues. Organizations such as the United Farm Workers have a history of working to protect the rights of farmworkers; some of the campaigns and causes these organizations work on include heat exposure, wage rights, and overtime inclusion.

Farmworker organizations have been able to achieve legislative success in reaching their goals for greater rights for farmworkers. In 2005, following the deaths of four California farm workers due to extreme summer heat, the United Farm Workers was instrumental in getting former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to propose emergency heat stress regulations to prevent possible additional heat-related deaths of outdoor employees and agricultural workers. The proposed regulations required water and shade to be present and available for laborers working outside who felt negatively affected by the heat.

Other legislative impacts and victories for farmworkers include the signing of an overtime law by California governor Jerry Brown in 2016 which extended overtime pay to farm workers who worked past 8 hours in a day or 40 hours in a week. The new rules will be phased-in over the course of four years, beginning in 2019. There has long been a precedent for the exclusion of agricultural workers from other labor right provisions, including the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, which had previously created minimum wage and overtime standards for American workers but had excluded all agricultural workers. In California in 1976, the state Industrial Welfare Commission had extended overtime pay to farmworkers but only after 10 hours on a job in a single day or past 60 hours in a week.

Environmental Justice

Since becoming popular in the 1980s, environmental justice issues have increasingly become important in the farmworker movement. Issues typically include the use of and exposure to pesticides, food sustainability, and climate change.

Pesticides

The use of pesticides for crop protection in the agriculture industry became increasingly widespread in the 20th century, and growers (the employers of farmworkers) have heavily relied on their use post-World War Two. Over 1 billion pounds of pesticides are used in the United States each year. Exposure to pesticides has been linked to negative health effects, and many farmworkers, both individuals and groups, have spoken out against their use in recent decades. As growers consistently believed that pesticides were the best method to control pests, many growers’ associations worked against regulation on the use of pesticides in the 1970s. Due to the rise of globalization, employers have been pressured to lobby for less regulations against pesticides in recent years to cope with increased competition, while farmworkers have been pressured to stay silent on workplace conditions and to remain unorganized.

Several groups of farmworkers and organizations which represent farmworkers across the United States have consistently spoken out against the pesticides due to their claims of negative effects on the workers who are exposed to the chemicals. Such groups include Farmworker Justice, El Comité de Apoyo a Los Trabajadores Agrícolas (CATA), and the Farmworker Advocacy Network. While other strictly environmental justice groups have achieved success in reaching their goals by lobbying for regulations and public protests, farmworkers have struggled to advance via similar methods on the issue of workplace pesticide exposure. Groups which focus on pesticides today have opted to use a variety of methods in trying to help those affected by the use of harmful chemicals. Some organizations such as CATA have used pesticide safety training, including tips on clothing to wear. Other groups, such as Farmworker Justice, have called for increased protections by the Environmental Protection Agency and the requirement of reporting of pesticide use on a national level, in addition to calling for extensive research on the long-term effects of pesticide use and exposure on agricultural workers.

The federal government has also been involved in regulating the use of and monitoring the effects of pesticides. Since its creation in 1970, The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has been involved in working to regulate the use of pesticides and any potential harmful effects. The EPA’s Agriculture Worker Protection Standard (WPS) attempts to help workers exposed to pesticides and aims to reduce the risk involved with exposure to pesticides. The WPS gives protections to over 2 million agricultural workers and pesticide handlers; its services include preventing workers from being in areas under a restricted-entry interval (REI), with a few exceptions. On November 2, 2015 the EPA revised the WPS in order to enact stronger protections for the same workers and handlers it had covered previously. The majority of the revised protections of the WPS took effect on January 2, 2017, however three requirements will take effect on January 2, 2018; these requirements are aimed at increasing pesticide safety training and revised information posters on pesticide safety, in addition to compelling handlers to suspend applications if anyone (workers) are in “application exclusion zone.”

Recently, The Dow Chemical Company, a U.S.-based multinational chemical company, has been accused of attempting to persuade the Trump administration to ignore the findings of federal scientists that found that the chemicals chlorpyrifos, diazinon, and malathion are harmful to nearly 1,800 “critically threatened or endangered species.” The chemicals are heavily used and sold by the Dow Company, and the company has hired its own scientists to create a rebuttal to the findings of the governmental studies.

Food Justice

[Already on Farmworker page on Wikipedia]: “There are other specific groups that are influential in their organization attempts. For example, the Food Chain Workers Alliance is a coalition of agricultural production organizations founded in 2009 with the goal of creating a sustainable food system and advocating workers' rights while keeping the cost of food down. Campaigns include Dignity at Darden, Making Change at Walmart, and the Campaign for Fair Food. The program also fights for raising the tipped minimum wage, and the Fair Food Agreement with the Coalition of Imomokalee Workers.[52]”

“Another such group is the ‘’’Agricultural Justice Project’’’ (AJP). This project seeks to promote food justice by creating a food label that signifies the certification of fair treatment of the workers who helped produce the food as well as fair contracts and pricing for farmers, and sustainable and fair trade of the food at every step of production. Four nonprofit organizations are partners in the AJP: The Rural Advancement Foundation International (RAFI-USA), The Farmworker Support Committee (CATA), Florida Organic Growers (FOG), and the Northeastern Organic Farming Association (NOFA). Each group has a common goal of improving the quality of life for sustainable farmers.”

Legislation

In 2003, an immigration reform bill titled the Agricultural Jobs, Opportunity, Benefits and Security Act of 2003 (AgJOBS) was introduced in Congress and received bipartisan support from over 500 labor, business, immigrants rights, and other groups. The bill would allow undocumented farm workers in the US to have the opportunity to legally earn the right to stay in the country permanently by continuing to work in the agriculture industry. In April of 2005 AgJobs became the first major bill aimed at immigration reform in 20 years to be supported by a majority of senators, however it was not a supermajority and did not receive enough votes to avoid a filibuster. The bill has not been passed as of April 2017.

Groups such as Farmworker Justice have continued to support the AgJobs bill, and while it was not a stand-alone bill in the 112th Congress, it was included with Senator Bob Menendez’s (NJ) Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2011.

Other recent legislation relating to farmworkers was introduced in 2011 by Representative Howard Berman (CA); the bill was titled the Agricultural Labor Market Reform Act, H.R. 3017. This bill aimed to remove incentives for growers (agricultural employers) to hire guest workers instead of US workers. This bill did gather the support of some farmworker organizations, including Farmworker Justice.

There have also been legislative attempts at enacting environmental change by farmworker groups. In 2017, a coalition including the United Farm Workers (UFW) has challenged the Environmental Protection Agency’s reversal of a previous law to ban the pesticide chlorpyrifos; according to studies conducted by the EPA, exposure to chlorpyrfios, even at very low levels, can damage children’s brain development and cause other brain-harming effects. The chemical was banned in 2000 for most household settings but is still used on some crops. Many environmental groups have since come out to condemn the choice of the EPA to reject the pesticide ban. The coalition has called for Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Scott Pruitt to reinstate the planned ban.

Social Media, Outreach, and the Internet

The use of social media and coalition building has become increasingly important for organizations within the farmworkers movement in the 21st century. As the United Farm Workers organization notes on their website, the group “increasingly makes use of the Internet to solicit mass grass-roots participation…” On the importance of alliances and coalition building, UFW writes, “Hundreds of thousands of supporters are involved through UFW appeals forwarded by allied and sympathetic organizations.”

Many farmworker organizations are now able to receive individual donations via their organization websites. Also, a significant amount of groups with websites now have social media platforms where the organizations can connect with local community members or others interested in their work. However, even with the advent of the use of the internet union membership in some organizations, such as the United Farm Workers, is comparatively much lower compared to participation at its height in the 1970s. While UFW union membership was cited at close to 50,000 at its height in the late 1970s, in 2014 it claimed 8,724 members.