Agricultural workers in New York just formed the state’s first farmworker union, but a new law guaranteeing overtime protections and organizing rights for the first time has been delayed.
Too often, workers' calls for justice and all of our calls for a fair food system are met with false solutions like this label that try to rebrand the exploitative status quo as ethical. But there is another way.
Farmworkers fought for years to have the legal power to unionize in New York State. Finally, in 2019, the state passed the Farm Laborers Fair Labor Practices Act, which gave agricultural and farm workers the right to collectively bargain.
The artwork, commissioned by my old boss Billy Steinberg, is a reminder that there’s an alternative to today’s brutal agribusiness.
By excluding jobs held by black and brown workers from basic worker protections, the Fair Labor Standards Act, adopted decade ago during the New Deal, injected institutional racism into a federal wage and hour law.
The Farm Workforce Modernization Act is the dream of the industry.
The Supreme Court heard an important case today challenging California's Agricultural Labor Relations Act, which allows union organizers to enter farms to talk to workers. The plaintiffs had a sympathetic Court but may have overreached their case.
Chávez and the UFW exposed a paradox that still affects most farmworkers. No matter how hard they work, most will never achieve the so-called American Dream as they are bound to a system of agricultural production that thrives on labor exploitation.
The decision offers more compensation for those laboring in hazardous conditions during the pandemic.
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