Oxnard, CA – Today, the United Farm Workers (UFW) announced its endorsement of Joseph R. Biden for President of the United States.
“Throughout his life, President Biden has been an authentic champion for workers and their families, regardless of their race or national origin,” said UFW President Teresa Romero. “The United Farm Workers has seen first hand the positive impact that President Biden has made in the economic standing, labor rights, and daily lives of farm workers across America. That is why we are proud to again endorse Joe Biden for President and Kamala Harris as Vice President of the United States. We look forward to working to ensure that farm workers and their communities become an integral part of the President’s re-election in 2024, and to the greater progress for farm workers that a second Biden-Harris term will bring. ¡Con Biden, si se puede!”
Throughout President Biden’s first term, the Biden-Harris administration has delivered on several key priorities for America’s agricultural workers. These include:
- Ensuring a speedy and efficient rollout campaign for the COVID-19 vaccine that prioritized marginalized communities and frontline essential workers like farm workers.
- Authorizing the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s historic Food and Farm Workers Relief Program – a first of its kind grant program that provided for economic relief payments directly to farm workers.
- Pushing critical reforms via the rulemaking process on the H2A visa program, strengthening protections for farm workers in the H-2A program and helping empower worker voices that will help prevent abuses that undermine wages and standards for all farm workers.
- Increased wages for farm workers by updating the Department of Labor’s methodology for the Adverse Effect Wage Rule (AEWR), reversing former President Trump’s effort to slash wages for farm workers.
- Speaking out in support of critical legislation to strengthen agricultural workers’ unionization rights in the State of California and for equal overtime pay rights in the State of Washington.
- Utilizing prosecutorial discretion to create new deferred action protections for undocumented workers involved in labor disputes.
- Investing in the communities where farm workers live, including by expanding rural health care access, investing in rural broadband, and facilitating long overdue upgrades to critical rural infrastructure such as levees, to prevent future tragedies experienced by farm worker communities like Planada and Pajaro.
- Began the federal rulemaking process to establish nationwide heat safety standards for outdoor workers, offering farm workers and advocates the opportunity to emphasize the critical importance of guaranteeing workers a right to drinking water, adequate shade, and paid rest breaks to prevent worker deaths and injuries during dangerously hot temperatures.
- Fighting to pass just immigration reform legislation that includes a pathway to citizenship for farm workers, and a continued commitment to doing so despite congressional setbacks.
- Intentionally including the viewpoints of farm workers throughout the administration, such as by appointing a diverse group of high-level administration officials who seek to learn from farm workers so that the country may benefit from farm workers’ knowledge and experience, inviting UFW rank-and-file to the White House on special occasions such as Mother’s Day, Easter, Christmas and the Fourth of July, and including farm workers in major conversations about agriculture and in any conversation on immigration reform.
The UFW also notes the historic appointment of Julie Chavez Rodriguez, granddaughter of UFW founder Cesar Chavez and daughter of UFW President Emeritus Arturo Rodriguez. Elevating trusted leaders with strong work ethics like Julie is yet another expression of President Biden’s commitment to and personal relationship with the farm worker movement, its history, and our ongoing struggle for justice.
The UFW will organize, train, and deploy skilled organizers and Spanish-speaking farm worker membership and farm worker activists to critical battleground states including in Arizona, Nevada, Texas, Michigan, and Georgia. Similar UFW actions in 2020 helped President Biden earn record turnout and the support of the critical Latino swing voters who delivered the margin of victory in several key states. Together with President Biden and Vice President Harris, we will ensure that farm worker voices are heard loud and clear in the 2024 election cycle.
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