Ceremony at 10 am, Tuesday, July 10 in San Juan
Retired Texas farm worker will get $13,000 pension check from United Farm Workers fund; others may not know about union benefits
Among the many achievements of United Farm Workers founder Cesar Chavez
was creation in the 1970s of the nation’s first–and only–functioning pension plan for farm laborers. More than seven years after Chavez’s death, UFW National Vice President Juanita Valdez-Cox will hand a pension check for $13,038 to retired farm worker Maria Arguijo during a ceremony Tuesday in San Juan.
Arguijo, 76, was not aware she was eligible for pension benefits from the Juan de la Cruz Farm Workers Pension Fund. In addition to the lump sum payment, she will receive $112.49 per month from the joint union-management pension plan for the rest of his life. She resides in Harlingen, Texas.
The UFW also hopes to use the event to spread the word to other retired farm workers in the U.S. and Mexico who, like Arguijo, don’t know they qualified for pensions when they worked under union contract. Arguijo labored under a UFW contract over eight years, between 1977 and 1985, for a unionized California vegetable company.
Since 1989, the pension plan–which is funded by contributions from growers for every hour worked under UFW contract–has provided cost-of-living increases and other adjustments and bonuses. The pension plan was named for Juan de la Cruz, a 60-year old farm worker striker shot to death on a Kern County, Calif. vineyard picketline in 1973. Chavez died on April 23, 1993.
Who: UFW Vice President Juanita Valdex-Cox, retired union worker Maria Arguijo and members
of her family.
What: Presenting Arguijo with a $13,000 check from the union pension plan begun by Cesar Chavez.
When: 10 a.m. Tuesday, July 10, 2001
Where: UFW’s San Juan office located at Cesar Chavez Road & Business 83.
– end –