For Release:
Jan. 28, 2002
12 noon Monday January 28, 2002, in Salinas
Retired farm workers to get more than $41,000 in pension checks; UFW appeals to workers who may not know they qualify
One of United Farm Workers founder Cesar Chavez’s accomplishments was creation in the 1970s of America’s first–and only–functioning pension plan for field laborers. Nearly nine years after Chavez’s death, UFW National Vice President Efrén Barajas will hand two pension checks totaling more than $41,000 to retired vegetable workers Leonardo Briseño and María Carmen Gonzalez during a ceremony Friday in Salinas.
Briseño, 70, and Gonzalez, 77, didn’t know they were eligible for pension benefits from the union’s Juan de la Cruz Farm Workers Pension Fund. In addition to the lump sum payments ($26,799 to Briseño before taxes and $14,474 to Gonzalez before taxes), Briseño will receive $367 each month and Gonzalez will get $103 per month from the joint union-management pension plan for the rest of their lives. Both retirees live in Salinas.
The UFW and the pension fund also hope to use the event in spreading the word to other retired farm workers who, like Briseño and Gonzalez, aren’t aware they qualified for pension benefits when they worked under a union contract. Briseño labored with a UFW agreement under which Admiral Packing Co. contributed to the pension plan between 1976 and 1984. Gonzalez worked with a union contract under which InterHarvest (later Sun Harvest) paid into the pension fund from 1973 to 1980.
The pension plan–funded by contributions from growers for every hour worked by a union member under UFW contract–issued its first benefit checks in 1979, and since 1989 has provided numerous cost-of-living increases and other adjustments and bonuses. The pension plan was named for Juan de la Cruz, a 60-year old grape striker shot to death on a Kern County picketline in 1973. Chavez died on April 23, 1993.
Who: UFW National Vice President Efrén Barajas, pension plan Administrator Douglas L. Blaylock, retired union members Leonardo Briseño and María Carmen Gonzalez, and members of their families.
What: Presenting two retired Salinas farm workers checks totaling more than $41,000 from the union pension plan begun by Cesar Chavez.
When: 12 noon, Monday, Jan. 28, 2002.
Where: La Campesina (Farm Worker) radio station, 229 Pajaro St., Suite 302 (cross street Alisal St.), Salinas.
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Retired farm workers who believe they may qualify for the Juan De La Cruz Pension Plan
can inquire online at: http://www.ufw.org/jdlc.htm or call: (800) 321-6607 or (888) 735-5352.