How would the UFW’s farm worker contract legislation impact California agriculture?

Agribusiness claims growers–particularly small farmers–would go out of business if United Farm Workers-sponsored legislation is enacted allowing farm workers to use mediation to resolve contract disputes when employers drag out negotiations. Here are the facts:

     –Among concessions to Gov. Gray Davis in the compromise bill passed by the Legislature on Aug. 31 (AB 2596, by Assembly Speaker Herb Wesson, D-Los Angeles) is a cap of 75 on the number of cases that could be brought through the mediation and review process in the five years before the law would sunset. According to the Western Growers Association and the Farm Bureau, there are roughly 86,000 farms in California. So the UFW bill would affect less than 1/1000 of one percent of the farms in California.

     –There are still some small farmers in California–and growers with 25 workers or less would be exempted from the UFW bill. But California‘s nearly $30 billion agricultural industry has always been dominated by large corporations or big family-run operations employing hundreds–sometimes thousands–of farm workers. It’s the big growers that the UFW usually organizes.

     –Farm worker pay has been very depressed for years. The U.S. Department of Labor says 75% of California farm workers earn less than $10,000 per year. Most migrant and seasonal farm workers earn the minimum wage at best; minimum wage and hour violations occur all too frequently. And benefits are nearly nonexistent; U.S. government figures reveal 90% of California farm workers have no health coverage.

So even if some farm workers were to win modest pay raises from their first union contracts as a result of the UFW-sponsored legislation there would be little, if any, impact on the prices consumers pay for fruits and vegetables at the supermarket.

     –Every time farm workers have won even modest gains, growers have said they would go out of business. When Congress ended the bracero program in 1964, growers said they would go out of business. When farm workers won unemployment insurance in 1975, growers said they would go out of business. When farm workers won workers’ compensation and abolition of the infamous short-handled hoe, growers said they would go out of business.

Today, agribusiness is a nearly $30 billion-a-year business–and it’s getting bigger and richer every year.

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