Remarks by Douglas Blaylock, JDLC Administrator

On behalf of the Board of Trustees of the Juan de la Cruz Farm Workers Pension Plan, it is a pleasure to be with you at this very special event honoring Mr. Francisco Flores Martinez.

I would like to briefly describe the Juan de la Cruz Farm Workers Pension Plan.

The fund was first established by Cesar Chavez in 1975 as the very first pension plan for farm workers in the United States, and it continues to be the only defined benefit plan for farm workers in America today.  Being a defined benefit plan means that once a participant has worked enough years to become “vested,” or eligible, for pension benefits, he or she is guaranteed a pension upon reaching retirement age.  As a “Jointly-Managed, Multi-Employer Trust Fund,” we are regulated by the United States government.

The first monthly pension benefit checks were issued in September 1979, and have continued to expand since then.  We currently have more than 10,000 participants in our plan and more than 2,500 of them, or their surviving spouses, receive monthly pension checks in excess of a total of $370,000 per month.

Several years ago we began searching for farm workers who are eligible for pension benefits, but apparently are not aware of that fact. Mr. Martinez will be the 99th retiree to whom we have paid a retro-active pension of more than $5,000. (We don’t track those for less than $5,000.) To date, we have paid more than $1.3 million in retro-active pensions to this very special group of farm workers.

Many have worked under different names and multiple Social Security numbers. But as long as they can prove to us who they are, we are then able to combine their work histories and give them the maximum benefits to which they are entitled.

We believe there are still more than 700 eligible participants (over 200 of whom we know are over the age of 65) who we have been unable to locate. So it is our hope that other former United Farm Workers members will see the news coverage of this event and contact us to determine if they are eligible for benefits.

Mr. Martinez’s daughter, Ana, for example, saw a news story on Spanish-language television news about another farm worker who received a $42,000 retro-active pension check just a few months ago.  She then suggested to her dad that he inquire to see if he was eligible for a union pension.

After visiting the UFW office in Oxnard, California, Mr. Martinez soon learned that he too was eligible to receive a very large sum of money that will be formally presented to him in just a few minutes.

Events such as this one play an important role in helping us locate other farm workers who may be eligible for benefits, and I encourage any former UFW member who thinks he or she may be eligible for a pension to contact us at our toll-free number 800-321-6607 or visit the UFW web site at www.ufw.org.
 
Thank you, Consular Jiminez, for your assistance and support.