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Highlights from speeches at UFW’s
17th Biennial Constitutional Convention
Fresno Convention Center
Saturday, August 28, 2004
AFL-CIO President John Sweeney
My partners at the AFL-CIO join me in commending President Arturo Rodriguez for his leadership for our entire movement as a vice president of the AFL-CIO and a member of our Executive Council and in thanking all of the officers, leaders, staff, members and retirees of this great union [the United Farm Workers] for the tremendous job you are doing for farm worker families and for the job you are about to do to help us take back the White House, take back control of the U.S. Congress and take back control of our country. You continue to honor the memory of Cesar Chavez.
During the Democratic convention, John Kerry grew three feet in my eyes and in the eyes of the voters. Working families and labor have never been placed higher on the agenda of a presidential campaign. At the Democratic convention we were treated with more respect and inclusion than at any convention in my memory.
Kerry really carved out his place in our members’ hearts when he declined to cross the police union’s picket line to speak to the U.S. Conference of Mayors. And he really put down a marker for all elected officials at all levels of government when he said, “I don’ cross picket lines. I never have.”
At the Republican convention you’re going to see the most vicious campaign in history dive even deeper into the sewer. Bush has already spent 75 percent of his advertising money on negative ads, and that’s unprecedented for a sitting President. Now the Republican smear machine is moving into high gear. It is shameful, but it will drive us to work harder and harder. And on election night, I am confident we will have the last word on George W. Bush when we all stand in front of our television screens and chant: ‘No mas. No mas. No mas.’
George Bush and Dick Cheney have cost us dearly. While they’ve been in office, four million more Americans lost their health insurance. Our $5.83 trillion dollar surplus was transformed into a $5 trillion dollar long-term deficit. Three million more people have been plunged into poverty. Nearly three million manufacturing workers have lost their jobs. Last Monday, they eliminated overtime pay rights for up to 6 million workers.
One of our big priorities is genuine immigration reform, so workers who come to this country to work and raise their families can have a clear path to full rights and full citizenship. For farm workers, the AgJobs legislation now in Congress is a giant step towards that goal. It is supported by employers as well as workers, and it means immigrant agricultural workers will no longer have to live in fear of their families being deported. It establishes a clear path to full citizenship. And it means agricultural workers will have the same protections and rights on the job as all other workers.
Together we demand that Republicans and Democrats alike support the AgJobs bill.
California state Senate leader John L. Burton
 I have been a supporter of the union for nearly 40 years, beginning with a visit I made to see Cesar Chavez in Delano in the 1960s. I wanted to meet this great man to wish him the best.
The farm workers inspire the politicians. I marched with the farm workers to Sacramento in 1966, and I marched again with the farm workers two years ago to let the governor know the importance of the [2002 state binding mediation law]. I have a photo of myself and my daughter at the march in 1966, and I have one of myself and my grandson at the march to Sacramento in 2002.
I will leave office in December, but I promise to continue to support the farm workers’ struggle until the day I die.
California state Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez
 I have come to give you a short report about the work we have done in Sacramento and talk about a new wave of anti-immigrant sentiment. We believed that by participating in the political process we could overcome that sentiment. But it is being awaken once more.
Last night at the state Capitol we voted to put bills before the governor to sign. One is the driver’s license bill for undocumented workers. The governor personally asked me not to put that bill on his desk to sign. If the governor doesn’t sign it, he will have to answer to the immigrant population in California.
One thing about the history of the agricultural workers led by Cesar Chavez. What we can take with us through each struggle is the fighting spirit of Cesar Chavez.
My office is your home and I am at your disposal at all times. I have always been and will always be there for the farm workers.
U.S. Representative Hilda Solis
 Seven million people in California are without health insurance. One million more are in poverty. Most are children under the age of six. How embarrassing!
Bush and his cronies don’t care about the plight of the working families. Let’s send George W. Bush back to Texas and let’s send John Kerry and John Edwards to Washington, D.C.
John Kerry co-sponsored the AgJobs bill and earned legalization bills. John Kerry and John Edwards have promised that in the first 100 days in office they will propose the earned legalization bill in the U.S. Congress.
The first casualty of the Iraq War was from my district. His name was Francisco Martinez Flores. He was born in Mexico and was two weeks shy of gaining his U.S. citizenship. It was given to him posthumously. I proposed new legislation for those who serve at least one year in the military that they be granted citizenship.
We have to work hard for the next 67 days, Democrats, farm workers in every part of our country to get out the vote for John Kerry. We will not let Bush steal the 2004 election like he did in 2000. Everyone needs to come and fight the good fight.
I am the daughter of an immigrant father who was a farm worker when there were no unions. But later he fought and helped organized the Teamsters Union.
Miguel Contreras, leader of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO
 Los Angeles County has 340 local unions and approximately 800,000 union members to organize the get-out-the-vote for John Kerry and Senator Barbara Boxer. We need help from all the Latino valleys: Coachella, Salinas, San Joaquin, Napa and Sonoma.
It takes money to support the volunteers who work in the campaigns and I am proud to present Arturo Rodriguez with a check for $10,000 for get-out-the-vote. The Los Angeles County Federation of Labor and the United Farm Workers are united in this fight.
Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry
 It is a great honor to be talking with you today. Use your common sense. We are 67 days away from the most important election in our lifetimes. Everything is at stake. Bush is trying to undo the minimum wage, undo the 40-hour workweek, undo safety in the workplace.
I want to ensure the right of people to organize in the workplace without harassment.
We are going to introduce within hours of being sworn into office legislation so everyone has health care automatically from day one. In the first 100 days of taking office, we will make the American workplace work for the American workers again. I support comprehensive immigration reform legislation.
We will fully fund and change the No Child Left Behind education law and fully fund special needs education. In the last year, 1.4 million people have been pushed into poverty and 1.4 million workers have lost their health care.
We have 67 days left to change the direction of our country if we do what we know we can do. That is nothing compared to what it took for the union of Cesar Chavez to organize.
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Sunday, August 29, 2004 AgJobs Presentation
U.S. Representative Howard L. Berman
 No workers in this country are more poorly paid than farm workers, but none work harder. Without a union contract, job security is nonexistent, and the basic understanding that the rest of us have about the terms and conditions of our employment is denied. Housing may be no more than a hillside.
Growers persist in inflating the supply of workers in order to drive down wages, and the reserve army of workers they seek to have at their disposal feeds their callous disregard for the well-being – indeed the very lives – of those workers. We don’t need to look any further than the tragic death of Asuncion Valdivia in Kern County last month for confirmation of that disregard for the worth of an individual human life.
When the largest wine company in the world, Gallo of Sonoma, does not provide any benefits for their workers employed by farm labor contractors that is unfair. Make no mistake, I and other public officials who support the cause of farm workers will stand with you if you do not resolve your contract at the bargaining table.
We needed to take steps to improve the circumstances of farm workers in this country. To accomplish that in the present political context requires a collaborative, bipartisan approach that takes into account the needs and interests of labor and employers. AgJobs would create an earned adjustment program for undocumented farm workers who would be eligible to apply for temporary immigration status based on their past work experience, and who could get a green card when they satisfy the program’s prospective agricultural work requirement. For all of us who deplore the abuse of undocumented farm workers, this legalization component is what makes passage of AgJobs so critically important.
So we have a bill strongly supported by the UFW, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, the national Latino civil rights organizations, and the AFL-CIO on the one hand, and by all the key national – and California – agricultural employer organizations, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on the other hand. It has been cosponsored by a resounding 63 United States senators, and was about to come up for a vote in the Senate in July when the vote was blocked by the Republican leadership at the request of the White House.
Why? Could it be that as the election approaches, a president who claims that some of his best friends are Latino, and invites them to the White House to hear a speech about his pro-immigrant principles, in reality cares more about solidifying his right-wing, anti-immigrant base? Does he think that Latino voters and their friends and supporters can be so easily fooled?
I know that the UFW officers, staff, and members are working tirelessly to rally public opinion in support of AgJobs. Newspapers around the country have editorialized in favor of AgJobs, seeing the bill as a sensible and balanced package that promotes the national interest. The fact that longtime adversaries came together to negotiate and work for passage of this legislation has been a real attention-getter. The opportunity to enact legislation that farmworkers and growers alike have a stake in may not come along again anytime soon.
That is why we must succeed in our effort to pass AgJobs this September when the Congress reconvenes following the long summer recess or, barring that, in the increasingly inevitable lame-duck session following the election. With your help, we will. We must.
But the UFW alone cannot achieve lasting justice for farm workers, because that is our nation’s task as well, and that is why we need AgJobs. It is not right that hundreds of thousands of undocumented farm workers harvest America’s food, and are willing to continue to do so, but are consigned to live in the shadows. We can and must change that with Agjobs.
UFW President Arturo S. Rodriguez
 The only people who aren’t behind the AgJobs bill are in the White House of President Bush and the Republican leadership in the Senate. To get their support, the UFW and other members of the coalition sponsoring AgJobs have moved heaven and earth.
Last March, I went to the White House with a top representative of the American Nursery & Landscape Association. We met with a very senior White House official, urging the President to get behind the AgJobs bill.
Repeated appeals have gone to the White House from leaders of Latino, immigrant rights, religious, labor, business and national agricultural organizations.
President Bush says the right thing. In a speech last month to the convention of the League of United Latin American Citizens in San Antonio, President Bush declared that "America is a nation of open doors, and we want it to remain that way. Immigrants bring great strength,” the President added. “For this administration, el sueno Americano es para todos (the American dream is for everyone) and we all deserve a chance at the American dream,” he said.
Yet at the same time President Bush was saying those nice words, the White House told Senate Republican Leader Bill Frist to stop a vote on the AgJobs bill. AgJobs is the first time President Bush and Republican leaders can do more than just say the right thing. It is time for President Bush and Republican leaders to match their rhetoric with action by supporting the AgJobs bill, which is also co-sponsored by 26 Republican senators.
What is at stake with the AgJobs bill for immigrant farm workers? The question is not whether these workers will remain in the country.
America’s economy–and American agriculture–cannot survive without them. The question is whether they will continue living in fear, suffer exploitation and be denied a voice in a country that relies so heavily on their contributions and sacrifice.
To those who say undocumented farm workers don’t deserve consideration because they are criminals and trespassers, we say you should be consistent:
You should stop buying most fresh fruits and vegetables, and other agricultural products that from the skill and toil of immigrant labor.
Undocumented farm workers are among the hardest-working, tax-paying workers in our land, but they cannot enjoy the American dream that President Bush holds out for Latinos.
Peter Orum, President, American Nursery & Landscape Association
 It might seem a bit peculiar to some of you that I, a farmer and employer, am here to speak at your union convention. Maybe more than a bit peculiar since I am told this is the first time in the 42-year history of the UFW that a grower has addressed the group.
There are important things we do not agree on. But there are many things we can agree on. I am here today because we are fighting together for the future of American agriculture. The AgJobs bill is absolutely essential to that future.
You are in the same boat, you and I. We want to keep these farms and jobs in America! We want our trained, experienced and trusted workers to be able to keep working with us, to live openly in our society.
I came to this country as an immigrant almost 40 years ago. I know how life is in the field. At our own nursery, growing ground cover plants and perennials, we have people who have been with us for 25 or 20 or 15 years.
Farm workers work hard every day to produce the products and the services we need in America. Too few Americans today will do agricultural work, no matter what their color or background. Few even have the skills to do it anyway.
It is time that we get our American house in order and develop rules and laws and systems that are realistic and can function now and in the future. AgJobs will address all of this and we must fight to the end to get it through.
Our anti-immigration adversaries have nothing to offer that can function. They don’t even have the guts to follow the logic of their own talk and propose deporting all of these workers. Maybe they know that the country would come to a screeching halt if that was done.
There is still time to get AgJobs through and get it signed by the President, but the time is running short. We must do all we possibly can, and I am speaking not the least to myself and my Republican friends, to get the AgJobs bill through in this Congress.
We are fighting for the livelihood of our people and for American agriculture and for keeping jobs in America. We have a just cause; this is the right thing to do. In the end we shall succeed–together.
Thank you for all the efforts of the United Farm Workers to see AgJobs enacted. Thank you President Rodriguez and to all of you for having me here today.
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