On January 30, President Trump’s announcement that his administration would begin deporting immigrants to Guantánamo Bay prison made big news.
Meanwhile, at an apple orchard in upstate New York, immigrant farmworkers signed the first United Farm Workers (UFW) union contract in the state, joining the legendary California-based union founded in 1962 by Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta. Most of the orchard workers were Jamaicans who are granted entry to the country through the government’s H-2A visa program for just a few months each year during harvest season. But going forward, the new contract will offer protections for all of the orchard’s approximately 150 workers, regardless of where they come from or what their legal status might be.
“There is a lot of fear. There is a lot of worry. There are also conversations happening around, ‘How do we build solidarity?’”
“It doesn’t matter if they crossed through the desert or if they came through a [guestworker] program,” said UFW organizer Gabriella Szpunt, who helped organize the workers. “At the end of the day, they’re all looking for the same thing: something better for their families.”
UFW leaders say the contract is significant for several reasons. First, during the process, farm groups in New York filed a lawsuit challenging the right of guestworkers to unionize. But the court affirmed that right, creating a precedent at a time when the number of workers coming to farms on H-2A visas has grown exponentially. While the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) first organized H-2A workers in North Carolina in the 1990s, very few guestworkers to date have union protection.
It also marks the historic farmworker union’s first of many steps toward expanding its reach beyond its headquarters in California: UFW already has eight additional New York contracts in the pipeline.
A worker at an apple orchard in New York. (Photo credit: United Farm Workers)
And it’s part of a broader organizing push that involves other unions and worker groups, still moving forward in the face of an aggressively anti-immigrant administration in Washington, D.C. For instance, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem recently launched a multimillion-dollar ad campaign in which she tells immigrants, “We will hunt you down.” Last week, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested and detained farmworker and activist Alfredo Juarez Zeferino, who helped create an independent farmworker union in Washington state about 10 years ago.
“There is a lot of fear. There is a lot of worry,” said Fabiola Ortiz Valdez, the director of organizing at Food Chain Workers Alliance, a coalition of labor groups across the food system. Valdez said that while she doesn’t want to minimize the impact the immigration crackdown is having on food and farmworkers, moments of crisis can also provide opportunities. “There are also conversations happening around, ‘How do we build solidarity?’” she said.
The Rise, Decline, and Return of Farmworker Unions
Today, to mark Cesar Chavez Day, more than 5,000 UFW workers, allies, and supporters will march in Delano, California to call attention to the role immigrants play in putting food on American tables. They’ll end at the UFW union hall at 40 Acres, where grape growers gathered in 1970 to sign their first UFW contracts.
In those early days, UFW founders Chavez, Huerta, and Larry Itliong built a movement that at its peak saw 60,000 unionized farmworkers planting and harvesting across California’s abundant fields and orchards.
A march to Sacramento in 1966 from Delano, California. (Photo credit: Harvey Richards)
Over the last several decades, their numbers have dwindled, alongside a much larger decline in unionization across all industries. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 1983, the first year similar data was available, the union membership rate in the U.S. was 20 percent. By 2024, it had been cut in half to less than 10 percent. Compared to other industries, agriculture had one of the lowest rates of all, at 1.4 percent.
Immigration status is one reason farmworkers have lagged behind other workers in organizing unions. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) estimates that about half of farmworkers lack legal authorization to work in the U.S, while temporary H-2A workers depend on their employers for legal status. Fear of deportation, or of not being called back the following year, is a constant.
In addition, federal laws that prohibit employers from firing or retaliating against workers for joining a union exclude farmworkers. Since 1975, California has extended those protections to farmworkers.
New York has only recently followed suit. In May 2019, farmworkers backed by the Workers’ Center of Central New York (WCCNY) and the Worker Justice Center of New York (WJCNY) won a court case in which they argued that New York’s state constitution guarantees farmworkers the right to organize. Two months later, former Governor Andrew Cuomo signed a bill into law that prohibited employers from firing or retaliating against farmworkers who organize; the bill also granted farmworkers overtime pay, one day of rest each week, and other protections.
That prompted a surge in organizing, although the pandemic initially created a delay. In September 2021, Local 338 RWDSU/UFCW, a union that represents workers in grocery stores and other industries, certified the first union contract for New York farmworkers. Twelve workers at Pindar Vineyards on Long Island were the first, and Local 338 has since organized workers at two additional Long Island vineyards.
Organizing in New York’s Apple Orchards
Armando Elenes, the secretary treasurer of UFW, told Civil Eats that when the union began looking at New York, the team decided to focus on the western part of the state because of the density of larger farms, primarily apple orchards. After the pandemic delay, they began reaching out to hundreds of workers and educating them about the protections the new state law afforded them.
In spring of 2022, Szpunt, the UFW organizer, started meeting with workers at Cahoon Farms, an apple orchard that also does its own processing to sell, fresh, frozen, and dried apples in addition to apple juice. “When I first related this possibility to these workers, they were just in shock that anybody cared and that anybody had a mechanism for them to advocate for themselves,” she said. That changed quickly once they understood the opportunity, she said.
“I was excited, because it’s a chance for us to get some fair treatment.”
Martin Griffiths is from Jamaica and started coming to the U.S. in 2018, as he puts it, “bottom line, to make things better for yourself.” Griffiths ended up at Cahoon through the H-2A program, where he climbed ladders of various heights with a picking bag to harvest apples. Depending on whether the apples would be sold fresh or processed, he said, he’d have to work carefully, to avoid bruising, or faster, to prioritize volume.
Management counted the bins of apples filled at the end of a shift to make sure workers met productivity standards. He said the hours were long, usually 7 a.m. until 5 p.m., and the work was hard. Primarily, he said, he felt like he and his fellow workers had a hard time standing up for themselves with management. When UFW showed up and proposed organizing a union, “I was excited, because it’s a chance for us to get some fair treatment,” he said.
The process of organizing was slow, partially because workers like Griffiths go home to Jamaica in the off-season, so meetings had to be arranged remotely, over WhatsApp and Zoom. Then, organizers hit another snag, when Cahoon, a few other allied farms, and the New York State Vegetable Growers Association filed a lawsuit that claimed the new union protections should not apply to guestworkers.
“We weren’t expecting them to challenge the right of H-2A workers to organize, but they did,” Elenes said. The farmers’ lawsuit put a freeze on the efforts for about six months, but the state ultimately prevailed with its argument that the law applies to guestworkers as well.
“That was important, because we believe that every worker, no matter what your status is, should have the right to organize,” Elenes said. “We don’t want to be in the game of playing undocumented workers against citizens or undocumented workers against H-2A workers.”
When the UFW contract was finally officially certified in January of this year, it included wage increases and bonuses, a retirement plan, nine paid holidays, and several other provisions. One provision that is especially important to Griffiths requires Cahoon to recall guestworkers each year based on seniority, so they can return season after season, which will provide some job security he and others previously lacked. Also, receiving 401(k) benefits is key, Elenes said, since guestworkers are not eligible to receive Social Security benefits when they retire.
But Griffiths kept coming back to something less tangible the union gave him: a sense of empowerment. “Now, since the contract, we feel a little more safe,” he said. “It’s never been about the money. It’s about respect.”
Cahoon Farms did not respond to a request for comment.
The Future of Farmworker Organizing
With that momentum, Elenes and Szpunt are now organizing farmworkers at eight other New York farms, primarily apple orchards, but also vegetable farms. Things have certainly gotten harder since Trump’s election, Szpunt said. “Just a simple act of visiting a worker at their home: They’re more afraid to even just open a door,” she said.
But UFW also points to recent successes in California, including a new contract at a sweet-potato farm in Merced that covers 1,200 workers. Today’s march in Delano also signals a network of support for the union.
Valdez, at Food Chain Workers Alliance, said that while the new legal protection from retaliation is critical, immigrant farmworkers in New York have been organizing in other ways for many years. In early 2019, for example, a coalition was able to get a law passed allowing undocumented workers to get drivers’ licenses, giving more agency to farmworkers who were once isolated on farms. Farmworkers have also organized for their rights through worker centers and committees and tribunals.
“Unions are such a key part of the labor movement, but they’re not the only piece,” Valdez said.
“I think the best thing is for farmworkers to decide what model and what structure works for them.”
Griffiths, who will return to Cahoon to start the apple harvest in August, feels confident about his decision to become a member of the UFW. “It was definitely worth it,” he said, even though during the organizing process, he lost out on work before the union was able to prove he was retaliated against for organizing.
“Basically, I say the contract is definitely a good thing, and I would encourage any worker not to be afraid to do it,” he said.
The post Farmworker Unions on the Rise in New York, Joined by the United Farm Workers appeared first on Civil Eats.
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