By Tina Vasquez for Yes! Magazine.
Broadcast version by Suzanne Potter for California News Service reporting for the Solutions Journalism Network-Public News Service Collaboration

Latine workers form the backbone of the American agricultural industry. Without them, we could not eat. Without them, our larger food systems would crumble.

But farmworkers earn “far less than even some of the lowest-paid workers in the U.S. labor force,” according to the Economic Policy Institute. And the overwhelming majority of farm laborers in the United States are Latine, while more than 40% are undocumented. Another 10% of the farm labor force working in crops comes to the U.S. as part of the H-2A Temporary Agricultural Program, a guest worker program overseen by the U.S. Department of Labor that allows American employers to temporarily hire migrant workers to perform agricultural work. Employers can request workers from 86 eligible countries, though 90% hail from Mexico.

The World Bank has described agricultural development as “one of the most powerful tools to end extreme poverty.” Conservation organizations report that sustainable agricultural operations can help preserve and restore habitats, protect watersheds, and improve soil health and water quality. Experts suggest that expanding urban agriculture can even help fight racism and increase health equity.

If agricultural development is, indeed, the linchpin for a more just world, then realizing that world requires listening to and caring for the human beings whose labor facilitates that development. It also demands we reckon with how an industry built on exploitation can pave the road to justice. 

While working on a long-term investigation about wage theft and abuse in the H-2A program, I heard stories from farmworkers about their friends, colleagues, and family members who were worked to death or trafficked as part of the H-2A program, or raped in the fields by an employer. Stories about injustices have become normalized in the industry, including those about dangerous housing conditions at labor camps and systemic wage theft. According to the Department of Labor, agriculture is the top low-wage, high-violation industry in the nation. 

Sometimes stories of horrific abuse break through to the public. In 2021, the nation was shocked to learn details of “Operation Blooming Onion.” Trafficked migrant workers were ensnared in what U.S. government officials called “modern-day slavery” on southern Georgia farms, where victims were forced to dig for onions with their bare hands under the threat of gun violence. As appalling as the details were, crimes of labor trafficking, extreme wage theft, and passport confiscation all frequently occur as part of the agricultural guest worker program. 

Decades of data from government agencies, advocacy organizations, and academic institutions back up these stories from the field. Farmworkers suffer extreme health disparities due to the brutal, repetitive, fast-paced outdoor work they perform in extreme temperatures under harsh conditions that include pesticide exposure and high risk of heatstroke.

When I first started my investigation in fall 2021, well-meaning colleagues offered unsolicited advice about how difficult it would be to find farmworkers willing to go on the record. I was repeatedly told that farmworker communities are notoriously hard to build trust in. “They won’t speak to media,” one editor warned me. “They’re afraid of journalists,” a reporter friend said. I came to parrot these lines myself—and admittedly, the first several months of reporting were hard. I had particular trouble finding H-2A workers to speak to, but I soon learned it’s not because migrant farmworkers are unwilling to make their voices heard. These workers are hard to reach because of the nature of their work. Farmworkers are also fully aware of the consequences of speaking to a reporter—employers of H-2A workers can covertly blacklist them from being able to legally work in the U.S. Retaliatory employers have threatened undocumented farmworkers with immigration enforcement for detailing wage theft and other abuses. More often than not, these workers choose to speak out anyway. 

Once I was tapped in, one worker led to another. I tuned in to a chorus of voices and an avalanche of stories. There was no way to ignore farmworkers’ decades-long fight to be heard. In recent years alone, they have inspired berry boycotts and changed the face of labor organizing through efforts like the Milk With Dignity Program and the Fair Food Program. In Florida, they marched 45 miles to demand that companies such as Publix, Wendy’s, and Kroger provide farmworkers with better working conditions and wages. In California, farmworkers marched 335 miles to the state capital to urge the governor to sign a bill that would have made it easier for them to vote in unions. 

The appalling injustices farmworkers experience in the U.S. are not the result of a few bad apples in the agricultural industry. Their mistreatment is cemented into law by way of the Fair Labor Standards Act, which denies agricultural workers the bare minimum: a livable wage and overtime pay, while failing to mandate access to shade and water. These racist exclusions from basic labor protections have literally cost farmworkers their lives. But when their co-workers die in the fields from thirst and heat exposure, they protest. They strike. Farmworkers fight back. 

The most important public data we have about abuse in the agricultural industry exists because farmworkers risked it all to speak truth to power. The media’s portrayal of farmworkers as meek, scared, and hiding in the shadows flies in the face of what they have shown us: an unquenchable thirst for justice and a deep, abiding hunger for accountability—two things that have been denied to them for far too long. 

Until we truly reckon with the almighty agricultural industry that abuses our farmworkers with impunity, there can be no future where agriculture miraculously saves us from the damage already wrought on our agrifood systems. Without significant steps to ensure dignity and safety for the workers who nourish us—hundreds of thousands of whom come to the U.S. each year as part of a federal program that functions as a form of indentured servitude—we are doomed to continue perpetuating these cycles of harm.


Tina Vasquez wrote this article for Yes! Magazine.

A case before the U.S. Supreme Court could have implications for the country's growing labor movement. Justices will hear oral arguments in Starbucks versus McKinney today to determine if the bar should be raised for the National Labor Relations Board when it seeks to impose court-ordered injunctions on companies.

David Groves, communications director with the Washington State Labor Council, said the Supreme Court could further undermine the power of the NLRB, the independent federal agency that protects employees' rights.

"We already have weak labor laws in this country that have such minor penalties for breaking union organizing laws that companies routinely do it, and this is another opportunity for them to weaken labor laws even further," he argued.

The case involves Starbucks' firing of seven employees in Memphis during their union campaign in 2021. The coffee company says it rehired the workers and denies wrongdoing. If the justices rule in favor of Starbucks, it could make it harder for the NLRB to seek court orders.

Groves said the law states that workers have a right to organize unions in their workplace without coercion or retaliation from their employers.

"That's all fine and good but if the penalty's not significant enough, then they'll just go ahead and break that law and consider it the cost of doing business if they have to pay a fine two years down the road," he explained.

Groves said his and other labor organizations support the passage of the Protecting the Right to Organize or PRO Act in Congress, which would strengthen labor laws, including providing greater authority to the NLRB.


get more stories like this via email

The U.S. House has approved a measure to expand the Child Tax Credit. It would help 16 million children from low-income families in Indiana and nationwide. Despite bipartisan support, the bill is stalled in the Senate. Advocates praise the credit's pivotal role in combating child poverty, pointing to its effectiveness in the past, and especially during the pandemic, when it was broadly expanded.

Candace Baker, an Indianapolis mother of 4, said the previous tax-credit expansion worked for her family, and she wants it reinstated.

"Having a child, and I had to get on some government-assistance programs. My grandmother never did because she just didn't want that stigma over her, but I utilized those services when I had a child. I didn't want to either, but I'm like, I need this support," she explained.

Congress approved expanding the Child Tax Credit in 2021. However, the expansion has expired, leaving families without vital assistance. As the Senate deliberates, pressure mounts on lawmakers to prioritize the needs of struggling families and secure passage. Opponents believe taxpayers who don't work should not be eligible. Some Republicans also contend the provision may incentivize parents to leave the workforce.

Families reeling from the pandemic received between $300 and $360 per month per child from the expanded tax credit. It lifted 3.7 million children from poverty. Baker currently works for a food bank in Indianapolis where she says she is able to help neighbors in need and give back to the community.

"Being able to be a voice for those who have no voice - that is my motto. Even though where you start, you don't have to stay there. So, that is my biggest motto that I stand on: You may start here, you may be on government assistance, you may be in poverty, but that does not have to be your end game," she said.

Families who benefited from the increased aid were more than twice as likely to pay their overdue rent during the initial stages of the pandemic. The Child Tax Credit did not pass in time for this year's tax deadline, and its prospects for the future are uncertain.


get more stories like this via email

Washington joins a handful of states to do away with mandatory meetings for employees on political or religious matters.

Sometimes known as captive audience meetings, the gatherings were seen as a way for employers to give their opinions on subjects like unionization, and held potential consequences for employees who didn't attend. Lawmakers passed a bill this session allowing workers to skip the meetings without repercussions.

Sen. Karen Keiser, D-Des Moines, a sponsor of the bill, said we live in a divided society where emotions run high on political topics.

"This bill simply protects employees to have a real choice on whether or not to attend a meeting called by their boss to be told about some political or religious issue," Keiser explained.

Keiser pointed out the legislation is nonpartisan. For instance, employers could not force employees to attend anti-union meetings, but also could not force them to attend a meeting about the importance of reproductive rights. The bill takes effect June 6.

Keiser noted the bill likely got across the finish line this session because of the uptick in union organizing and support for labor. She added there are widely known stories of Starbucks managers, for example, requiring employees to attend anti-union meetings while the employees organized the workplace.

"Employees have been forced to attend meetings to listen to the boss or the employer basically tell them why they shouldn't join a union," Keiser observed.

Washington is the sixth state to pass a law prohibiting attendance at captive audience meetings. Connecticut, Maine, Minnesota and New York have passed similar laws in recent years. Oregon passed a law allowing workers to skip such meetings without repercussions in 2010.


get more stories like this via email