$1,000 a Month for Farmworkers? Proposed Payments Aim to Help Amid Drought

A California state senator would offer guaranteed income for the next three years to farmworkers who lose work as a result of the ongoing drought.


BY MELISSA MONTALVO, CALMATTERS
APRIL 29, 2022

A Democratic lawmaker from the central San Joaquin Valley wants to put cash in the hands of eligible farmworkers to help them deal with the devastation of California’s drought.

Proposed by State Senator Melissa Hurtado, a Democrat from Sanger, Senate Bill 1066 would allocate $20 million to create the California Farmworkers Drought Resilience Pilot Project, a state-funded project that would provide unconditional monthly cash payments of $1,000 for three years to eligible farmworkers, with the goal of lifting them out of poverty.

“When we talk about climate change, we forget about those that are most impacted and are already hurting,” Hurtado said in a phone interview on Tuesday. “And that is the workers and the farmers.”

Part of the reason for the bill is that the agriculture industry lost over 8,000 jobs in 2021 alone due to the drought, Hurtado said.

“This is climate change; we know this (the drought) is ongoing,” Hurtado said. “I don’t anticipate it getting better.”

The proposed legislation comes nearly a year after Hurtado wrote a letter to Governor Gavin Newsom, urging him to prioritize farmworkers with the $35 million the state earmarked for guaranteed basic income pilot programs. The funding, agreed to by the Governor and the legislature as part of the fiscal year 2021-22 budget, will prioritize projects that serve former foster youth as well as pregnant individuals.

Hurtado said the state needs to create more policies that support the agricultural workforce. “Farmworkers have been long neglected and continue to be neglected,” she said. They need “the right policies for them to be successful.”
Fallowed Land Means Lost Jobs for California Farmworkers

Advocates say they’re already seeing the impact of the drought on farm work in the Valley.

Carlos Morales has worked in Fresno County’s fields for over 15 years. Earlier this month, he said that farmworkers in the county are already noticing that work is increasingly scarce due to the lack of water.

“There are many fields where the farmers have stopped growing,” Morales said in Spanish in an interview. “There’s no water; there are no jobs.”

In 2021, California farmers were forced to fallow 390,000 acres of land due to the drought and water allocation cutbacks–most of which were located in the Central Valley.

Hernan Hernandez, executive director of the California Farmworker Foundation, said that farmworkers are already seeing their work hours decreasing every year.

“Farmworkers now have to choose between putting food on their tables and paying rent, as there is less work in agriculture because of the lack of water in the Central Valley,” he said in a news release from Hurtado’s office, adding that the proposed legislation would bring “much-needed relief” to farmworkers and their families.

Some growers also support the legislation. Representatives of agriculture groups such as the California Fresh Fruit Association spoke in support of SB 1066 during a Senate committee hearing on Tuesday.

In a phone interview with The Bee on Thursday, Ian LeMay, president of the California Fresh Fruit Association, said the bill was an “interesting proposal” that acknowledges the many impacts of the drought on Central Valley communities.

“When we are in drought situations, or when we have low water allocations, not only are the businesses that we represent impacted, but ultimately our employees,” said LeMay.

He said he hopes the pilot program can help sustain the livelihoods of California’s farmworkers during the drought so they can remain in the community and be available for employment when the drought dissipates or when “an increased allocation of water is made to the growers in the central San Joaquin Valley.”

Who would Qualify for the Drought Relief Payments?

If SB 1066 becomes law, qualifying farmworkers would be eligible for $1,000 unconditional monthly payments for three years—or up to $36,000.

To be eligible for the program, a household must meet the following criteria:At least one member of the household is a California resident;
At least one member of the household has worked as a farmworker for the entire period between March 11, 2020 to January 1, 2022;
At least one member of the household is a farmworker at the time of consideration for, and throughout the duration of, the pilot project; and
The household received benefits under CalFresh, California Food Assistance Program, or would have been eligible to receive benefits “but for the immigration status of one or more members of the household.”

Undocumented individuals that would have qualified for CalFresh or FCAP, except for their immigration status, could be eligible for the supplemental payments if they meet the other criteria. The legislation does allow for short lapses of unemployment during the duration of the pilot project if the unemployment is “due to reasons out of their control.”

If approved, the pilot project would run from January 1, 2023, through December 31, 2026.

Some Farmworkers Still Left Out of Safety Net

Many farmworkers, especially those that are undocumented, are unable to access unemployment benefits.

Legislators and labor advocates are increasingly calling on the state to expand the safety net to the state’s most vulnerable workers, including undocumented workers.

Last month, Assembly member Eduardo Garcia, a Democrat from Coachella, introduced legislation that would create a pilot program to provide unemployment benefits to undocumented workers. The bill—a high-priority legislation for the Latino Legislative Caucus—would provide undocumented workers with $300 per week for up to 20 weeks of unemployment between January 1, 2023, and December 31, 2023.

Researchers at the U.C. Merced Community and Labor Center released a report last month making a case for why California should provide unemployment benefits to undocumented workers. Undocumented workers risked their lives during the pandemic, the report found, and could be in significant jeopardy in the future due to climate change.

This article originally appeared in CalMatters, and is part of The California Divide, a collaboration among newsrooms examining income inequity and economic survival in California.


Melissa Montalvo is a reporter with The Fresno Bee and a Report for America corps member. She covers childhood poverty in the central San Joaquin Valley for the Bee in partnership with CalMatters' California Divide project.

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SHOULD BE CONTIENT WIDE

It's Farmworker Awareness Week. Here’s What Those Who Feed Us Deserve.

The workers who put food on our tables face poverty, deportation, and extreme heat. These are policy choices—and they can be changed.

Farmworkers tend to strawberries growing in a field on February 10, 2021 in Ventura County, California. (Photo: Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images)

From Cesar Chavez’s day to our own, “the struggle continues”—la lucha sigue!


ENNEDITH LOPEZ

COMMON DREAMS

March 30, 2022

Few workers play a more intimate role in our lives than the farmworkers who plant, pick, package, and ship the food we put on our tables. But unfortunately, few are more vulnerable.

As the climate crisis accelerates, their already hard jobs are getting deadlier.

Ever since the mid-20th century, when migrant braceros from Mexico kept food on U.S. tables while Americans were off fighting in World War II, farmworkers in this country have faced systemic injustices and abuse.

They’re no less vital now—in 2020, they were declared essential to ensure families continued to be fed during a pandemic that forced others to stay home. But many continue to face systemic exploitation on account of their poverty or immigration status.

There are between 2.5 and 3 million agricultural workers in the United States. Migrant farmworkers account for an estimated 75 percent of these, and 50 percent of migrant farmworkers are undocumented. Many live in this country at risk of deportation, in substandard housing conditions, and in extreme poverty.

And unfortunately, as the climate crisis accelerates, their already hard jobs are getting deadlier.

Because most farmworkers lack basic working protections and are paid “per piece”—that is, for how much they harvest—they’re often forced to choose between going without pay and working long hours through dangerous conditions. In recent years, they’ve had to work through heat waves, extreme drought, and even wildfires.

In 2021, the United States experienced the hottest summer on record, and some farmworkers died because of these unpredictable circumstances. Heat is now their leading cause of death on the job—in fact, farmworkers are 20 times more likely than other workers to die from heat-related illnesses.

Even one death on the job is too many. We need real labor standards to mitigate these gruesome conditions.

Farmworker deaths can be prevented by implementing federal heat safety standards and actually enforcing them—a call many advocacy groups have made. Employers should be required to prevent heat-related illnesses by providing clean drinking water, shade, and rest periods. And they should be held accountable for deaths caused by dangerous working conditions.

But protecting farmworkers on the job also means addressing the issues that make them so vulnerable in the first place.

Protecting farmworkers on the job also means addressing the issues that make them so vulnerable in the first place.



The piece-rate wage forces workers to put in 10- or 12-hour workdays and still leaves many food-insecure and impoverished. And due to their immigration status, farmworkers are often unable to protest dangerous working conditions or poor wages, incentivizing employers to exploit them further.

The complete marginalization of farmworkers is due to decisions made by our policymakers, as well as an exploitative food system that profits from their misfortunes. But these decisions can be changed.

Providing a legal and just pathway to citizenship would ensure that immigrant farmworkers have the opportunity to improve their living and working conditions. Labor laws that ensure workers are fairly paid regardless of their immigration status could greatly mitigate the risks many are forced to take.

And real action to address our climate crisis and protect our environment would have the added benefit of protecting our most essential workers.

The farmworkers who feed us are on the frontlines of climate change, poverty, and our broken immigration system. They shouldn’t be treated as sacrificial or replaceable—especially when they’re nothing short of essential. We must support their causes and demand justice.

This Farmworker Awareness Week, it’s critical that we continue to recognize the vital role farmworkers play to sustain our country’s entire food system, their proud history of union mobilizing and organizing, and the need to respect their humanity.

From Cesar Chavez’s day to our own, “the struggle continues”—la lucha sigue!

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.

ENNEDITH LOPEZ is a New Mexico Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies.

California farmworkers now get overtime pay after 8 hours. Some growers say it’s a problem

Nadia Lopez

FRESNO BEE
Sun, January 9, 2022

For the past two decades during the harvest season, 58-year-old farmworker Lourdes Cárdenas would wake up at 3 a.m. to get dressed, say her daily prayers and prepare lunch before driving an hour south from her home in Calwa to a farm in Huron. She’d pick crops like cherries, nectarines, and peaches from daybreak until sundown — at least 10 hours a day, six days a week.

There would be days where she wouldn’t get home until 7 p.m or 8 p.m., depending on traffic, she said. For many of those years, she was paid minimum wage. There was no overtime pay.

“It’s a long work day,” she said in Spanish. “I’d get home very late, exhausted. It’s very hard work being in the fields.”

For years, hundreds of thousands of farmworkers toiling in California’s agricultural heartland weren’t entitled to overtime pay unless they worked more than 10 hours a day. But that has changed due to a 2016 state law that’s been gradually implemented over four years. As of Jan. 1, California law requires that employers with 26 or more employees pay overtime wages to farmworkers after eight hours a day or 40 hours a week.

That means many farmworkers like Cárdenas will now be compensated time-and-a-half for working more than eight hours. It’s a change advocates say is long overdue to provide the agricultural labor force with the same protections afforded to other hourly workers. But opponents argue that the law — though well-intentioned — strains farmers who already operate on thin margins and confront other financial challenges. Employers also say the new rules will disadvantage workers, as they’ll likely reduce hours in an attempt to cut increasing labor costs.

Under the law, which was authored by Assemblymember Lorena Gonzalez, farmworkers began in 2019 to gradually receive the same overtime pay as employees in other industries. Farmworkers previously became eligible for overtime benefits after 10 hours, but the law has lowered the threshold for overtime pay by half an hour annually for the past three years, until reaching the standard eight hours this year.

In a Twitter post on Wednesday, Gonzalez said “none of my bills stole my heart more.”

The full implementation of the law for larger-scale growers marks the most recent win for labor advocates, who had been running a decades-long campaign to secure overtime pay for farmworkers. California is one of six states, alongside Hawaii, Maryland, Minnesota, New York and Washington, to provide overtime pay to agricultural workers. Many states, however, only provide overtime pay after the 60-hour threshold has been met.

Fresno growers concerned about farmworker overtime law

Eriberto Fernandez, the government affairs deputy director at the UFW Foundation, which sponsored the California bill, said the law secures a basic protection for a workforce that has long been exploited. He added that agricultural workers were excluded from the federal Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 that gave most employees the right to minimum wage and overtime pay.

“It’s a very historic and momentous occasion for farmworkers that they now, for the first time in the history of agricultural labor, have the same rights as all other Californians do,” he said. “For the first time since the 1930s, equal overtime pay now also applies to farmworkers.”

Fernandez said the law will provide farmworkers with more quality time with their families. He also said farmworkers, many of whom work ten- to twelve-hour shifts during the peak harvest season, will be fairly compensated for their labor.

“This is about leveling the playing field for farmworkers,” he said. “We’re hoping that this new law now puts farmworkers on equal ground with all other industries in California.”

But many growers say the new law could do more damage than good.

Ryan Jacobsen, a farmer and Fresno County Farm Bureau CEO, said the law doesn’t address the needs of the farming industry, arguing that agriculture requires a unique set of rules because it is subject to changing weather and seasons. And unlike other businesses, the labor-intensive industry requires more flexibility on scheduling and working, especially during peak harvest times, he said.

“Most of these jobs in the industry are still seasonal in nature and there are times of the year where there’s more work than there is in other times of the year,” he said. “In the California ag industry, there was always — up until the passage of this bill — an understanding that these employees would be able to make up these hours during these shorter windows because there’s not as much availability of farm agricultural work (in other times of the year).”

Daniel Hartwig, a fourth generation grape farmer from Easton who also works as the procurement manager at Woolf Farming, agreed. He said that the law makes an already fickle industry even more complicated for growers.

Growers have been concerned about labor costs increasing, in part due to California regulations, Hartwig said. He said many growers are reducing their employees’ hours and transitioning to cultivating other crops that don’t require as much human labor. Instead of planting fruit trees, Hartwig has switched over to nuts like almonds and pistachios, he said.

“We can’t absorb those additional labor costs,” he said. “So we’ve just kind of refocused on making sure more of our crops are able to be mechanically harvested. Those are the choices we’re making. (The law) is hurting farmers, and it’s hurting the farm workers as well.”

Fresno County broke its own record for agricultural and livestock production in 2020, peaking at more than $7.98 billion, according to the crop report from county Agricultural Commissioner Melissa Cregan. Nuts were among the top earners. Almonds were the county’s top-grossing crop, earning $1.25 billion, while pistachios made up $761 million, the report found.

Fernandez, of the UFW Foundation, said it’s “unfortunate” that farmers are reducing hours for their employees given the county’s record-breaking years.

“These are the same arguments that we hear over and over again about how these laws are going to destroy agribusiness in California,” he said. “And if anything, we’ve seen the opposite — we’ve seen the California businesses thriving. For them, it’s a matter of economics and of profitability. They’re choosing to shorten worker hours to save money that they would otherwise have paid for overtime pay.”
California farmworker wages increasing

Farmworkers are some of the lowest-paid workers in the U.S, according to a 2021 report from The Economic Policy Institute. On average, farmworkers in 2020 earned about $14.62 per hour, “far less than even some of the lowest-paid workers in the U.S. labor force,” the report found. Farmworkers at that wage rate earned below 60% compared to what workers outside of agriculture made, according to the report.

Lourdes Cardenas is shown waving a UFW flag with other demonstrators in front of the state building in 2017.

In some states though, wages are increasing. California’s minimum wage on Jan. 1 rose to $15 an hour for employers with 26 or more employees and increased to $14 an hour for employers with 25 or fewer employees.

Cárdenas is hopeful the new overtime protections and increased minimum wage will help her family in the long run. While she acknowledges that she may lose hours due to the new rules, she said the overtime law is “a huge relief” for farmworkers like her.

“We have been marginalized and mistreated,” she said. “But we are workers, just like any other worker. It’s sad they didn’t value us before. This is a big change.”

She said during the busy season farmers may not have a choice but to keep their employees working for longer periods of time, providing workers with a financial cushion they previously didn’t have. She hopes it will provide her with the ability to afford her car repairs, rent, food and other utility bills she had struggled to pay in the past.

“This is a great victory and a great triumph for us,” she added. “Sometimes, I couldn’t even afford food. But now we’ll have equal pay.”

KVPR’s Madi Bolaños contributed to this report.

Farmworkers use Florida march to pressure other companies

By MIKE SCHNEIDER

1 of 13
In this photo taken with a drone, farmworkers and allies march through agricultural land on the first day of a five-day trek aimed at highlighting the Fair Food Program, which has enlisted food retailers to use their clout with growers to ensure better working conditions and wages for farmworkers, Tuesday, March 14, 2023, in Pahokee, Fla.

(AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)

Farmworkers were leading a five-day, 45-mile (72-kilometer) trek on foot this week from one of the poorest communities in Florida to a mansion-lined, oceanfront town that is one of the richest in an effort to pressure retailers to leverage their purchasing power for better worker pay and working conditions.

The farmworkers said they were marching to highlight the Fair Food Program, which has enlisted companies like McDonald’s, Walmart, Taco Bell and Whole Foods to use their clout with growers to ensure better working conditions and wages for farmworkers. They hoped to use the march to pressure other companies, like Publix, Wendy’s and Kroger, to join the program that started in 2011.

The march began Tuesday from the farming community of Pahokee, one of the poorest in Florida, where the median household income is around $30,000. The march’s launching point was a camp where farmworkers were coerced into working for barely any pay by a labor contractor who was convicted and sentenced last year to almost 10 years in prison. The contractor confiscated the Mexican farmworkers’ passports, demanded exorbitant fees from them and threatened them with deportation or false arrest, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

The marchers were on schedule to arrive Saturday in the town of Palm Beach, which has a median household income of almost $169,000 and is lined with the mansions of the rich and famous, including billionaire Nelson Peltz, who is Wendy’s chairman, and former President Donald Trump.

According to the Florida-based Coalition of Immokalee Workers, which organized the march, the program has ensured that farmworkers are paid for the hours they work; guaranteed them on-the-job safety measures such as shade, water and access to bathrooms; and has reduced the threats of sexual assault, harassment and forced labor under armed guards in the fields where tomatoes and other crops are harvested. Immokalee is a southwest Florida farming town in the heart of the state’s tomato-growing area.

Growers have benefitted since it reduces turnover and improves productivity, according to the coalition.

Farmworkers marching in Florida to demand better conditions
Farmworkers are leading a 45-mile march from one of the poorest communities in Florida to one of the richest. It's an effort to pressure retailers to leverage their purchasing power for better worker pay and working conditions

. (March 17) (AP video: Daniel Kozin)

Wendy’s said in a statement that it didn’t participate in the Fair Food Program because it sources its tomato supply from indoor hydroponic greenhouse farms, while the program operates for farmworkers predominantly in outdoor fields, so “there is no nexus between the program and our supply chain.” The fast-food chain said it requires third-party reviews to make sure no abuses are involved in the harvesting of the tomatoes it gets from suppliers.

“The idea that joining the Fair Food Program, and purchasing field-grown, commodity tomatoes, is the only way that Wendy’s can demonstrate responsibility in our supply chain is not true,” Wendy’s said.

The coalition on Friday in a statement described Wendy’s response as a “dodge.”

Officials from Publix and Kroger didn’t respond to emailed inquiries.

The idea to pressure retailers to use their clout with growers to improve pay and conditions for Florida tomato pickers took off in the early 2000s when the Coalition of Immokalee Workers led a four-year, nationwide boycott of Taco Bell. The boycott ended in 2005 when the company agreed to pay a penny more per pound for tomatoes purchased from Florida growers in order to raise farmworkers’ wages.

The Fair Food Program followed several years later in an agreement with Florida tomato growers, and it now includes more than a dozen participating corporations. Leaders of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers and the Fair Food Program have been recognized with a MacArthur Foundation fellowship, a Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights award and presidential award presented by then-Secretary of State John Kerry.

“So now workers enjoy the right to complain without fear of retaliation. Workers also have water and shade as part of these agreements,” said Gerardo Reyes Chavez, a coalition official, at the start of the march in Pahokee. “The program has proven to be the solution, the antidote to the problem of modern day slavery, the problem of sexual assault, and the problems that have always plagued the agricultural industry.”

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Daniel Kozin in Pahokee, Florida contributed to this report.

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Follow Mike Schneider on Twitter at @MikeSchneiderAP

Biden Is Paying Growers to Replace Farmworkers With Bracero Contract Labor

Under the new visa pilot program, the administration is prioritizing growers’ profits over farmworkers’ rights.

By David Bacon ,

TRUTHOUT

December 21, 2023

Farmworkers brought to the U.S. in the H-2A visa program harvest melons early in the morning in a field near Firebaugh, in California’s San Joaquin Valley. 

DAVID BACON

On September 22, 2023, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced it would begin paying growers to use the notorious H-2A contract foreign labor (or guestworker) program. Tapping into $65 million from the American Rescue Act, the USDA will pay between $25,000 and $2 million per application to defray the expenses of recruiting migrant workers from three Central American countries — Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador — transporting them to the U.S., housing and feeding them while they’re here, and even subsidizing part of their wages. Labor contractors, who compete with each other to sell migrant farm labor to growers at low wages, will be eligible as well as growers themselves.

The H-2A program is the modern version of the old bracero scheme, under which growers brought Mexicans to work in U.S. fields from 1942 to 1964. Workers had to pay bribes to come, were kept separate from the local workforce, and deported if they protested or went on strike. Because of widespread abuse of the workers who came through the program, and growers’ use of bracero labor to prevent farmworkers from organizing, the program was abolished — one of the main achievements of the Chicano civil rights movement. But even at its height, the U.S. government never actually paid growers to bring in workers. Now, the Biden administration is doing just that.

The H-2A program allows growers to recruit workers, who today mostly come from Mexico. They can and do discriminate, hiring almost entirely young men and then pressuring them with production quotas to work as fast as possible. Workers have an H-2A visa, which allows them to stay only for the length of their contract — less than a year — and they cannot legally work for anyone other than the grower or labor contractor who recruits them. They can be fired for any reason, from protesting to working too slowly, and once they are terminated, they lose their visa and must leave the country. Recruiters maintain blacklists of workers fired for those reasons, and especially for striking and organizing, refusing to rehire them in future seasons.

Although the bracero program had ended in 1965, the H-2A visa category reestablished a contract labor program, in the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986. The program remained relatively small until it began to mushroom during the Bush and Obama administrations. The Biden administration is now expanding it even further by subsidizing growers who use it.

The Biden administration’s purpose for its subsidy program, called the Farm Labor Stabilization and Protection Pilot Program (FLSPPP), is political. In announcing it, the USDA lists three goals. The first, “addressing current labor shortages in agriculture,” means not just giving growers a government-sponsored labor recruitment system, but even paying them to use it. While growers complain about labor shortages, unemployment in farmworker communities is higher than in urban areas. Agribusiness has been intent, however, on keeping wages extremely low. Many growers were Donald Trump supporters, and the rural areas of California and Washington State are still littered with old Trump signs from the 2020 campaign. But hope dies hard. The Biden campaign would welcome whatever support it can get from agribusiness in the tight 2024 election to come.

NEWS |

ECONOMY & LABOR

Migrant Farmworkers Have No Safety Net in the Face of Catastrophic Flooding

Many farmworkers are still out of work and struggling to afford food in the wake of California’s disastrous floods.

By Leanna First-Arai , TRUTHOUTJanuary 30, 2023

Samantha Power, administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, held a meeting with growers at the USDA in September 2022. She thanked them for working with the administration on “a critical priority — expanding the pool of H-2A farmworkers from Central America, specifically from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras.” “We have got your back,” she promised them. “We are committed to helping maintain a strong pipeline of experienced farmworkers to support you.”


It is no coincidence that a work visa program is being unveiled as Biden negotiates with Republicans over measures to make the asylum process basically unavailable to those same migrants fleeing poverty and repression.

The second stated goal of the pilot program is to “reduce irregular migration from Northern Central America through the expansion of regular pathways.” As Republicans attack the president for being “soft” on immigration, the Biden administration hopes to forestall caravans arriving at the border by channeling thousands of potential migrants into work visa programs. The FLSPPP does nothing to change the conditions that produce migration, nor does it allow migrants to access the asylum system and become U.S. residents. In fact, it is no coincidence that a work visa program is being unveiled as Biden negotiates with Republicans over measures to make the asylum process basically unavailable to those same migrants fleeing poverty and repression.

The third goal, “improving the working conditions for all farmworkers,” is political theater. Applicants for subsidies under the pilot program are required to provide H-2A workers with living wages, overtime pay, workers’ rights training, health and safety protections, and no retaliation if they try to organize a union. These protections and benefits — in many cases, simply the base legal requirement — don’t even exist on paper for almost all farmworkers who are already living in the U.S. And because, according to the National Agricultural Workers Survey, about 44 percent of all farmworkers are undocumented, it’s difficult for them to use what legal protections exist. However, instead of pushing for immigration reform that would provide them with legal status, the Biden administration is helping growers bring in H-2A workers to replace them.

This trailer, at 1340 Prell Rd., in Santa Maria, California, was listed as the housing for six H-2A workers by La Fuente Farming, Inc.

DAVID BACON

With weak enforcement on the ground, it’s unlikely that H-2A workers would get these benefits either. Violations of the rights and minimum standards for both H-2A and resident farmworkers are endemic in U.S. agriculture. The program contains no funding for even a minimal increase in Department of Labor (DoL) investigations of existing violations, much less those to come.

The proposal shocked many farmworker advocates and organizers. A number of them sent a letter of protest to the Biden administration, which I also signed as a fellow of the Oakland Institute. “As farmers, farmworkers, and their advocates, we are writing to express our indignation that USDA is committing $65 million of public money to pay farm employers, including Farm Labor Contractors, to raise wages, improve housing or other adjustments for H-2A workers before making any significant changes in the conditions of the millions of farmworkers already in this country,” the letter read.

Documentation of worker abuse in the H-2A program goes back decades, and many farmworker advocates and unions doubt it can be reformed. “Because of its record of abuse of both H-2A workers and local farmworkers,” the protest letter stated, “we have called for the abolition of the H-2A program for many years.” Sarait Martinez, director of the Binational Center for Oaxacan Indigenous Development, which organizes farmworkers against wage theft and other abuse, told Truthout, “This program pits resident farmworkers against contract workers recruited by growers, and makes it impossible to end the poverty in farmworker communities, treating it as normal and unalterable.”

“This program pits resident farmworkers against contract workers recruited by growers, and makes it impossible to end the poverty in farmworker communities, treating it as normal and unalterable.”

At the same time that USDA is handing out subsidies, the enforcement system that should protect farmworkers from wage theft, illegal wages, and other violations of workplace standards and rights is in freefall. A 2023 study by the Economic Policy Institute found that investigations by the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division (WHD) have plummeted by over 60 percent — from a high of 2,431 in 2000 to only 879 in 2022. The department has only 810 investigators for the nation’s 164.3 million workers, or one inspector per 202,824 workers. As a result, the DoL only investigates fewer than 1 out of every 100 agricultural employers each year, although, notes the study, “when WHD does investigate an agricultural employer, 70 percent of the time, WHD detects wage and hour violations.”

From 2000 to 2022, violations of the H-2A visa program accounted for roughly half of the few cases in which employers were forced to pay back wages and civil penalties, rising to nearly three-fourths during the Biden administration. Because enforcement is weak, cases of employers and labor contractors using H-2A workers to replace local workers, and cheating those H-2A workers, are multiplying.

One example of cheating occurred with notorious labor violator Sierra del Tigre Farms in Santa Maria, California. In September 2023, more than 100 workers were terminated before their work contracts had ended and told to go back to Mexico. The company then refused to pay them the legally required wages they would have earned. Its alter ego, Savino Farms, had already been fined for the same violation four years earlier, an indication that the profits of labor violations outweigh the small penalties.

One worker, Felipe Ramos, was owed more than $2,600. “It was very hard,” he remembers. “I have a wife and baby girl, and they survive because I send money home every week. Everyone else was like that too. The company had problems finding buyers, and too many workers.” In fall 2023, Rancho Nuevo Harvesting, Inc., another labor contractor, was forced by the Department of Labor to pay $1 million in penalties and back wages to workers it had cheated in a similar case. The frequency and seriousness of these cases in one relatively small valley alone indicate that the problems with the program are fundamental, structural and widespread.

As the USDA “pilot” subsidy program is being rolled out, the U.S. Department of Labor has proposed a set of reforms it says may reduce the long-documented abuse of H-2A farmworkers. Yet even in the published text of the proposed reforms, the DoL staff who drafted it summarize the structural reasons that make the impact of reforms so doubtful:


Over the past decade, use of the H-2A program has grown dramatically while overall agricultural employment in the United States has remained stable, meaning that fewer domestic workers are employed as farmworkers. … Some of the characteristics of the H-2A program, including the temporary nature of the work, frequent geographic isolation of the workers, and dependency on a single employer, create a vulnerable population of workers for whom it is uniquely difficult to advocate or organize to seek better working conditions. … This lack of sufficient protections adversely affects the ability of domestic workers to advocate for acceptable working conditions, leading to reduced worker bargaining power and, ultimately, deterioration of working conditions in agricultural employment.

The existing local farmworker workforce suffers from the conditions the Department of Labor describes. In another wage theft claim in July 2023, a group of resident workers charged that high-end winery J. Lohr conspired with a group of labor contractors to pay less than the minimum wage, while hiding records of the violation. The Binational Center for Indigenous Community Development, which brought the suit, has fought five similar cases in the last year.


There is no requirement from the USDA that employers of local workers implement any of the pilot program’s conditions, and no additional resources are destined for defending the existing farmworker workforce.

Instead of spending its limited resources to protect and advance the wages and job rights of the farmworkers who live and work in the U.S. (68 percent of whom are immigrants themselves), the Biden administration is making it more attractive for growers to bring in guest workers to replace them. This gives growers a workforce that is easier to control, and who leave the country when the work is done. It continues a policy that extends back through the Trump, Obama, Bush and Clinton presidencies.

About 2 million workers labor in U.S. fields. Last year, the Department of Labor gave growers permission to bring 371,619 H-2A workers — or about a sixth of the entire U.S. farm labor workforce — an increase from 98,813 in 2012. Employing such a large quantity of H-2A labor cannot be done, as the DoL admits, without displacing domestic workers, who continue to endure extensive wage theft and an average family income of $20,000 per year.

Employers who hire local workers are ineligible for the pilot program subsidies unless they recruit H-2A workers — essentially bribing them to use H-2A workers to replace residents. There is no requirement from the USDA that employers of local workers implement any of the pilot program’s conditions, and no additional resources are destined for defending the existing farmworker workforce. This will directly hit farmworker families and communities across the country.

The Biden administration’s political calculations could prove disastrous as well. By doubling down on the program, it is essentially telling farmworkers and their advocates, in an election year, that the administration is solely concerned with the welfare of growers. Yet almost all farmworker unions and communities campaigned heavily against Trump in 2020. They were often Biden’s main support in rural areas where growers were solidly in the Republican camp.

“By implementing this pilot program, the Department of Agriculture has failed miserably to engage with us or hear our arguments,” the protest letter concluded. “We call upon USDA to cancel it and redirect the $65 million to a campaign to rebuild the domestic farm labor force.”

DAVID BACON is a writer and photographer, and former union organizer. He is the author of several books on labor, migration and the global economy, including In the Fields of the North / En los campos del norte, The Children of NAFTA, Communities Without Borders, Illegal People and The Right to Stay Home. His photographs and stories can be found at here and here.

Hundreds of California Farmworkers Are Marching for Union Voting Rights

The marchers are demanding better protections against voter suppression by employers in union elections.

UNITED FARM WORKERS / @UFWUPDATES

BY Sara Herschander, 

Waging Nonviolence

August 6, 2022

On Wednesday, around 250 farmworkers and their supporters took their first steps of a 24-day Delano-to-Sacramento march to demand more voting options for farmworkers when casting a ballot on unionization.

The march, organized by United Farm Workers, or UFW, has been billed as the “March for the Governor’s Signature,” a reference to demands that California Gov. Gavin Newsom sign a new bill meant to protect farmworkers from voter suppression by employers.

“California is a very wealthy state and agriculture contributes to that wealth, but farmworkers continue to be poor and their families suffer — that’s what we need to change,” Dolores Huerta, co-founder of the UFW, told a crowd of marchers gathered at Forty Acres, the site of UFW’s original headquarters in Delano.

“We want everything that you’re doing here to reach the hearts of the growers and the heart of the governor,” said Huerta, before shouting “Si se puede,” a phrase she originated in 1972, while campaigning against legislation that denied workers’ right to organize during harvest seasons.

Over the next several weeks, participants are expected to march roughly 15 miles per day, before reaching the state capital in Sacramento on Aug. 26, which Gov. Gavin Newsom declared “California Farmworker Day” last October. They’ll be marching in the scorching summer heat, behind the same Lady of Guadalupe banner that UFW has been using since the 1960s.

According to Elizabeth Strater, director of strategic campaigns at UFW, that history was palpable during the march’s launch, which she called a kind of “family reunion” for farmworkers, organizers, clergy and other union workers who attended in solidarity with the farmworker movement.

The new bill — the Agricultural Labor Relations Voting Choice Act, AB 2183 — would allow farmworkers to cast a vote on unionization through mail-in ballots or at a drop-off location. Current regulations dictate that workers must cast ballots at in-person-only polling places, typically located at their place of employment, where they may face intimidation from supervisors.

“The vast majority of those elections are on the growers’ property, under the watchful and often retaliatory eye of their bosses,” said Strater, who explained that such a system has “an incredibly chilling effect” on a largely undocumented workforce.

Even as policymakers have lauded farmworkers as essential workers at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, they’ve largely sided with the agricultural industry in curtailing or neglecting workers’ right to organize over the past several years. As of 2021, fewer than three percent of farmworkers belong to a union, and farmworkers still lack the right to collectively bargain and unionize in most states.

On Cesar Chavez Day this April, farmworkers and advocates organized marches in 13 California cities criticizing the governor’s continued refusal to meet with farmworkers to discuss the most recent bill. Newsom also vetoed a similar bill in September 2021, which would have allowed for mail-in unionization ballots.

Farmworker organizers faced another blow in June 2021, when the Supreme Court ruled in Cedar Point Nursery v. Hassid that labor organizations could no longer go on grower’s property to meet with workers.

Still, longtime organizers like Roberto “El Capitan” Bustos, who led UFW’s famed 400-mile march to Sacramento in 1966, were in attendance on Wednesday to encourage marchers to persevere despite political setbacks.

“I’m here again — I’m still marching,” Bustos told those gathered on Wednesday. “You can’t get lost. Follow our footprints. You’re going to see our footprints along the way.”

About half of the farmworkers in the US don't have legal status. They're risking getting COVID-19 to supply our food.

Michelle Mark and Jacqueline Baylon
Sep 3, 2020

Nearly half of America's 2.4 million farmworkers are in the country without legal permission.
These farmworkers have been deemed essential workers during the coronavirus pandemic, and are often working long hours in harsh conditions to supply the country with food.

These workers weren't eligible for most of the federal assistance given to Americans amid the crisis, and one worker said she fears what could happen if she gets sick.

But she said she's proud of her work, and hopes President Donald Trump will one day make it easier for workers like her to stay in the country legally.

More than 1 million of America's 2.4 million farmworkers are in the country without legal permission.

These farmworkers plow, pick, and harvest the country's fields, often for long hours and low wages, and in grueling conditions. And despite their unauthorized status, these farmworkers have been deemed essential workers during the US coronavirus crisis, which has plunged the economy into uncertainty and raised fears about food shortages.

Now, these workers risk getting COVID-19 to supply food for the country, while arguing the country isn't doing enough to protect them during the pandemic.

Farmworker advocates have expressed concern that a lack of education could leave workers susceptible to a major outbreak. That would not only wreak havoc on America's immigrant community, but it could disrupt food supply chains and cause shortages in grocery stores.

"We're treated as essential workers right now because if we don't do this kind of work, the United States is not going to have food in supermarkets, food to feed the nation," Mily Treviño-Sauceda, cofounder of the farmworkers advocacy group Alianza Nacional de Campesinas, told Business Insider Weekly.

Unauthorized immigrant farmworkers say even though they've been deemed "essential workers," they feel vulnerable. Louis DeBarraicua for Business Insider Today

Carmelita is one of more than 1 million unauthorized immigrants who are working through the pandemic. She told Business Insider Weekly she's been working in the country for 13 years.

"I don't feel 'essential,' as they say, because we don't have the same privileges," Carmelita said in Spanish.

She was referring to government programs and services available to Americans that she cannot access due to her immigration status.

Carmelita did not receive a $1,200 stimulus payments like her American counterparts, and she's also ineligible for health insurance programs like Medicaid, which would cover the costs of her treatment if she grew sick with COVID-19.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom allocated $75 million to provide $500 cash to the state's unauthorized immigrants, but it only covered about 150,000 people.

Irene de Barraicua of Lideres Campesinas, a group that works with women farmworkers in California, told Business Insider Weekly that one of her top concerns is the workers' lack of awareness about the disease, which could be solved by bringing more health care workers out to visit the farms and educate the workers.

"That's definitely a concern that some people are going to work and they might have already more information than others in terms of what COVID-19 is," she said. "And so they worry when they're working next to someone else that hasn't read anything or isn't as informed."

Still, despite everything, Carmelita said she's proud of her work.

"We are the ones who are harvesting the products, fruits, and vegetables so they get to the table of the people who have to stay home," she said.

Farmworker advocates say a lack of education for the immigrants could contribute to a coronavirus outbreak Laura Rishell for Business Insider Weekly

But she longs to one day not have to worry about losing everything she's worked for simply due to her immigration status.

She says she hopes that one day President Donald Trump will give workers like her a "blue card," which Democrats have proposed for agricultural workers. The blue cards would provide the immigrants with a pathway to permanent, legal status in the US.

Carmelita's sons are American citizens, but she said she hopes to one day call herself the same.

"Right now what motivates me to work so hard is to help my children get ahead so that they can have a better life than I have," she said. "I know I can't give them everything, but at least they can get a better education than I did, so they'll be less likely to end up as farmworkers."

Meanwhile, the pandemic continues to draw attention to the nation's food sources. Last week, the Hispanic Heritage Foundation announced that farmworkers are being honored at this year's Hispanic Heritage Awards.

"Every single time we take a bite of food, we should think about the importance of our farmworkers in our lives, especially during the COVID-19 crisis as they put themselves and their families at risk to nobly nourish our families. Their service is nothing short of heroic," Antonio Tijerino, president and CEO of the Hispanic Heritage Foundation, said in a statement.

"It is with tremendous gratitude, pride, and admiration that we honor farmworkers."

How coronavirus threatens the seasonal farmworkers at the heart of the American food supply

April 3, 2020 By The Conversation


Many Americans may find bare grocery store shelves the most worrying sign of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on their food system.

But, for the most part, shortages of shelf-stable items like pasta, canned beans and peanut butter are temporary because the U.S. continues to produce enough food to meet demand – even if it sometimes takes a day or two to catch up

To keep up that pace, the food system depends on several million seasonal agricultural workers, many of whom are undocumented immigrants from Mexico and other countries. These laborers pick grapes in California, tend dairy cows in Wisconsin and rake blueberries in Maine.

As a sociologist who studies agricultural issues, including farm labor, I believe that these workers face particular risks during the current pandemic that, if unaddressed, threaten keeping those grocery store shelves well stocked.

Essential labor

It is difficult to accurately count the number of hired agricultural laborers in the United States, but official sources place the number at
1 million to 2.7 million people, depending on the time of year.

Most of these workers are employed seasonally to perform the hard manual labor of cultivating and harvesting crops. One-half to three-quarters of them were born outside of the United States, with the majority holding Mexican citizenship.

The H-2A visa program authorizes noncitizen agricultural laborers to work in the United States. This program allows farmers to recruit workers for seasonal agricultural jobs, provided the workers return home within 10 months.

But the H-2A program doesn’t cover enough workers to meet the needs of the food system. In 2018, only 243,000 visas were issued under the program – far less than the total number of workers needed to power the farm economy.

Government research suggests that approximately half of the remaining workers on U.S. farms are in the United States without legal authorization. These workers often live in the U.S. year-round, choosing to be in legal limbo rather than risk crossing an increasingly policed border. Some travel from state to state, following the harvest cycle of crops.

These farmworkers play an essential role in U.S. agriculture. They pick fresh fruits and vegetables, which are often difficult or impossible to harvest mechanically. They milk cows on dairy farms. In my home state of Iowa, they detassel the hybrid corn varieties – a form of pollination control – that farmers rely on.

Remove these workers, in other words, and large sectors of the American food system would grind to a halt.

Dangerous conditions

Yet there are several factors that put them at higher risk during the pandemic.

For example, social isolation is almost impossible for farmworkers, who often live and work in close proximity to one another.

Those in the H-2A program typically live in on-site, dormitory-style housing, with up to 10 people sharing sleeping quarters and restroom facilities.

The mostly undocumented workers not covered by H-2A visas frequently work for labor contractors, who arrange for their transportation to work sites in shared vans or trucks.

And once on the job, workers interact closely to harvest crops at a rapid pace.

This near-constant physical proximity to one another can facilitate the rapid transmission of the coronavirus.
Seriously susceptible

The nature of their work also makes farmworkers especially susceptible to serious coronavirus infections.

Although COVID-19 tends to be most severe in the elderly and people with underlying health conditions, farm laborers face working conditions that may elevate the risk for severe disease.

Exposure to dangerous pesticides is not unusual, and agricultural workers must also contend with lung irritants from dust, pollen and crops. This can trigger asthma attacks in farmworkers and their children and contribute to other respiratory disorders. Heath officials have found that these conditions contribute to serious coronavirus infections.

Moreover, farmworkers face a number of barriers to accessing medical care, ranging from linguistic and cultural differences to lack of reliable transportation to the limited number of medical facilities in many rural communities.

These barriers are especially high for the many undocumented farmworkers, who are not eligible for insurance coverage through the Affordable Care Act, which does cover workers on H-2A visas.

They may also be reluctant to seek medical care, not wanting to draw attention to themselves in a political climate in which immigration laws are strictly enforced. And farmworkers aren’t typically granted sick leave.

Finally, the labor contractors who employ undocumented workers generally pay only for work that is completed. This means that a day at the doctor’s office is a day without pay – no small sacrifice for a worker making less than $18,000 a year.
Impact on the food supply

But what would an outbreak of COVID-19 among farmworkers mean for the food system?

Fortunately, the risk of direct transmission of the coronavirus passing from farmworkers to consumers through food products is low.

However, widespread infections among farmworkers could make it difficult for farmers to harvest crops. Even before the pandemic, farmers in many agricultural areas were already struggling with labor shortages.

The coronavirus could make this problem worse, potentially causing the loss of crops that cannot be harvested in time. Demand for farmworkers peaks in the summer, so this problem is only a few months away.

Another concern is that fewer workers, fearful of the coronavirus, will apply for H-2A visas to work on U.S. farms, instead seeking work in their home countries. Farmers in hard-hit Italy are already grappling with a similar issue. And on the other side of this issue, the suspension of visa services at U.S. embassies and consulates may restrict the number of H-2A visas given out.

Eventually, consumers could begin to see the impact of any labor shortages in the form of higher prices or shortages of products ranging from strawberries and lettuce to meat and dairy.

There’s no easy solution, but a good start would be ensuring farmworkers are able to follow effective social distancing guidelines, are wearing protective gloves and masks, and are able to get the medical care they need without fear of lost wages or deportation.

Americans depend on these laborers to continue putting food on their tables during this crisis. A little support would go a long way.

Michael Haedicke, Associate Professor of Sociology, Drake University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

 

After enduring ‘complete hell’ during pandemic, food workers face obstacles getting COVID-19 vaccinations

“Vaccinating our essential farmworkers will ensure the safety of their workplaces, their homes, their families, our food supply, and the vital services that they perform.”

By

 Leah Douglas

 -

February 1, 2021Common Dreams

The thousands of workers who pick, pack, and process our food have become eligible to receive the Covid-19 vaccine in many states. But they still face obstacles to actually getting the vaccine, as companies sort out their vaccination policies and advocates struggle to secure enough doses for a workforce that ranks among the most vulnerable to the coronavirus.

Labor organizations and the food industry spent months pushing for agricultural and food processing workers to be in early distribution phases of the Covid-19 vaccine. In December, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices recommended that agricultural workers be vaccinated in Phase 1b, and many states have followed suit.

Yet with the vaccine rollout moving slowly because of continued shortages and with some states shuffling around their priority populations, there are still unanswered questions about how and whether the vaccines will actually get to workers and about what role food manufacturers will play in getting shots into arms.

Florida is now requiring vaccine recipients to show state driver’s licenses or proof of residence, potentially excluding the state’s 200,000 migrant and seasonal farmworkers

Meanwhile, food system workers are still contracting the virus at workplaces across the country. More than 85,500 food and farmworkers have contracted Covid-19 and at least 368 have died as of Jan. 27, according to FERN’s tracker. Nearly 7,000 cases have been added to the database since the beginning of January, even with just a few states regularly reporting data.

Kristy Tijerina, a worker at a JBS meatpacking plant in Plainwell, Michigan, says it’s essential that the vaccine be allocated to the industry’s workers as quickly as possible. At her plant, at least 88 workers have contracted the virus and one has died. Tijerina herself contracted Covid-19 in the spring, and her father died of the virus in August.

“It’s just getting really bad right now,” she says of the case rates in her community. “The more everybody gets vaccinated, it’s a lot better for everybody working here together.”

One obstacle to expediently vaccinating food workers is the still-changing prioritization of essential workers in states’ vaccination phases. Amy Liebman, director of environmental and occupational health at the Migrant Clinicians Network (MCN), which has been supporting local health systems in vaccinating farmworkers, says it’s “been a disappointment” seeing food and farmworkers still unable to access vaccines in many states, given their high risk of contracting Covid-19.

“First and foremost, we need the doses,” Liebman says.

In California, home to as many as 800,000 farmworkers, Gov. Gavin Newsom recently shifted the state’s vaccine distribution structure to be age-based, leading to concerns that many essential workers would need to wait longer for their shots. Florida, another major agricultural producer, is now requiring vaccine recipients to show state driver’s licenses or proof of residence, potentially excluding the state’s 200,000 migrant and seasonal farmworkers from being vaccinated at all.

“Farmworkers are among the most vulnerable populations, because they work in close proximity to each other [and] they go home, often to multigenerational households,” said Fresno County supervisor Brian Pacheco at a vaccination site on Wednesday. Fresno County became one of the first counties in the country to begin vaccinating farmworkers this week and plans to vaccinate more than 3,000 agricultural workers in the coming days at vaccination sites around the county.

“Vaccinating our essential farmworkers will ensure the safety of their workplaces, their homes, their families, our food supply, and the vital services that they perform,” Pacheco said.

One of the logistical questions facing employers and health departments is where, exactly, workers should get inoculated. Particularly for migrant farmworkers, who may relocate between shots, vaccine distribution must happen at easily accessible locations, says Leibman. MCN is aiding in that effort with a virtual case management program that can help workers figure out how to get a second vaccine dose if they move after their first shot.

“We need to make sure that the vaccine is available to workers rather than the workers being available to the vaccine,” she says.

For meatpacking workers, the best option is to get vaccinated at work, says Mark Lauritsen, vice president of meatpacking at the United Food and Commercial Workers union. Many large meatpacking plants have their own health clinics, where workers already receive medical care. Workers may be less nervous getting vaccinated in a familiar setting, he says.

“We’re going to work to make sure that it’s an efficient process and a safe process, and that there’s no barriers to accessing [the vaccine],” he says. “The power of having it right there at the plant means we get to these people with very few obstacles.”

Yet there’s also an essential role for public health departments, especially in cases where workers may not trust their employer or report to work on a regular schedule. Advocates who represent subcontracted workers in food processing recommended recently that local health departments be “heavily involved” in vaccine distribution to ensure that temporary workers are reached.

In some states, meatpacking and other agricultural workers can already receive the vaccine or will qualify imminently. Iowa’s meatpacking workers are expected to be able to set up vaccine appointments by Feb. 1, and in Kansas, they began to qualify for vaccine appointments on Jan. 26.

Meatpackers are still figuring out some of the details of how they will vaccinate workers. Nikki Richardson, director of communications for JBS, says vaccination logistics are still being determined at each plant, and that in some cases, public health departments, pharmacies, or local health clinics will carry out worker vaccinations. But the company is “prepared for our phase of vaccine allocation whenever it may occur,” Richardson says.

Tyson Foods plans to “offer vaccinations on-site at our facilities, at no cost, while our team members are on the job,” said the company’s public relations manager, Derek Burleson. Tyson has contracted with Matrix Medical Network to coordinate its worker testing and vaccination, so the timing of vaccinations will depend on when states make vaccines available to Matrix, Burleson says.

Meatpacker JBS says it will pay workers $100 to get vaccinated. A critic called the incentive program an “attempt to distract from the company’s failure to protect its workers.”

Smithfield did not respond to questions about the specifics of its vaccination program.

Employers are also still sorting out whether to incentivize or compensate workers for getting vaccinated. In the grocery sector, where at least 109 union workers have died of Covid-19 and more than 17,000 have contracted the virus, some retailers are introducing incentives to encourage workers to get the vaccine, though they’re not requiring it. For instance, Instacart will pay $25 to employees who take time off to the get vaccinated. Trader Joe’s will give its workers two hours of pay per vaccine dose.

So far, JBS is the only meatpacker that has said it will pay workers to get the vaccine—$100 for employees of the Brazilian-owned meatpacker and its subsidiary Pilgrim’s Pride. But that approach isn’t uniformly popular.

Kim Cordova, the president of UFCW Local 7, said in a statement that JBS’s incentive program is an “attempt to distract from the company’s failure to protect its workers.” Local 7 represents workers at a JBS plant in Greeley, Colorado, where six workers have died of Covid-19 and nearly 450 have been sickened by the virus. The company should quickly restore hazard pay for its workers and implement daily testing, among other precautions, Cordova said.

Meatpackers are also mixed on whether the vaccine should be mandatory for their workers. JBS is “currently focused on achieving the highest voluntary participation rate possible,” says Richardson. Tyson is “strongly encouraging team members to take the vaccine but are not mandating it,” says Burleson.

Lauritsen says the UFCW is opposed to making the vaccine mandatory and that receiving the vaccine should not be a condition of employment. Besides, he says, workers are ready to get the vaccine without it being made compulsory.

“Given the work that’s been done, the complete hell that these folks have went through during this pandemic,” he says, “our members are ready to get the vaccination, and the sooner the better.”

Leah Douglas  is an associate editor and staff writer at FERN. Prior to joining the team, she worked for three years as a reporter and policy analyst with the Open Markets Institute, where she researched economic consolidation and monopolization in the food and agriculture industry. She founded and wrote Food & Power, a first-of-its kind resource on food sector consolidation.