After months of delays and negotiations between vegetable and fruit growers and pickers over unionization, five farms in Western New York have started the process of binding arbitration with the state’s Public Employment Relations Board.
This decision comes as a last resort for the pickers’ representative, United Farm Workers. Through binding arbitration, UFW and the farms are handing over the ruling on exact details of union contracts to a neutral third party.
“The workers have a large number of issues that they want addressed including pay as required by the law, housing improvements, protection from retaliation, recall rights (the right to be brought back each season), and to be treated with basic respect on the job,” says Armando Elenes, UFW secretary-treasurer.
In short, Elenes says, “workers want a union at their job to ensure we have a framework to defend and improve workers’ lives.”
Alongside hopes of stable and legal pay for the workers, unionization will also attempt to alleviate negative working conditions and verbal abuse.
If successful, these unionization efforts could be a watershed moment for New York. Farm workers were excluded from labor rights protections until the Farm Laborers Fair Labor Practices Act of 2019, which legalized collective bargaining and labor unions.
The five farms—Wafler Farms, Porpiglia Farms, Cahoon Farms, A&J Kirby Farms, and Lynnette & Sons Farms Inc.—would be the first New York with union-represented workers. The workers and the UFW have received support from the Latino and Caribbean communities who comprise a large part of the farm-labor workforce.
Throughout the process, produce growers have been consistently slow and dishonest in discussions, UFW alleges.
“Most are using delay and litigation tactics to drag out the process. Some have outright threatened organizers with calling the police and attempted to stop workers from being able to have organizers visit them,” Elenes says.
The farms’ response extends beyond Western New York to the entire state—four of the five farms listed here have joined a lawsuit that aims to halt parts of the FLFLPA pertaining to foreign worker visas. The growers’ case, however, was deemed to be unlikely to succeed by the district court.
The primary challenge workers and the UFW have faced, according to Elenes, is workers’ fear of retaliation from employers and repeated delays in the implementation of FLFLPA. While significant, the law has no real timelines for mandated change, leaving room for intimidation.
Conversely, farms allege a host of union-based abuses of power to support their goals to diminish or remove UFW presence in the workforce.
At the Mexico-U.S. border, farms claim that union representatives have been meeting with seasonal Western New York farm workers and pressuring them into union membership through lies or intimidation. They note that in Western New York, if successful, unions would mandate membership through required meetings for the entire workforce, forcing workers to comply.
The FLFLPA, farms say, provides preferential treatment to foreign workers (on H-2A visas) as opposed to local workers, and that the exceptions for secret-ballot union elections allow for intimidation, both of which violate national employment law. The UFW denies these allegations and the farms’ legal battles against unionization have failed so far.
As of now, the organization of farm workers continues—at a sixth farm, Cherry Lawn Fruit Farms, workers just elected UFW for representation. Elenes hopes to have an official union by the end of the year.
Henry Cramer is a Rochester Beacon intern and a rising junior at UR. He is a member of the Beacon Oasis Project’s inaugural cohort. The Beacon welcomes comments and letters from readers who adhere to our comment policy including use of their full, real name. Submissions to the Letters page should be sent to [email protected].
In the end the farmers will lose, the union will prevail, the workers will gain little, the union leadership will establish themselves as last word with the workers, they will be paid well for their efforts, the union will fall inline politically, the price of the farmers crop will go up for the wholesale buyers and be passed on to the general public. And then lets not forget about those who will be asked to represent sides, the attorney. They will win, financially, no matter what the outcome. Eventually the union will become a political powerhouse that will play a role in the political arena financed be the worker who will have little to say about the political direction other than to pay their dues. And the beat goes on.
And yet the farmworkers will receive what every other worker in NY receives: respect.
They will obtain what the law already states. They will have a voice in the labor market, wages will not be held, excessive hours will not be “enjoyed”, and heat protections will be in place to name a few positives.
Please do not “paint” all farmers as abusers of workers. The union or a union is not necessarily the answer. And that said, unions do so very well for themselves but not so well for the employer and the final product. Take the Rochester Teachers Union. That union hasn’t done a thing for urban education in decades. The union president, Adam Urbanski, has done very well for himself as the leadership of that union. The final product, successful education, not so much. The “unionless” Charter Schools have done very well. So, you’re willing to sacrifice urban youth, the future of this nation, for the the union that provides security for the staff and it’s leader, yet failing the urban populous big time. Big time. As a matter of fact, the worst in the State of NY.