Farmworker Justice Fund, Inc.

Farmworker Justice's overall goal is to improve the working and living conditions of farmworkers. The U.S. fruit and vegetable industry relies on seasonal workers to cultivate and harvest our crops. Farmworkers work in virtually every state of the country. Low wages, inadequate health care, decrepit housing, dangerous working conditions, and unfair labor practices characterize much of farm work. The average farmworker earns about $15,000 to $17,500 per year, and few workers receive any fringe benefits, such as paid sick leave or health care. The large majority of farmworkers are immigrants and are Latino. Many farmworkers are recently-arrived immigrants who enter the US hoping to begin a better life for themselves and their families. Among our nation's roughly 2.5 million farmworkers, over half are believed to be unauthorized immigrants. These undocumented workers, toiling under physically grueling and often hazardous working conditions, live in fear that they will be deported, and have few resources to help them fight for justice.

Farmworkers, often mistreated, deserve respect for the vital role they play in helping produce the food we eat. Consumers concerned about eating healthy and safe foods, should also support foods produced under fair working conditions. Over the next several years our goals include:

• Pass meaningful immigration reform that grants farmworkers and their families the opportunity to become citizens and prevent harmful guestworker legislation.

• Secure labor rights for farmworkers by reducing systemic abuses associated with farm labor contracting and enhance farmworkers' access to the justice system.

• Educate the public on the valuable contributions of farmworkers, raising their profile and building support through effective communications strategies.

• Protect the occupational health and safety of farmworkers and their families by improving occupational safety standards and providing culturally appropriate information to reduce illness and injury in the fields.

• Secure health equality for farmworkers and their families by reducing health disparities and promoting healthy, sustainable communities.

To achieve its goals, Farmworker Justice's core strategies are advocacy, education, capacity-building, litigation, and communications.

Advocate for positive policy changes and against harmful proposals on issues of concern to farmworkers and facilitate advocacy efforts by farmworker organizations.
• Educate Members of Congress to prevent enactment of harmful guestworker programs and promote passage of progressive immigration legislation, and assist farmworker organizations in voicing their concerns to Congress.
• Advocate at the EPA and OSHA to include farmworkers in safety standards that currently exclude them, and strengthen safety regulations and their enforcement, especially on pesticides.
• Advocate in the Department of Labor, supported by research and policy analysis, for stronger enforcement of wage-hour laws and allocation of enforcement resources to high-priority abuses.

Strengthen coalitions to increase our impact and advance farmworkers' interests by building our relationships with labor, religious, environmental, immigrant, health, labor, civil rights, and Latino communities.
• Help advance the Equitable Food Initiative, a corporate social responsibility project, by working with Oxfam America, Farm Labor Organizing Committee, National Farm Worker Ministry, Pesticide Action Network North America, United Farm Workers, plus Costco, Bon Appetit Management Company, and others.
• Participate in the International Labor Rights Working Group, addressing abuses taking place during international labor recruitment.
• Educate the public and our allies by providing information that motivates people to take action.
• Use photographs and stories of farmworkers to educate the public about the lives of farmworkers and policy changes needed
• Distribute reports and videos on the effects of pesticides on farmworkers and their families to raise public awareness and improve safety regulations.
• Represent farmworker interests in national meetings and forums; educate advocates at conferences and through webinars
• Shape public opinion through media coverage.

Build the capacity of community-based groups to improve health and access to health care through training community health workers ("promotores de salud").

Litigate by bringing high-impact lawsuits on priority issues for farmworkers; provide training opportunities and assistance to legal professionals.
• Bring targeted lawsuits, in conjunction with legal services groups and private law firms, to expose and remedy systemic abuses and to deter exploitation of farmworkers by employers and remedy government agencies' violations of law
• Engage, support, and train other legal advocates through bi-annual National Farmworker Law Conference, list serve, presentations, and workshops

Farmworker Justice is a highly effective national advocacy, litigation and education organization serving farmworkers and their organizations. Organizations throughout the country rely on our expertise on health, occupational safety, immigration policy, and labor rights. We provide tools to help farmworkers and advocates work toward developing better policies, enforcing labor protections, and understanding ways to protect against illness and injury.

Our advocacy work has helped pass major legislation and win important regulations on farmworker issues: the Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Worker Protection Act of 1983, the main federal employment law for farmworkers; the OSHA Field Sanitation Standard in 1987; the EPA Worker Protection Standards in 1992 and 2015; and, an agricultural legalization program as part of the Immigration Reform & Control Act of 1986, resulting in legal status for 1.1 million undocumented farmworkers. Our advocacy inside federal agencies has helped improve implementation and enforcement of labor protections and programs. Our communications help shape public opinion. Our assistance to community-based groups builds their capacity to improve farmworkers' lives and communities.

Farmworker Justice is led by a well-respected Board of Directors that includes representatives from three major farm labor unions as well as longstanding farmworker champions from leading farmworker service agencies. The organization is headed by Bruce Goldstein, a longtime public interest labor and civil rights lawyer who has worked on farmworker issues at the national level for 30 years. He leads a talented, dedicated staff, including attorneys, health advocates, and communications and development professionals, a fellowship position, administrative staff, and various interns throughout the year.

The value of our high-impact work stems in large part from our collaborations with a broad array of organizations and individuals:
• Farm labor and other unions: the United Farm Workers, Farm Labor Organizing Committee, and PCUN (Oregon's farmworker union), the AFL-CIO, UFCW, and SEIU.
• We are on the Board of Directors of the National Hispanic Leadership Agenda, a major Latino coalition that issues public policy recommendations.
• Environmental organizations: Pesticide Action Network North America, Natural Resources Defense Council, and Earthjustice.
• Nonprofit advocacy groups: NCLR, MALDEF, National Immigration Law Center, Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, Oxfam America, California Rural Legal Assistance, National Farm Worker Ministry, the National Employment Law Project and, .
• Community-based organizations, public health centers, and legal services organizations throughout the country
• Academics, policy analysts and think tanks.

Our collaborative work on immigration policy – including policy analysis, media work, coalition building, and advocacy - helped prevent passage of terrible guestworker legislation, and led to the 2013 Senate compromise on immigration policy. We provided valuable assistance to the United Farm Workers in negotiating the agricultural stakeholder agreement on immigration policy that was included in the comprehensive immigration reform in the U.S. Senate. At this time, we still do not have immigration reform to legalize the undocumented farmworkers. We have helped farmworker organizations understand the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program and other immigration programs.

Our monitoring, policy analysis, media work and advocacy contributed to improvements in the quality and quantity of the enforcement of farmworkers' labor rights by the Obama Administration. The use of the "joint employer" concept to address farm labor contracting abuses has been a priority for FJ and for the Wage and Hour Administrator, David Weil, under the Obama Administration.

Our advocacy for stronger health and safety protections at the EPA and OSHA achieved important results. In late 2015 the EPA issued a new Worker Protection Standard on pesticides that takes effect in 2017, and in late 2016 issued a new safety standard for certified pesticide applicators and their employees. OSHA engaged in education and training on reducing heat stress (but did not strengthen its regulation).

Our health promotion work with community-based groups stresses the empowerment of the farmworkers to become trainers in their own community, promotores de salud, rather than just receive information passively. Using this approach, we have enabled local groups to train over farmworkers to prevent children's exposure to environmental dangers and workers on occupational safety, workplace rights, prevention of illness and injury and access to health care. Through this local work, we learn about farmworkers and their needs. The demand for our assistance exceeds our resources.

The Equitable Food Initiative, a corporate social responsibility project which Farmworker Justice helped found, holds great promise for empowering hundreds of thousands of farmworkers to improve their wages and working conditions.

Through litigation, we are helping to remedy and deter systemic labor abuses. FJ's ability to represent undocumented immigrants and bring class actions law suits is critical, because most legal aid programs are prohibited from doing so and many private attorneys cannot or will not take on these cases. Regrettably, violations of farmworkers' rights are rampant and many more lawsuits should be filed.


Through advocacy, public education, litigation and coalition building, Farmworker Justice works to improve the health, safety, immigration status, wages and working conditions of farmworkers, their families and their communities.