Will a new generation of activists finish what Cesar Chavez started?
All over the country this week—in classrooms, community centers, and living rooms—Americans are honoring Cesar Chavez, the civil rights icon who co-founded the United Farm Workers (UFW) of America. Regrettably, not everyone celebrating Chavez on his commemorative holiday may be aware that the workers whose rights he and others fought so hard to protect are arguably more vulnerable now than they were at the labor union’s height.
The data speaks for itself:
- There are an estimated 2.5 million farmworkers in the U.S., and the workforce is young: the average age of a farmworker is 36, and 25% are under 24—including an estimated 3% who are children between 14 and 17-years-old.
- As an industry, agriculture in the U.S. generated $835 billion (that’s almost 5% of the Gross Domestic Product) in 2014. Yet the average annual income for an individual farmworker today is between $10,000 and $12,499. The average family income for a farmworker household isn’t much better, at $15,000 – $17,499—significantly lower than the federal poverty threshold of $24,036 for a family of four.
- Nearly 8 in 10 farmworkers are foreign born, and language is a major barrier for most. Nearly two-thirds reported speaking either little or no English, and 38% say they cannot read English “at all.”
- An estimated 99% of all crop workers (who have the most physically taxing and lowest paying farm jobs) are Latinos, and at least half of all U.S. farm workers are undocumented—which means they’re barred from receiving most federally subsidized services, including Medicaid and food stamps.
- Meanwhile, only 34% of farmworkers report having some form of health insurance, and a majority of those pay out-of-pocket for their care. This, despite the well-documented occupational hazards associated with farm labor, such as prolonged exposure to pesticides, heat exhaustion, and mechanical accidents like tractor overturns. Each day, about 243 agricultural workers suffer a serious “lost-work-time injury,” according to the Center for Disease Control, and 5% of those injuries cause permanent damage.
- Despite the obvious lack of basic labor protections in the agriculture industry, only 2% of farmworkers belong to labor unions, according to a 2013 Center for Progressive Reform report.
To be sure, Chavez’ dream of a well-organized and empowered farm labor force has yet to be fully realized.
That point wasn’t lost on the 1,000 or so organizers, politicians, teachers and students who gathered last Saturday at the San Diego Convention Center to pay their respects to the late labor leader, at an event organized by the student-led Cesar Chavez Service Club.
One of the speakers was Marshall Ganz, a lecturer at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, who spent 16 years working alongside Chavez in the 60’s and 70’s when the UFW was at the peak of its powers. He spoke of marches and boycotts past, but also about the existing need for young people to get involved in labor issues and embrace the idea of service to others.
After the breakfast, Ganz sat down with Fusion to talk about the farmworker movement and what the future could hold if a new generation of activists is willing to pick up the torch.
It’s been more than five decades since Cesar Chavez began organizing farmworkers in California, yet today they’re still among the most vulnerable workers in the country. What happened to the movement?
I think the Union was at its peak strength from about 1968 to 1983 or so, and after that it went into decline. We had an internal problem in the union—you know, there are a lot of people who have written about exactly what happened. But basically, there was a leadership crisis. It’s tragic, because for that period of say, 15 years, we made a huge difference in the lives of farmworkers and their families, the broader working community, and the community more generally. It’s like that Bob Dylan song: “You’re either busy being born or you’re busy dying”—you’re either growing or you’re shrinking. It began to go backwards around ’82, ’83, and… today [farm working] conditions are terrible. And the whole job has to be done all over again.
Where would you hope to see young organizers and activists focus their attention, in regards to the farming industry in particular?