Sixty years ago, in 1966, farmworkers in Starr County took matters into their own hands and began a strike against the Ag industry because of extremely low wages being paid when they worked in the hot summer months.
This strike ended when the Texas Rangers were called in by the Governor and the growers to shut it down. Unafraid, these workers raised the ante and took their message to the rest of the state. On July 4, 1966, these intrepid farm workers began to walk from Rio Grande city through the valley to the towns of South Texas organizing support along the way demanding a law establishing a minimum wage.
On Labor Day 1966, they arrived at the Austin State Capitol and were met by 12,000 people from across the state showing their support. Five years later in 1971, legislation was enacted to establish the Texas minimum wage at $1.25 an hour.
The Farmworker movement was born in South Texas.
In 1978, the United Farm workers began an organizing campaign that led to the passage from 1983 to 1987 of historic Farmworker laws which included workers compensation, unemployment compensation, pesticide right to know legislation, the banning of the short, handled hoe, and raising the minimum wage from $1.25 an hour to the federal level of $7.25 an hour.
Since that time, the lives of farm workers should have improved. But instead of seeing improvement, farm workers today are faced with an even worse situation.
Every time farmworkers fight and win rights to improve their lives - the Corporate Industrial Agriculture Bosses find a way to use their political power to get workers for their farms as close to slavery as they can.
Further: This whole system requires corruption and corrupt people to manage it. There are people making a profit off these workers every step in the process to come to the US as an H2a worker. Recruiters in Mexico charge hundreds of dollars per worker to get them on the list for a worker Visa. If you want to get on that bus with a grower in the US, the worker pays that recruiter some money and continues paying that recruiter money even while under the contract. Recruiters take down the home addresses in Mexico where their families live, a clear threat that if they do not pay their families will suffer. The hotels that house these workers under the contract, also are making a bundle of money from them, so nobody is complaining.
Local workers who live in the US are being pushed out of their work because growers would rather have an H2A worker who cannot make a complaint rather than a local worker who has the ability to file complaints if their wages aren't paid, if that worker gets hurt on the job, if their unemployment insurance is not being paid. It's a sweetheart deal.
Further, because the construction industry is bleeding due to the ICE raids, the construction industry is now also getting H2A workers.
I am calling on all people to investigate the H2A program and commit your organizations to end this current legal slavery; join this campaign to demand that our congressional leadership do away with the H2 A program. In 1964, after 20 years, the Bracero Program was brought to an end. We must end the H2A program now, before we become accustomed to slavery in our backyards.
There are a number of bills in Congress that we must not allow to pass. HR 9535; HR 1891; HR 3227; HR 4367; HR 6122; HR 6847.
Editor's Note: The above guest column was penned by Rebecca Flores, former director of the Texas chapter of the United Farm Workers labor union. The column appears in the Rio Grande Guardian with the permission of the author. The column coincides with a gathering of members of the Unión de Campesinos at La Unión del Pueblo Entero's Union hall, located at the corner of Old 83 and César Chávez Road between San Juan and Alamo. The meeting takes place Saturday, October 10, at 10:00 a.m. The gathering will remember the 1966 Starr County farmworker strike and march, reflect on the organizing victories that followed, and discuss what is happening in farm labor today.
