Fellow Worker Noah interviews Fellow Worker Edgar of Familias Unidas por la Justicia

So I know that Familias Unidas and the Whatcom Skagit branch of the IWW have had a good relationship with each other over the past few years. But I was wondering if you could tell me a little bit about Familias Unidas?

Okay, well, it’s an independent farm worker union. It’s based here in Skagit County, and we have over 500 members. It’s mostly Mixteco and Triqui indigenous people from Mexico. We have a collective bargaining agreement with Sakuma Brothers Farm here in Burlington, Washington. We do have members all throughout the state, doing different types of work like apples, to different harvests that are around the state. But the collective bargaining agreement is just specifically for this one farm. But you know, anybody that’s a farm worker can join the union and ask for representation. We try to stretch out as much as we can all over the state and help out workers wherever they may be around Washington.

So I take it that a lot of these workers are essentially recent migrants to the United States, they’re looking for work, and agricultural work is more accessible to them. I imagine that they have a lot of common work experience, and judging by the information, some common cultural experiences as well. How does that impact the formation and the solidarity of that union?

It’s very rare to have a union that’s made up of farmworkers to organize a farm worker union, because of history and because of political legislation. Social norms and cultural norms present a perception of what farmworkers are and what they do. And it’s purposely done so because the agricultural industry is very powerful and always has been since the inception of the United States. It has always relied on cheap labor, exploitable labor. It’s based on plain cheap plantation style agriculture. I think that current day, most of the work in agriculture is done by immigrants, undocumented immigrants, mostly from Mexico and Central America, even though there’s more folks now from Asia, in Jamaica and the Bahamas other parts of South America, just people trying to escape the situations where they’re from trying to get an opportunity and survive economically here in the United States.

I think that in itself lends itself to employers taking advantage of that situation where a lot of the rules are already in favor of the employer. The employer can basically harass and intimidate workers into producing and putting up with any kind of situation because of the threat of deportation and having people sent back home. Because of the lack of oversight and enforcement of labor rules, especially in agriculture, it makes it really hard for workers to organize and are wanting to step up and voice their concerns, even though in theory we have the protections and freedom of assembly.

You know, it’s more complicated when you enter the workforce, and especially if you’re coming from a marginalized community that’s very vulnerable to a lot of these systemic, racist attacks. Because of language barriers, cultural and societal norms, your labor not being respected, all of those things combined make it so that an immigrant workforce is highly susceptible to exploitation of all types.

Even if you wanted to fight back, there’s a system so you don’t become successful. Because of the leadership of the workers, we were able to fight back. And in our instance, we were able to win, but we’ve also seen many instances where workers fight back and the retaliations are severe.

So, you know, I think that that culture, though, of organizing and fighting back, I think that’s something that’s already really built in for farmworkers, even going back to our homelands. There’s this resistance, whether it be by resistance to colonization, or capitalism or displacement, I think that’s really ingrained in us. And you see certain sparks and flashes of the power we have every so often. So that’s why you do see waves of strikes in strawberry fields or apple orchards and anywhere there’s immigrant workers, because there’s only a certain amount of humiliation a community can take before we fight back.

Going back to earlier in the conversation, you were talking about some common experiences that a lot of these farmworkers face, whether that’s trying to immigrate to the United States, or trying to organize amongst their co-workers when they could face deportation, harassment, racial bias, racialized attacks, and so on. Can you speak to some of those common experiences and how that helped shape Familias Unidas as it formed as a union?

I think because of how the conditions are everywhere, almost in every place you go in agriculture are similar. It’s very top down. But to know this, the kind of institution or kind of culture that exists within agriculture, where the boss has the ultimate word on everything. And workers are subservient to that. Anywhere you go, it’s not just one farm or this farm, it’s almost everywhere. If you go to one farm and you quit expecting better treatment at another farm — which you might — you still have that same structure in place. I think that’s a common experience a lot of farmworkers have faced not only in this generation, but prior generations as well. Going back into history, this power structure has always existed.
I think that experience of knowing that no matter where you go, you will be treated the same, I think that in itself can cause a sense of helplessness. However, I think in the formation of Familias Unidas there was an opportunity here where a worker said, “This is where we’re gonna make a stand at this one farm.” Because we know if we go anywhere else, it’s gonna be the same thing. If we’re going to fight, then this is the place where we’re gonna fight and we’re gonna try to win and change at least this one farm.

I think that was one of the main things that created Familias Unidas that was different, I think in the past, because workers could have just quit and gone to another farm. But again, knowing that there was unity, and there was a lot of energy there for workers, and an opportunity to really go and create a change. And this one workplace, workers decided to stick at this one place and fight. And, you know, at first, it wasn’t even for a collective bargaining agreement, it was just for like, getting their friends that have been fired their jobs back and their housing fixed. And then eventually the campaign developed as the workers saw that the only way to have permanent change is to have a collective bargaining agreement. So that was like the beginnings of a campaign to get a contract. . . 80% of the workers voted for the union in September of 2016, and from there, the contract negotiations began in 2017. By the beginning of that season, there was a collective bargaining agreement that was agreed to.

What do you hope for in the future of the union? How can we better support migrant farm workers when they decide to band together and organize like this?

Our goal is not to become like the one union to represent every farmworker. I think we want to assist workers in finding their own path. Whether that be true collective bargaining or just a solidarity union we want our role to be to support workers and their decisions in whatever way they may choose to go. We would like to share our experiences, like organizing principles and contract negotiation, and other things that people don’t really hear about. We like to share all that knowledge to people that are really interested in organizing so that we can build a solidarity network throughout the United States and internationally. I will think that for the union in the near future, we want to start expanding and really going all across the state and connecting with people that wanna organize and create the conditions so that if there is an uprising of workers, we are able to assist them in any way that they want to be, in the direction they want to take their movement.

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