\u201cWe want everything that you\u2019re doing here to reach the hearts of the growers and the heart of the governor,\u201d said Huerta, before shouting \u201cSi se puede,\u201d a phrase she originated in 1972, while campaigning against legislation that denied workers\u2019 right to organize during harvest seasons.<\/p>\n
Over the next several weeks, participants are expected to march roughly 15 miles per day, before reaching the state capital in Sacramento on Aug. 26, which Gov. Gavin Newsom declared \u201cCalifornia Farmworker Day\u201d last October. They\u2019ll be marching in the scorching summer heat, behind the same Lady of Guadalupe banner that UFW has been using since the 1960s.<\/p>\n
According to Elizabeth Strater, director of strategic campaigns at UFW, that history was palpable during the march\u2019s launch, which she called a kind of \u201cfamily reunion\u201d for farmworkers, organizers, clergy and other union workers who attended in solidarity with the farmworker movement.<\/p>\n
The new bill \u2014 the Agricultural Labor Relations Voting Choice Act, AB 2183 \u2014 would allow farmworkers to cast a vote on unionization through mail-in ballots or at a drop-off location. Current regulations dictate that workers must cast ballots at in-person-only polling places, typically located at their place of employment, where they may face intimidation from supervisors.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe vast majority of those elections are on the growers\u2019 property, under the watchful and often retaliatory eye of their bosses,\u201d said Strater, who explained that such a system has \u201can incredibly chilling effect\u201d on a largely undocumented workforce. <\/p>\n
Even as policymakers have lauded farmworkers as essential workers at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, they\u2019ve largely sided with the agricultural industry in curtailing or neglecting workers\u2019 right to organize over the past several years. As of 2021, fewer than three percent of farmworkers<\/a> belong to a union, and farmworkers still lack the right to collectively bargain and unionize in most states.<\/p>\n On Cesar Chavez Day this April, farmworkers and advocates organized marches<\/a> in 13 California cities criticizing the governor\u2019s continued refusal to meet with farmworkers to discuss the most recent bill. Newsom also vetoed a similar bill<\/a> in September 2021, which would have allowed for mail-in unionization ballots. <\/p>\n Farmworker organizers faced another blow in June 2021, when the Supreme Court ruled in Cedar Point Nursery v. Hassid<\/em><\/a> that labor organizations could no longer go on grower\u2019s property to meet with workers.<\/p>\n Still, longtime organizers like Roberto \u201cEl Capitan\u201d Bustos, who led UFW\u2019s famed 400-mile march to Sacramento in 1966, were in attendance on Wednesday to encourage marchers to persevere despite political setbacks. <\/p>\n