LEGISLATIVE TESTIMONY


Testimony of Javier Ceja

To: House Committee of Business, Labor, and Consumer Affairs
Re: HB 2351
Date: March 26, 2003

Good morning. My name is Javier Ceja. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak to you today. I have lived in the United States and worked in the fields, nurseries, and canneries for over twenty years. I want to comment on the proposal to establish a system of collective bargaining in agriculture.

The way I view this, we cannot take this proposal seriously since it only represents the perspective of the growers and does not take into account the situation of the farmworker. This is a proposal from the Farm Bureau that only benefits growers. This proposal is an insult to farmworkers. It shows that growers do not take seriously the needs or interests of farmworkers. This proposal, as is, is unacceptable.

This proposal gives all the power to the growers. It seeks to control workers even more through a bureaucratic and unjust system. For example, it proposes that the grower have the right to divide the people working on his farm into separate groups, depending on whether they are permanent or temporary workers, or if they work for a labor contractor. If all the workers work on the same farm, there is no reason to put them in separate groups when it comes to union elections or negotiating a contract. This is simply a management ploy to make organizing for a union election more difficult. All the workers on a farm should have the right to vote as a united group for a union if they want it.

The entire process that is proposed to hold union elections on farms is flawed. This proposal is so bureaucratic that it does not work for us; it is necessary to have a proposal that will function given the unique circumstances faced by farmworkers. Thus, proposing that there be a waiting period of at least fourteen business days (18 calendar days) before a union election for seasonal workers doesn’t help us at all. Farmworkers do not work the entire year in one place, since harvests often come to an end within two to three weeks. There is no point in having an election once the harvest is over. Because of this it is very important to hold elections within a week at the most. It would be even better to hold them within three working days. It is necessary to respect the working conditions of farmworkers to create a functional law.

In my point of view from my testimony, this proposal only represents growers’ interests, and does more to damage farmworkers than to give them the right to unionize. Farmworkers will never unionize under this proposal. It is so unacceptable that it does not even merit discussion.





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