The agricultural industry faces significant challenges navigating complex labor laws, particularly concerning legal workforce access and immigration policies, which are critical for its survival and economic stability.
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labor laws are extremely complicated and broad
broad
and we were fortunate a number of years
ago to have a guest lecturer in the class
class
named jim bogart
and jim bogart came to salinas
as a young attorney
and took a job with the grower shipper association
association
and he became the president of the
growershipper association and helped
them for years with legal issues and supported
supported
the agriculture businesses agriculture industry
industry
and actually started here to
to
help with legal representation during the
the
1970s the the years that started
to really get the farmworkers union ufw
and cesar chavez
a lot of
so that is why he ended up in salinas
in the beginning so
jim was in our class to talk about from
leader of the grower shipper association
what his views on
agricultural labor law looked like
now it says here he's the grower shipper
association president
and i'm not going to change the slide it
actually is now past president uh jim
he's done a tremendous amount of work
in the in this area in california in general
general
for the ag industry and
and so
so
i want to give you some of the things
from his perspective and some of the
details about some of the topics that i
already have discussed with you in the
previous labor law
law uh
uh powerpoint
powerpoint
so labor and employment laws and
regulations affect
damn near everything imaginable in the ag
ag
industry now you could pause on that
previous slide
to get some ideas that you might want to
dig into maybe
maybe
something here is
something that triggers
an interest on your side and you want to
write your term paper
talk about
you could look into any of these for
your own term paper but it's a huge
broad area
and he just touches
on the tip of the iceberg that list is
actually just off the top of his head he
just typed it up real quick
uh the things that he has to deal with
so the grower shipper association
started in the
1930s way before jim
and it actually became an organization
that grew into existence because of a
labor strike at that time and
and [Music]
[Music]
so a staff of about four people work there
there
right now so it's just a small advisory
informational and legal resource for the
central coast ag community with about
500 members
in the ag industry
and it serves the primarily the tri-county
tri-county area
area
but it also
supports the ag industry in other areas
as well and there's a lot of
organizations that
farm here in the salinas valley or
some nearby area
and they also
farm in in yuma arizona for example
imperial valley california all of that so
so
it doesn't stop at the borders of our
tri county area
um again jim bogart was president
general counsel
and he came on board in 1979
and so that was later in
in the
the
era this was not in the
heat of the
the
cesar chavez years
that really started and gained most
attention but it continued it didn't
stop all of a sudden
75-76 and it all happened in one
explosive uh series of events it was
ongoing for a number of years but
but uh
uh
there were lots of strikes that
continued throughout the mid 70s into
the 80s and
and [Music]
[Music]
rightfully so
you know don't get me wrong on anything
i may have said i totally support the
workers strikes and the efforts of the
uf ufw
i think some of the things that happened
in the ag industry are
quite embarrassing and illegal and unethical
and sometimes it takes a lot of pressure
to get things to change for
social justice reforms to actually occur
so the whole idea of workers rights and
coming to grips with
california state and
u.s federal laws
dealing with workers rights
getting everything to work well together and
and
the unions or the non-union workers and
the businesses to
find common ground to get
the ag industry
work done
also food safety
largely starting in 2006 with an e coli
outbreak in 2006 there was actually a
previous one that
arguably could have started it in 2005
it kind of was the wake up call and
people started paying attention in 2005
but it really exploded with
the following year yet another e coli
bacterial outbreak in
leafy greens
uh that um
um
put food safety on the map on the international
international map
map
as well as in the psyches of the
american public that
that
started to really pay attention uh
uh
water and the ag waiver water is always
a legal issue there's a saying that uh
you know whiskey's for drinking and
waters for fighting over
and in agriculture there's so much truth
to that in any in any place the ag has
has
a huge water demand
but that doesn't mean they're stingy and
selfish and the industry is pulling
water because they want all of it for themselves
themselves
our whole
existence as a species is dependent upon
food shelter and clothing
and we are all in that battle together
and how do we solve the problems of food
shelter and clothing
the biggest portion of that starts with
agriculture so we all are responsible to
to
support agriculture no matter what
industry we're interested in
and we all have to be [Music]
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accepting of the fact that we need water
to run agriculture because we all need
it to survive
now can ag industries be more efficient
with water absolutely
absolutely
but they don't waste water indiscriminately
indiscriminately
water is expensive and it's become more
expensive and there's more pressure so
the kind of water waste that we may have
seen in the 70s 80s and even 90s
is tightening up there's much less waste
and the industry is doing a lot better
could we do better still of course we can
can
there's always things you can do to
incrementally improve what you're doing
but it's not just about water quantity
it's not about water conservation it's
also about water quality
and the pesticides and fertilizer runoff
that gets into the water or goes down into
into
our water table for the well water
lots and lots of issues going on we'll
talk about water at a later time
and then access to legal farm labor the
emphasis on legal because if you don't have
have a
a
right to work because you don't have a
green card or visa worker visa status or
something that would allow you to work
citizenship being the most obvious but
if you don't have that
you're not considered legal farm labor
and that's been getting more and more tight
tight
over the years and these things have
largely remained the same with the
exception of food safety throughout
throughout
what i would say the last 40 years it's
it's
so what are the current priorities um
water and the ag waiver which is another
class topic
as well as
access to labor are the two top ones at
the moment um in the year uh in the era
i would say it spent 10 years probably
at the top of the list food safety was it
it
and i think it's become a little more
routine a little more understood accepted
accepted
uh companies have figured it out they're
it's still crucial it's still important
there's still a lot of work to do but it's
it's
not the same urgent priority that it was
before it's slipped into third place because
because
companies have largely figured it out
and are working with it and don't have
nearly as many urgent issues
related to food safety as they used to
so what about your legal right to work
there is the
workforce act legal workforce act of
2013 introduced
by lamar smith of texas
and uh that was an amendment to the
workforce or workplace security act of 2010
2010 and
if it went through in its entirety
without change the
the
main thrust of this this
this
proposed law
was to make e-verify
mandatory for all employers throughout
the united states
and immigration worker labor
labor
green card issues are
just hot potato issues and they have been
been
for a while now and it's been almost a
topic that
can't even reach
the level of discussion i would say in
the last um
it's such a hot potato topic and there's
so many other things going around it's
it's
dropped to a background issue it's
important to a lot of people but the
problem is if you were to make e-verify
absolutely the law of the land without
making other changes it would be
devastating for our labor force because
we don't have a way to
make some of the
workers that would be
ineligible under e-verify to make them
eligible through some other program like
the ag industry would arguably be the
hardest hit and it's also
one of the dominant
industries one of a small handful of
industries that depend on uh
uh
migrant and um
and uh non-legal
non-legal worker
worker uh
uh production
production and
and
unfortunately and i find this to be an
embarrassment it's not that the workers
aren't there it's not that they wouldn't
be willing to do what is necessary to be
a legal worker it's that in this country
we have
a horrible situation where we're fighting
fighting
about these issues in a way that's about
politics and not about
getting the work done about respecting
people and getting people to work
and we should have a guest worker program
program
but there's so much racism and anti-immigrant
sentiment among some in this country
that we can't even have the discussion
without it breaking down into some bs um
um
anyway it it is a problem and e-verify
is being used more and more companies
every year are deciding to opt-in
because it's working great
but in the ag industry it is a problem
so currently uh in california
i-9s are used by a lot of companies and
you still can
use them
uh before this
uh bill um
um
there was the immigration reform and
control act by president reagan passed
to control and deter illegal immigration
it legalized many undocumented workers
so a lot of people were for it because
it gave this kind of one stop
one time pass to
undocumented workers it legalized
certain ag workers it provided sanctions
for employers who knowingly hire
undocumented workers
i really haven't seen that
put into practice very often but it
technically did the i9 form was the
primary means of compliance back in 86 but
it's now just one of two options
i-9 versus e-verify the i-9 forms
employers must examine the documents
provided with the i-9 forms
if the documents appear legitimate then
the employer is in compliance period and
and
as a human resources specialist you're
not a document expert you don't have to
go to great lengths you shouldn't go to
great lengths to try to verify the
documents they look legitimate does the
information match done
done
i'm going any further to verify employee
status opens up the employer to a
possible lawsuit so with an i9 you look
at the documents if they give you a
driver's license or social security card
that looks legit you log the number done
you hire the employee if you choose
whether you verify it links the social
security number to a name
and the employers become liable once an
employee is flagged in the system so if
the employee is flagged
they no longer can work for you or you
can't hire them in the first place
sometimes people get flagged after the fact
fact
and that could be because it was
later found that they were
not properly documented or they were a
victim of identity theft or some other
identity fraud
i know quite a few people i had one
worker that uh
shared the social security was another
another
family member so they were working here
in salinas under their social security
number and it was their social security
number but their cousin was working in i
think it was in yuma
under the same social security number
can you get away with that on an i9 yes
on a e-verify
that no longer
will work um
um
it is estimated
that 50 to 70 percent of ag workers are undocumented
undocumented
and that's a lot of people
and so there needs to be a way to do
that there there isn't any people
willing and capable to do this work
uh we've been through that in the past
where people say you're stealing jobs from
from
americans well not an ag that's not true
there might be some argument for that in
some industries like construction
that certainly does happen where undocumented
undocumented
untrained construction workers are
stealing jobs from union workers that
are being unemployed
that's a different issue not going there but
but
that argument is made in agriculture and
it doesn't hold water people have put
out jobs
um in the past in some cases
huge efforts in the state of california
to get people to work for these ag jobs
and nobody shows up
up
nobody shows up nobody will take these jobs
jobs
and there's a lot of reasons for that
i'm not going to go into the politics
and the psychology of it
but the idea that
undocumented workers or stealing jobs
from americans and agriculture is not
a valid argument
so what do we do we totally implement
e-verify that's
over 2 million
jobs cut right away
where do we fill those jobs how do we
fill those jobs who's going to do those
jobs what happens to the families of
those 2 million people
it's just unconscionable we need
a solution that makes sense
so lamar smith retired in 2019
and e-verify is part of his legacy that
he left behind after retiring a couple
years ago
the opponents the people against
e-verify are very reluctant to address
the issue
due to the current political climate and
that's been true like i said for probably
probably um
um
six years now at least seven years maybe
so it's just kind of
boiling on the back burner and e-verify
is just
sitting there
in california our representative
lundgren was approached to write a bill
for a temporary guest worker program i
think that was about 20
15. i can't remember when that exactly
there was no way that was going to get
off the ground no way
also there's something called the h2a
visa program and that is an alternative
where you can get h2a visas for people
but that's not enough
the program isn't efficient enough and
doesn't have the capacity
to replace ag workers and it's got some
problems it doesn't
it doesn't work well in the ag industry
and a lot of positions are in high volume
volume
if e-verify goes into effect h2a visas cannot
cannot
possibly fill the gap so
so
h2a visas are an alternative to i9 forms
you provide this legal status legal
to work using
using
the h2a visa program but it's extremely
cumbersome hard to do it's not efficient
at all
and some of the
h2a visa program has been
abused by certain industries i would
argue that the the
the computer
computer
and software industries have totally
abused the program because
rather than hiring an unemployed
computer programmer in the united states for
for
you know
60 70 80 000
salary that they should earn
they can get an h2a visa person from
that's not what the h2a visa is for it's
not so you can save money and
and
get uh workers
workers
because they're cheap
it's supposed to be when you can't get
workers there's nobody left unemployed
you've hired all of the unemployed
people and you're left with
no recourse
then you can go to the h2a visa program
the h2a visa program only accounts for
about two percent
of the ag labor force in california very
small percentage
the department of labor also targets h2a
visa employers so if you get an h2a visa
all of the sudden you become a target of
of
investigation by the department of labor
which totally screws up the whole process
process
now in higher paid jobs you kind of can
get away with it in the tech industry
because you've got higher paid employees
you've got the attorneys you've got
everything but for the ag industry this
is a disaster if you
don't have h2a employees
the average is about eight percent audit
rate eight percent of the industry
companies get audited unless
unless
you hire anybody with an h2a visa then
all of a sudden your whole company is
under department of labor audit at a 30 rate
rate
nearly four times as high a rate of audit
audit
that's just
the strong arm tactics of the federal
government anti-immigration
practices and this has gone on
h2a visas require the employers to
provide housing which is
great right
not always
there are a number of companies along
the arizona new mexico texas border
california border
where employers
hire people that might live in border towns
in tijuana mexicali uh san luis mexico
and they
cross the border in the morning go to
work go back home at night
you still have to provide housing just
because they have other housing
doesn't mean
that you can't you don't have to provide
it so the h2a visa program leaves
vacant housing and it's a disaster you
can't rent that housing it's very expensive
expensive
and a waste
there are other situations where people
have family members they don't want the
h2a visa housing they've already got
something set up right here in salinas
they they want to live with their uncle
because it's a perfect situation and
they don't want the h2a visa apartment
anyway i've been in some of these h2a
visa housing developments and
they're small but they're
very well maintained very clean very
well managed in my
observation and from people that i've
spoken to that live there so
so uh
uh
it is a great solution sometimes but the
red tape and the requirements can be a
problem at other times
so where will we find workers this kind
of is the exclamation point on something
i said earlier there was a welfare to
work program where dianne feinstein in
the late 90s here in california offered
100 000 jobs to people who were
unemployed who were collecting welfare
trying to give them an opportunity to
earn money a hundred thousand job
openings in agriculture
three people showed up
to get jobs
and i think
two of them quit almost immediately
after finding out what working an egg is
really like um
um
you know the people who grew up an egg i
don't care what color your skin is what
your background is
uh you know ag is hard work and for
somebody on an unemployment from another
industry it's an eye-opener
you go out there with a hoe in your hand
thinning lettuce it's hard work
you're harvesting
strawberries it's hard work
so there is no quick fix
e-verify in georgia um
georgia implemented
any verify program
and immediately boom 65 percent of the
ag workforce was lost because of
e-verify crops were rotting in the
fields emergency plans approved to
create a prison or release program and
within days the prisoners were saying
send me back to prison we don't want to
work in the fields no way and it was a
disaster i don't remember what year this was
was um
2015 maybe
you can look it up it's not a big deal i
will never ask you when was it
but it wasn't that long ago it wasn't
recently either but still it showed the
disaster when he verify is broadly
implemented in
states that have large agricultural production
production
magnifying glass on that problem that we have
have
and unfortunately the same business
owners that
very conservative that are talking about the
policies that could easily be argued as
anti-immigrant policies
it's the same
people that will turn right around after talking
talking
badly about immigration will turn around
and say we need these workers how are we
so for example the
hospitality industry the major hotel
chain massive amounts of
highly conservative
people own
the major hotel systems across our country
country
yet who's working in their kitchens and
providing made service and
bellhop service
so
you can't have it both ways we need a solution
so at the same time all of this is
happening with
e-verify enforcement is ramping up
it has been for quite some time it goes
up and down um there's social security
mismatches so the system isn't perfect
if e-verify kicks you out it doesn't
matter if there's a glitch in the
computer system you're out you can't be
hired you've got to find a way to fix it
and that's really hard especially if
somebody is trying to work and they
don't have a lot of money they don't
have a lot of resources they don't know
where to turn
so we
need to do something
the grower shipper's position is that if they
they
want to implement e-verify fine just
don't do it alone you need a guest
worker program of some sort that makes
sense you need to be able to provide
an opportunity for people to work
and when properly informed seventy
percent of voters approve a guest worker program
and unfortunately it's how you ask the question
question
a lot of people say people are against
this guest worker program what question
did you actually ask the question might be
be
should the united states bend over
backwards to give jobs to
illegals who don't have uh
uh
legal status to even be in this country
or who illegally came to this country
and broke our laws
well you say that and people say no
we shouldn't just give people jobs who
break our laws
but that's a disingenuous statement and
people come and ask these questions in a
survey and they lie about what's really
going on and
and [Music]
[Music]
the reality is that the vast majority of
undocumented workers came here because
of companies wanting them to come here
jobs and and they did everything they
can to help provide for their family
they're wonderful people trying to do
their best
there's this bait and switch bs in the
united states where you can be here for
this but not for this and
and we should stop
stop
that mess
and help people work
work legally
legally
open out in the open proper
proper
guest worker status pathway to
citizenship whatever
our immigration policies in this country are
are
a joke
so what happens if we don't act well
economic forces are pushing already
that forces
increased imports which
which
has a problem with our trade deficit
which is already too high
uh food costs are increased because we
have to bring things in from other
countries which always ends up costing
more in the long run and labor costing
more for domestic production
production
increased problems with food safety
food security uh loss of our skilled
workforce and indirect costs to our
communities it's a disaster
these are our family and friends that
get screwed up in this and
and
you know i know quite a few people that
would be really messed up with e-verify
no guest worker program
and i feel very bad for people that i
know that i call friends that uh
maybe you're one of them
what do they do how much stress do they
have to endure
about possible
retaliation maybe even getting
kicked out of the country
so i'm going to take a really quick break
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