‘Farmworkers Seed the Future!’— statewide coalition to meet with Legislature next Tuesday
Updated Jan. 19, 2025
What did you eat for breakfast this morning? Chances are the wheat in your toast came from Skagit Valley fields, the milk in your cereal from local dairy farms and the apple you grabbed on your way out the door from Whatcom County orchards.
Behind each bite is the labor of farmworkers who plant, harvest, process and deliver our food — and next week, they’ll be back at the state capitol, fighting for their rights.
“Campesinos Siembran el Futuro!” or “Farmworkers Seed the Future!” is the lobbying cry for the 2025 Farmworkers Tribunal, set to take place in Olympia on Jan. 21. An estimated 200 to 300 farmworkers, food justice organizations, labor councils, union members and more will gather to participate in the legislative process and engage with policymakers.
Organized by Community to Community Development (C2C) and Familias Unidas por la Justicia, the event aims to highlight human rights violations that judicial and political bodies ignore or dismiss.
Among the key issues on the agenda are climate crises, worker protections, community-based worker sourcing and access to healthcare.
Rosalinda Guillen, founder and lead strategist of C2C, emphasized that healthcare and the impact of climate change are among the recurring issues brought to legislators since the event’s inception 12 years ago. Farmworkers struggle to earn wages to afford health care, let alone the cost of living.
A significant factor contributing to the wage crisis is the job loss experienced by local workers as large corporations increasingly rely on year-round H-2A workers, Guillen explained.
“They’re importing workers from Mexico, and a lot of the local farmworkers are losing their jobs and losing income because of that,” Guillen said.
According to the Washington State Institute for Public Policy, Washington farms employed about 113,174 workers in 2022, making up about 3% of total employment in the state. A report from the American Immigration Council revealed that 33,049 were H-2A workers.
While outsourcing H-2A workers costs the federal government more, many large-scale farmers justify the practice by citing alleged worker shortages — a claim Guillen disputes, saying that the incentive for hiring H-2A workers lies in their temporary visa status.
“They don’t have a right to strike, they don’t have a right to demand better wages or better working conditions. They’re basically under the total control of the employer with no rights,” Guillen said, which leaves them more vulnerable to exploitation.
A key part of the problem is the lack of reliable data. Farmers are not required to report data on local farmworker numbers, making their claims of labor shortages difficult to verify. To address this, C2C successfully pushed for the passage of Substitute House Bill 2226 last year, marking the initial steps toward requiring better data collection from farm employers.
Next week, Guillen shared, the tribunal aims to pose a critical question to legislators: “‘Do you want to have a controllable, slave-like labor force in Washington State?’ We want them to understand that there are farmworker families living here, who are our neighbors, and they need these jobs.”
In addition to labor rights, the tribunal is presenting an economic argument. Guillen emphasized that farmers are not compelled to hire H-2A workers. Instead, she views it as a choice — or a moral decision — to prioritize them over local workers.
“Pay to local workers is spent in our communities, in the local economy,” Guillen said. “The H-2A labor force, all of that payroll goes back to the home country that the workers are coming from, whether it be Mexico or other areas of South America.”
For Guillen and the C2C team, the goal of achieving a local and fair food system involves dismantling the influence of industrial corporations that marginalize family farmers and suppress their voices.
“They’re controlling the marketplace, they’re controlling the environment, and most of all, they’re controlling the political system,” Guillen said. “They’re the ones shaping the laws and rules governing food production. A local or fair food system would ensure political power for family farmers, support organic farming and prioritize sustainable practices that produce healthy food for everyone.”
Among local allies, C2C and Familias Unidas por la Justicia will be joined by Latino Civic Alliance, Front and Centered,Washington State Labor Council, Latinos en Spokane, Puget Sound Sage, Empowering Latina Leadership in Action and Jobs with Justice.
[Ed.: A previous version of this article erroneously cited Senate Bill 5476, which would limit to 12 weeks per year when employers might employ farmworkers for up to 50 hours per week before overtime applies, as having been enacted. The bill was introduced in 2023 and reintroduced in 2024.]
— By Sophie Cadran
Also read in Salish Current:
“New funding to build farmworker housing in the Pacific Northwest, nationwide,” May 1, 2024