Key takeaways:
1. The Little Norris-LaGuardia Act already provides legal protections for people not covered under the National Labor Relations Act.
2. Farmworkers unions in Washington state represent less than half a percent of the total number of farmworkers in our state.
3. Washington state's agricultural community is intrinsically linked together. Our farms earned negative $294.6 million in 2024. If our farms fail, farmworkers will be forced to find work outside of agriculture.
Senate Bill 6045 and House Bill 2409 will not prevent bad people from being bad people.
Both the Washington state Senate and House committees on labor held concurrent hearings on the bills which would create collective bargaining for farmworkers in our state Tuesday.
The keystone of testimonies in support of the bills were stories of farmworkers being paid less than minimum wage, being assaulted by their employers, and worse. It is compelling, and heartbreaking, testimony.
When people treat other people as though they are unimportant and laws don’t matter, a collective bargaining unit will not change the hearts of bad people.
Both SB 6045 and HB 2409 outline identical plans for collective bargaining in Washington state’s agricultural sector. Under those plans every person involved in the food supply chain from farm to plate is eligible to create a union through a card-check system and strike for up to three months before coming to the negotiation table with final demands.
Farmworkers in our state already have the ability to voluntarily form collective bargaining units, if they wish. Under RCW 49.32.020 individuals have the right to bargain for themselves either individually or collectively in the interest of protecting their ability to earn a living. Under the RCW, which is commonly called the Little Norris-LaGuardia Act, farmworkers and others not covered by the National Labor Relations Act are afforded similar protections as the NLRA provides with those protections being enforced by a state’s department of labor.
Washington state has two farmworker unions that already exist – United Farm Workers (UFW) of Washington in Yakima County and Familias Unidas por la Justicia (FUJ) in Skagit County. Both unions benefitted directly from the existence of the Little Norris-LaGuardia Act in their formation here. UFW does not list a total membership in Washington state and FUJ notes about 500 members in the state.
Yet, supporters of this legislation, including union organizers have been given an out-sized voice in the discussion around farm work, despite the average of nearly 113,000 farmworkers in Washington state and the concentration of farm work being primarily in Yakima, Grant, and Chelan counties in eastern Washington. Based on FUJ’s listed membership numbers, they represent just 0.4 percent of the farmworker population of our state. Hardly a representative sample.
During testimony, one of the FUJ’s members stated, “we believe in democracy,” in support of SB 6045 and went on to say that if a majority of workers on a farm wanted to form a union, under the bill, then a union can be formed through the card-check system.
However, there is no opportunity for a person to opt out of the union once it is formed and a narrow window during which dissention regarding how the union operates can be brought to the fore.
Supporters of both bills claimed the bills were about “fairness” and “protection” for farmworkers. However, protections from the alleged under-payment, physical violence, and various other accusations against employers noted in testimony cannot be doled out by union representatives; those are the responsibility of law enforcement.
Washington state’s farm community is already splitting apart with farm income at a staggering negative $294.6 million for 2024 and recording labor costs of $3.49 billion the same year. Our state’s farmers pay 462 percent more in labor costs than any other state in the country, making us the leader in agricultural wages.
Divisive bills like SB 6045 and HB 2409 will not change the hearts of bad people. But they might put good people out of jobs and business. If we want to support our farmworkers, we must support the entire agricultural community because they are intrinsically linked; if one fails, the other fails.
