Farmworkers' Union Set to Announce First Natl. Contract for Guest Workers

NYT: Farmworkers' Union Is Set to Announce First National Contract for Guest Workers
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
Published: April 11, 2006

With Congress debating a major expansion in the program for guest workers, the nation's largest union of farmworkers planned to announce today that it had signed the first nationwide contract covering agricultural guest workers.

The union, the United Farm Workers, and Global Horizons, a labor contractor based in Los Angeles, have signed an agreement that provides employer-paid medical care, a seniority system and a grievance procedure to help ensure that farms comply with state and federal laws.

"This is huge, because we're setting a whole new standard of rights and benefits for guest workers," said Erik Nicholson, the union's Pacific Northwest director. "Guest workers have been the most exploitable and vulnerable workers short of slaves in the United States."

Global Horizons, one of the nation's largest suppliers of agricultural guest workers, has nearly 1,000 in the country now, but plans to have 3,000 to 5,000 by peak harvest season this summer.

The company, which has workers in more than a dozen states, signed the union contract in part to help improve its image after Washington State revoked its license to do business there because of violations alleged by state investigators. The state accused it of failing to pay Thai guest workers their promised wages, putting them in inadequate housing, not paying enough unemployment insurance taxes and improperly withholding state income taxes....

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/11/us/11union.html

K and R. :kick:

If they can do it in agriculture, there is no reason it can't be done in other fields of work.