Farmworker Justice

Farmworker Justice is a national advocacy organization helping migrant farmworkers improve their wages, working conditions, health, immigration status and access to justice. We engage in education, advocacy, litigation and coalition-building.

Why do we exist?

Migrant and seasonal farmworkers -- the people who put food on our table -- are the poorest of the working poor.  Government policies that protect working people often discriminate by denying farmworkers those protections.  Legal recourse for farmworkers is difficult.  Geographic isolation, legal status, language and cultural barriers, and poverty combine to prevent many farmworkers from seeking or obtaining assistance to improve their health and working conditions

Farmworker Justice was created in 1981 to help empower farmworkers to improve their wages and working conditions, immigration status, health, occupational safety, and access to justice.

What have you accomplished?

Our advocacy, education, research, and litigation have benefited tens of thousands of farmworkers and their communities in the following ways:

Our advocacy has helped farmworkers win major improvements in safety and working conditions by:

• limiting exposure to toxic pesticides
• gaining higher wages for farmworkers under the agricultural guestworker program
• improving access to drinking water and toilets in the field

Our educational efforts have helped prevent illnesses and injuries by:

• training hundreds of farmworkers and community organizations who, in turn, trained thousands of others 
• working with and training community-based groups on how to reduce the incidence of HIV in rural Latino communities
• educating health care providers about the particular challenges farmworkers experience

Our research and analysis has provided farmworkers and advocates with information needed to:

• advocate for farmworker rights in Congress and federal agencies on labor, immigration, health, pesticide safety, and justice issues
• educate the public and policy makers with the publications such as: Weeding Out Abuses:  Recommendations for a Law-Abiding Farm Labor System with Oxfam America and No Way to Treat a Guest:  How the H-2A Agricultural Guestworker Program Fails US and Foreign Workers. 

Our litigation efforts have:

• won hundreds of thousands of dollars in back pay and changes in companies’ employment practices for sugar cane cutters, apple harvesters, tree planters and strawberry pickers
• reformed government policies on guestworker programs and pesticides
• assisted legal aid attorneys around the country in bringing lawsuits to vindicate violations of farmworkers’ rights.

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