Brinksmanship: Activists' Wage Court Gambit Threatens Thousands of Farmworker Jobs

Save Family Farming Show

As part of a legal ploy--ostensibly to allow certain farmworkers to make more money during fruit harvests--a group of labor activists is pushing a federal judge to block guest farmworkers in Washington state. The activists' legal game essentially amounts to a scorched-earth approach to wage negotiations that ultimately threatens tens of thousands of farmworkers' jobs and the survival of a wide swath of the state's fruit production. Enrique Gastelum, Worker and Farmer Labor Association CEO, tells Dillon the same activist group that's now claiming workers will be harmed if they don't get piece rates years ago actually argued against piece-rate wages for farmworkers.