The United Farm Workers Union will recruit, train and deploy its members and affiliated activists to presidential swing states this election in support of President Joe Biden.
UFW endorsed Biden’s reelection campaign on Tuesday, praising him for his support of union workers across the county.
“This is a president and a vice president that have been the most pro-union, pro-labor in my lifetime,” Julie Chavez Rodriguez, the Biden-Harris campaign manager and granddaughter of UFW co-founder Cesar Chavez said at a press conference announcing the endorsement.
Bonita Villalobos-Rivera said the promised action by UFW will be “to help ensure our communities turn out and support candidates who see us, who know us, and who support us.”
The UFW endorsement comes as labor strikes have increased across the country: from student workers last year, to screenwriters, actors and hotel workers this summer in Los Angeles, and now United Auto Workers at all three major automakers: Ford, Chevrolet and General Motors.
Biden joined some of the striking UAW members on the picket line in Michigan on Tuesday. The White House said this makes Biden the first sitting-president to join picketing workers. UAW members are asking for higher pay and improved benefits, among other demands.
Former President Donald Trump, who is also seeking another term in office, is expected to speak with former and current UAW members in Michigan on Wednesday. The venue for that engagement, a factory which also manufactures auto parts, is not union-affiliated.
A group of about 20 workers dressed in white UFW and Biden-Haris T-shirts gathered behind a wooden lectern on a dusty access road between parsley fields in various phases of production at Muranaka Farms near Moorpark in Ventura County.
About 15-minutes down the road is the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library where the second GOP debate will take place on Wednesday.
“There’s going to be a lot more extreme positions and policies that we’ll likely hear tomorrow night coming from the debate stage,” Chavez Rodriguez said. In contrast, she said, “We stand here rooted in the values that we are ensuring that our workers have the wages that they deserve, that they have the protections that they deserve, that we continue to champion what we know are important efforts to continue to grow our economy and to ensure that our economy is fair.”
Unlike other unions currently striking, farm workers do not enjoy the same protections under national labor laws. In many states, they are not guaranteed overtime nor is their right to strike or support a union protected.
“The president has been really clear that past labor laws that have excluded not just farm workers, but [child-care and home] workers, need to be modernized to ensure that they’re protecting all workers,” Chavez Rodriguez said.
Antonio De Loera-Brust, the UFW Communications Director, said the Biden administration has championed all workers, including undocumented workers. He highlighted the Department of Homeland Security that protects migrant laborers from deportation if they are involved in a dispute with their employer. Loera-Brust said the UFW has already used the policy in its unionization campaigns.
“That’s why it’s so important to have a president who’s truly pro-labor,” He added. “They’re also going to be a president who’s pro-immigrant because let’s face it, immigrants are such an important part of American life at this point.”
Despite the symbolic significance of the UFW and its founder – Biden keeps a bust of Cesar Chávez in the Oval Office – the union has struggled to maintain its membership. Despite the fact that there are more than half a million farm workers in California alone, according to University of California Davis’s non-partisan Rural Migration News, UFW membership hovers a little over 5,000 statewide.
“Any time we see that my tata Cesar and the farmworkers movement is recognized, especially when it comes from somebody like the president, we are extremely honored,” Andres Chavez, grandson of Cesar Chavez and executive director of the National Chavez Center, said. “We know that when the president will be making decisions on whatever issues they may be, he will have my tata’s example and values to guide him in that process.”
Melchor Rios, who works in the broccoli fields in Salinas for a union company, traveled to Ventura county just for the chance to meet Chavez Rodriguez. In Spanish, he said, “We’re trusting that Julie is going to take a message to President Biden that we are with him.”
Mark Armendariz-Gonzales contributed to this report.