Letter to Labor Sec. Hilda Solis

Letter from Jerry Cohen, Co-founder, LABOR JUSTICE, to Hilda Solis, United States Secretary of Labor

Secretary of Labor Hilda SolisMarch 8, 2009

United States Department of Labor

200 Constitution Avenue N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20210

Secretary Solis:

In 1935 when Congress passed the Wagner Act, it specifically excluded “agricultural laborers” and “domestics.” Isn’t it time for the Obama administration to reverse this injustice and include farmworkers and domestics as an integral part of any reform of the National Labor Relations Act?

To address this question honestly, the best place to start is South Africa, which in 1924 solidified the foundation of apartheid when an alliance of white workers and Afrikaner nationalists formed a Nationalist Labor Pact government. That year the Industrial Conciliation Act was passed, setting up the legal machinery for collective bargaining. “Blacks” were specifically excluded from the definition of “employees” who were to receive the protections of the act.

Now while Congress was not so blunt as to deal out “blacks” and “browns” specifically in their New Deal labor legislation, most farm workers and domestics are in fact black or brown. For 73 years our sleight of hand has been more subtle but no less damaging because race, powerlessness and economic injustice are inextricably intertwined.

Despite the fact that farmworkers were operating in this legal wilderness, Cesar Chavez led an extraordinary organizational effort in the 60’s and 70’s when the United Farm Workers won contracts and passage of the California Agricultural Labor Relations Act of 1975. I represented the union from 1967 until 1981 and have always hoped that some day farmworkers throughout the country would have the same protections as farmworkers covered by the California Act. Any just national labor law reform must include farmworkers and domestics. If not now, when?

Yours truly,
Jerry Cohen
(831) 659-5562

Copies to Congressman Howard Berman
LeRoy Chatfield, Director, Farmworker
Movement Documentation Project