Unions without Borders: Organizing and Enlightening Immigrant Farm Workers

Abstract

Abstract Farm workers pose special problems for union organizing due to their legal status, their high rates of turnover, their employment through subcontracts, and the temporary and seasonal dimensions of farm work. Yet by organizing farm workers, unions have developed and refined strategies that point to methods of meeting the challenges of contemporary work environments in and out of agriculture. This includes organizing workers across fragmented space, whether transnational or transregional, and organizing workers who are sifted into production regimes via subcontractual relationships. This paper examines two farm worker unions – the Farm Labor Organizing Committee and the Coalition of Immokalee Workers – in terms of their successes and failures with farm labor organizing. It finds that boycotts, the use of fine arts, balancing local and transnational interests, and building relationships based on confianza (trust) are critical to the formation and maintenance of effective union organization.

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