Remarks by Arturo S. Rodriguez, President
United Farm Workers of America
Telephone news conference announcing
new EPA pesticide rules for farm workers
September 28, 2015
It is a privilege to join Administrator McCarthy and Secretary Perez for this momentous announcement.
As President of the United Farm Workers and having spent my life fighting alongside farm workers in the field, I have seen up close the consequences of farm workers not being afforded key and essential workplace protections granted to other U.S. laborers
Past discriminatory practices forced farm workers to be excluded from major federal labor laws since the 1930s. Then, most farm workers in the Southern U.S. were African Americans. In California, they were mostly from Mexico and the Philippines—and Mexican Americans born in the U.S. such as Cesar Chavez and his family. We just celebrated this weekend the 50th anniversary of the brave women and men who walked out on strike in Delano when first forming the United Farm Workers—and today’s announcement is a dream come true.
Protecting both farm workers and consumers has been a hallmark of the United Farm Workers since the 1960s. The first time DDT and a few 2 other toxic pesticides were banned in the United States was not by the EPA in was via a UFW contract with a grape grower in 1967.
The UFW has continued negotiating union contracts with pesticide protections. Our founder Cesar Chavez asked, “What good does it do to achieve the blessings of collective bargaining and make economic progress for people when their health is destroyed in the process?”
The union exposed cancer clusters in the Central Valley during the ‘80s.
Cesar Chavez’s last—and longest—public fast, of 36 days, in 1988 was over the pesticide poisoning of farm workers and their children.
The UFW helped enact basic pesticide protections in California, Texas and Washington state during the ‘80s, ‘90s and early 2000s. They included posting in the fields, wait periods before re-entry and pesticide drift notifications near schools.
We have worked with President Obama, EPA Administrator McCarthy, Secretary Perez and others in the administration to end this discrimination against farm workers.
Here is what this means for farm workers now in all 50 of our United States: it will no longer permissible for children to apply pesticides – this new EPA rule requires all pesticide applicators to be at least 18 years old. Additionally, this measure enhances pesticide training requirements, enacts whistleblower protections and allows improved access to important health records.
So, today, we can say that most of the same rules that have protected other American workers from dangerous cancer- and birth-defect causing pesticides are finally going to protect farm workers under the new EPA regulations.
Is it ever too late to do the right thing? It’s been a long time coming, but it has come today.
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