FARM WORKER ISSUES

Welcome to our farm worker issues links section!

Explore the menu on your right for links regarding specific issues faced by farm workers or search the links below for general information

 

Working Conditions

• Like Machines in the Fields: Workers without Rights in American Agriculture by OXFAM America and Make Fair Trade (.pdf)

• A state of fear: Human rights abuses in North Carolina’s tobacco industry. A report by FLOC and OXFAM America (.pdf)

• Inventory of farm worker issues and protections in the USA by OXFAM America, United Farm Workers and Bon Appetit Management Company Foundation (.pdf)

• Weeding out abuses: Recommendations for a law-abiding farm labor system. A report by Farmworker Justice and Oxfam America (.pdf)

• Migrant Farmworkers: America’s New Plantation Workers by Christine Ahn with Melissa Moore and Nick Parkert

• FILM: Harvest of Shame (1960) Watch the entire original broadcast of one of the most celebrated documentaries of all time, 1960′s “Harvest of Shame,” in which Edward R. Murrow exposed the plight of America’s farm workers.

• BOOK: “The Human Cost of Food: Farmworkers’ Lives, Labor, and Advocacy” by Charles D. Thompson Jr., and Melinda F. Wiggins.

 

Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta

• About Cesar, a collection of resources by the Cesar Chavez Foundation (includes suggested readings and resources, speeches and writings, timeline, audio, photos, videos and more!)

• The Story of Cesar Chavez by the United Farm Workers

• Cesar Chavez Day: United Farm Workers Co-Founder Dolores Huerta Reflects on the Life and the Legacy of the Legendary Labor Activist, interview by Democracy Now!

• Cesar Chavez Action and Information Center (United Farm Workers Website)

• FILM: Viva la Causa! by the Southern Poverty Law Center

 

 

Farm Worker Stories

• VIDEO: Más Que Nada by SAF. A view of life for a migrant family living in limbo to work the tobacco fields of North Carolina so they can raise six children up right in the very place where they were born.

• VIDEO: La Vida Diaria / The Daily Life by SAF. SAF Fellow Robyn Levine documents the experiences of a group of migrant farmworkers who live together and work in the Christmas tree fields in Boone, North Carolina.

• VIDEO: Echando la Mano by SAF. This documentary explores the theme of family in labor lore: how cell phones connect farmworkers to their loved ones far away, how they distract themselves from loneliness, and how the community in the farmworker camp becomes a sort of family during the long season of work in the fields.

• FILM: Immokalee USA by Georg Koszulinski