Upstate orchard putting new farmworker protections to the test

Yahoo

28-05-2025

Earlier this month, about a dozen workers arrived in Wolcott, a small town halfway between Rochester and Syracuse, to grow apple trees. At this time of year, farmworkers are grafting and budding, and planting long rows of seedlings.
They traveled to Wafler Farms, an apple orchard and fruit tree nursery, from Jamaica. Some have been making the journey for many years, living on the farm for up to three seasons and earning money to support their wives and send their children to school back home. It's a precarious arrangement: They can only return to the farm, and therefore to the US, if their boss brings them back.
'Sometimes you have to see something being done wrong and shut your mouth — you can't say nothing. Because if you say something, you just might not come back next year,' said Christopher, a seasonal worker who has been returning to the farm for a decade. (Four Wafler Farms workers spoke with New York Focus and asked to have their names changed to protect them from retaliation.)
Things were supposed to be different this year. A long-awaited union contract took effect in April, granting workers benefits including higher pay and the right to return each year if there is work for them.
So far, the contract is not being followed, according to the farmworkers.
Wafler Farms never agreed to the contract. The family-run farm refused to bargain with the union, which was formed in 2022 by a majority of the approximately 90 people working there during the peak of the harvest, and is affiliated with the United Farm Workers of America, a national labor union. So negotiations were moved to an independent arbitration process, as stipulated by state law. Wafler declined to participate in that process, as well, and a contract was finalized without the employer's input.
It's among the first few union contracts that farmworkers have won in New York since 2019, when the state legislature granted them collective bargaining rights as part of a package of landmark protections for agricultural workers. They are excluded from unionizing under federal law — a legacy of New Deal-era politics.
The fruit farm is now a testing ground for what workers can achieve under New York's law, and how far the state will go to help them.
Wafler Farms is arguing in a Wayne County Supreme Court case that the union is not legitimate, on the basis that the farm owner did not have the chance to discourage it from forming and that employees on guest worker visas do not have the right to unionize. (A handful of farms and the New York State Vegetable Growers Association brought a lawsuit making a similar argument in October 2023, but the court upheld the right of guestworkers to organize, and the case is now being appealed.)
Wafler has sought to halt contract negotiations while the case proceeds, but has so far failed to do so.
Wafler Farms and its attorney did not respond to requests for comment.
On April 30, the union filed a charge against Wafler Farms with the state Public Employment Relations Board for failing to follow the contract. The labor board, set up to resolve disputes for state public workers, is tasked with enforcing the farmworker union law. The charge is awaiting a hearing at the board.
If it rules against the farm, it may still be up to the union to enforce the contract.
'We would prefer that PERB would say, 'Hey, we issued this order and the company is refusing to abide by it, we're going to take them to court,'' said Armando Elenes, secretary treasurer of the United Farm Workers.
But Elenes isn't optimistic that the board will be that aggressive. 'We are testing the law in real time,' he said.
New York's more than 50,000 farmworkers had long been excluded from many of the labor protections that other workers in the state enjoy. They didn't get overtime pay, benefits like disability and family leave, or the right to unionize.
Then, in 2019, the legislature passed the Farm Laborers Fair Labor Practices Act, ending those exclusions. The law guarantees farmworkers a day of rest each week. It grants them overtime pay after 56 hours of work in a week (unlike the 40 hour threshold for other workers). and it gives them the right to unionize, although they can't legally go on strike, limiting their power to extract concessions.
Since then, workers on fifteen farms in New York have formed unions. Eight have formed with the United Farm Workers, the union best known for its 20th century boycotts and worker organizing in California. The UFW has struggled in recent decades to retain members and win contracts, and labor experts have hailed its recent organizing successes in New York as a potential turning point.
'It's really hard to organize folks in rural areas, because folks are really isolated,' said Reverend Richard Witt, executive director of the Rural & Migrant Ministry, a New York organization that helped pass the 2019 reforms. 'And then you add into that the power dynamics, and economic dynamics … within agriculture, it makes it really, really hard to organize.'
The United Farm Workers and two other unions — the United Food and Commercial Workers and the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union — have been organizing workers across the state, including on apple orchards, a dairy farm, and Long Island vineyards.
Many of those workers are immigrants, often undocumented, or migrants who come to the US for a portion of the year through a guest worker program called H-2A. That program allows employers to hire temporary workers from other countries and requires them to provide housing and pay a minimum wage on par with the industry's wages in the region. More than 10,000 workers were approved for the visas in New York last year.
At Wafler Farms, nearly all of the workers are Jamaicans on H-2A visas. They say the work offers a pathway to a better life.
'The wages here are a lot better than what we get in Jamaica,' said Christopher, who has a wife and two children back home. 'To send your family to a good college, to live a standard life, it's difficult in Jamaica. A regular nine to five cannot do it.' One of the workers works as a DJ during his months in Jamaica, another as a tour guide, a third in construction.
While the money supports their families, the farm work comes with challenges.
'For a lot of guys, your relationship gets ruined because of leaving your family for so long,' said George, another worker. 'We take the chance because we want betterment for our family.'
The H-2A program does not provide a path to citizenship, and workers are excluded from the Social Security system. Their presence in the US is contingent on their employer, meaning they can't seek out better pay and conditions by switching jobs, and they risk losing their livelihoods if they aren't rehired.
'You just don't know if you're coming back until they call you,' said Christopher. 'You could be in Jamaica, you don't have a primary job that you can depend on, you're depending on this job that you have now.'
In 2022, workers at Wafler decided to unionize with United Farm Workers. They hoped that a union would protect their jobs, even when they spoke up about working conditions. They also hoped it would stop the verbal abuse they faced from their boss. A video taken by one of the workers that year shows the owner screaming and repeatedly swearing at a group of them.
'Everybody was tired of this type of situation where if you see something wrong, and you try to talk about it, there is a backlash coming,' said Christopher.
The United Farm Workers has charged that some workers were called back later than usual last year in retaliation for union organizing. Those charges are awaiting a decision by the state labor board.
At Wafler and on other farms, the union efforts have been 'extremely contentious,' said Richard Stup, the director of the Agricultural Workforce Development Program at Cornell University. 'When you have a closely-held business like a farm, where people have been personally invested in it sometimes for generations, the idea of a union coming in and lodging itself in the middle of your business is almost inconceivable.'
Farm owner Paul Wafler 'was really pissed when he found out' about the union, Chistopher said. 'He was like, 'You stabbed me in the back.''
A couple of miles down the road from Wafler Farms, workers at Cahoon Farms, which grows apples and cherries, also organized with the United Farm Workers and won the union's first contract in New York. Management at Cahoons Farm agreed to follow it.
The Wafler contract is the first in the state to be imposed through arbitration. Under the 2019 law, if the union and employer can't reach a contract through bargaining, the matter can be brought to an arbitrator selected by both sides. Since the unions aren't allowed to strike, the process is meant to ensure that employers can't indefinitely delay negotiations.
The Wafler Farms contract includes the recall rights that the workers had sought: they will be brought back every year in order of seniority. They'll get a small wage increase for the two years of the contract, paid holidays and vacation, and some employer matching for a retirement plan.
But right now, that contract isn't being followed, the union charges. The workers are not being paid the more-than-$19 hourly wage stipulated by the contract, and the owner has changed their working conditions without negotiating with the union.
Under the 2019 reforms, farmworker unions are under the purview of the Public Employment Relations Board, which oversees New York public sector unions as well as private sector workers who can't unionize under federal law, like at horse racing tracks and religious organizations.
The board has the power to certify unions, oversee the bargaining process, and rule on charges of unfair labor practices. Employers who violate the law face fines of up to $5,000 and up to a year in prison. The board can also petition the state Supreme Court to enforce the law. (No unfair labor practice charges in agricultural workplaces have yet reached that point.)
'PERB is used to dealing with public employers, which operate in a much different manner than not only private employers, but agricultural private employers,' said Elenes of the United Farm Workers. 'I think they're having a wake up call that this is a different animal — this is agriculture.'
The union's charge against the farm for violating the contract is awaiting a hearing at the board. The union is seeking back pay for the workers, among other remedies.
'Our goal is the prompt resolution of certification and ULP matters and helping the parties build a healthy and productive collective bargaining relationship,' board chairperson Timothy Connick told New York Focus in a statement.
Even without the contract being followed, some things have changed since the workers unionized. For one, they now get paid for orientation.
And the swearing has abated. 'They talk to us much different,' said George.
'There's a lot of respect now,' said Christopher.